Refugeeship - A project of justification
Nicola Magnusson
Doktorsavhandlingar från Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik
3
‘Refugeeship’
- A project of justification
Claiming asylum in England and Sweden.
Nicola-Anne Magnusson
© Nicola Magnusson, St ockholm 2011
I SBN 978- 91- 7447- 262- 2
Print ed in Sweden by US- AB, St ockholm 2011
Dist ribut or: I nst it ut ionen för pedagogik och didakt ik,
St ockholm s Universit et
To Rune, Alexander and
Oliver
Abstract
Doctoral Thesis
Department of Education
Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm
Refugeeship: A project of justification. Claiming asylum in England and
Sweden
The aim of this thesis is to explore the asylum process from an experiential
perspective, starting in the country of origin, fleeing, claiming asylum and
being granted refugee status. The theoretical interest is to contribute with an
understanding of how this asylum process impacts on personal meaningmaking, focusing on identification and positioning work of the person forced
to flee and make an asylum claim. With this purpose in mind, I have
remained close to the experiences of the participants’ talk, made visible
through interpretative analysis.
Drawing on a discursive-psychological approach, 19 interview-cases (10 in
England and 9 in Sweden) have been analysed consisting of stories of the
migration process: life in the country of origin, fleeing, claiming asylum and
being granted refugee status. This talk includes rich description of what this
has involved for these participants, in terms of the more existential aspects of
this kind of migration, identification and positioning, as well as their
attempts to give this process some sort of meaning. This I name refugeeship.
The results show that refugeeship is characterised by a multitude of implicit
and explicit questionings concerning the refugee’s rights and duties. Implicit
questions concerning the refugee’s flight, starting in the country of origin are
followed by explicit questions when encountering the official legal system of
asylum in the new country, which involves an erosion of sense of self. The
refugee stories express what I call the moral career of refugeeship,
illustrating the events in refugeeship which are ongoing, though changeable
over time and space and incorporate a moral dimension. The refugee finds
him or herself continuously justifying the migration, struggling for
recognition and convincing ‘Others’ that one can in fact become a
contributing member of the new society.
Key words: identification, positioning, asylum system, asylum seeker,
refugee, moral career, justification and refugeeship.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to all the participants in this study, for trusting me with your
experiences and teaching me more about forced migration. Besides my
participants’ willingness to share their stories with me, this thesis would not
have been possible without the supervision of Professor Anders Gustavsson.
It is a well known fact amongst those who have been privileged enough to
work with Anders or have him as a supervisor that he is hugely inspiring.
This has been my experience too. Besides inspiring, he has supervised me
with great integrity, wisdom, patience and commitment. Thank you so much
Anders!
Many thanks to Professor Charles Westin who has been a wonderful and
supportive associate supervisor; his expertise of the field of migration and
gift of the English language has contributed enormously to my work. I also
thank you, Charles, for introducing me to Kesi Mahendran, at the Open
University, UK. Kesi has served as a real source of stimulation and is a true
mentor to me; thank you Kesi! Thank you so much Professor Sonja Olin
Lauritzen and Professor Ulf Janson for your diligent and engaged reading of
my work. At the beginning of the process of embarking on a PhD, Professor
Birgitta Qvarsell, Professor Katrin Goldstein-Kyaga and Professor Ola
Halldén were especially helpful. Thank you; the goal I set out to achieve has
been fulfilled!
During the process many have in different ways been very supportive, I’m
sorry I cannot name you all! Particular thanks to all of you who have taken
time to read my work in progress and contributed with your comments at
Föreställningsseminariet (the notion of ideas seminar) and
Tolkningsseminariet (the interpretations seminar). These occasions have
contributed with a sea of ideas which have been a crucial part of working
through the analytical aspects of the thesis. Thank you to all my colleagues
and friends at the department. A special thank you, to my great friend from
start to finish, Helen Knutes. Thank you Helen, for always being one step
ahead in the process, showing me that the highs and lows are all part of it!
Thank you to Robert Ohlsson, for your academic know-how and reading of
various chapters of this thesis. Besides being an academic role model for me,
Robert has been a great listener and source of support throughout. Thank you
to my dear friend Ewa Olstedt for all your guidance and for always being
there! Thank you to Eva Olsson and Jorun Bergström for always showing a
100% willingness to help in times of need- and there have been many! A big
thank you to the Red Cross drop-in-centres in Sweden and England, for
allowing me insight into their organisations, and the use of the building to
conduct interviews. I would also like to thank the UK Home Office -UK
border agency for permission to re-use part of a poster (front cover) used for
a campaign run in the UK. My deepest thanks to Anthea Holme for her
meticulous proof-reading of the manuscript towards the end.
Great thanks and much recognition goes to my family, who have with vast
patience allowed me to be pre-occupied with “the book” for some years now.
Thank you to my husband Rune, for your immense understanding and
encouragement, you always said I would get there and I have-right again
Rune! Thank you to my lovely children, Alexander and Oliver. You have
always shown an interest in the book’s development, the question “how
many pages is it now?” has been particularly motivating. Thank you to my
mum Anne, who at an early age introduced me to the stimulating and diverse
university world- “the school for big girls and boys”, this journey started
already back then. A special thanks for the anthropological ‘touch’ during
field work too! Thank you to my brother Dean and his wife Joanne, for
support of another kind, that of keeping me connected to the lighter side of
life and enjoying oneself now and again- our laughs have been a welcome
break from the challenges of the current asylum system!
Contents
1. I nt roduct ion - official m igrat ion syst em s and t he const ruct ion of
asylum seekers .......................................................................................... 15
1.1 The refugee cat egory definit ion and som e differences bet ween asylum
seeker and refugee .................................................................................................... 18
1.2 Swedish and UK asylum law in a European cont ext ................................... 20
1.2.1 Com plexit ies of assessing an asylum claim ......................................... 20
1.3 Dialogical m eaning- m aking .............................................................................. 21
1.4 The problem area of t he st udy and t heoret ical research int erest ........... 22
1.5 The ‘m igrant s’ in t his st udy .............................................................................. 24
1.6 St ruct ure and out line of t he t hesis ................................................................. 25
2. Previous research ................................................................................. 28
2.1 Asylum m igrat ion ............................................................................................... 28
2.1.1 Discourse research- m edia and public debat e on asylum m igrat ion
................................................................................................................................. 29
2.1.2 Research on t he ‘insider’: asylum seeker and refugee const ruct ions
and experiences .................................................................................................... 32
2.2 Refugeeship as a process ................................................................................. 33
2.3 Migrat ion, com bining ident ificat ions and posit ioning.................................. 34
2.4 Final com m ent ..................................................................................................... 37
3. Theoret ical point of depart ure ........................................................... 38
3.1 I nt roduct ion t o discursive psychology ........................................................... 38
3.1.1 Discourse- orient ed narrat ive analysis .................................................. 39
3.2 St ory lines ............................................................................................................ 40
3.3 Self- concept , dialogical self and posit ioning ................................................. 41
3.3.1 Relat ionship bet ween social and personal ident ificat ion ................... 41
3.3.2 I nt eract ional episodes and t he present at ion of self........................... 42
3.3.3 Posit ioning t heory and discursive pract ice ........................................... 43
3.4 Ont ological assum pt ions ................................................................................... 45
3.5 Sum m arising som e of t he key concept s used in t his st udy ...................... 46
4. Met hodological considerat ions ........................................................... 49
4.1 The st udy’s point of depart ure in relat ion t o t he t heory out lined in
Chapt er Three ............................................................................................................. 49
4.1.1 The aim , obj ect ives and quest ions of t he st udy ................................. 50
4.2 Underst anding t he int erview cont ext ............................................................. 51
4.2.1 Dat a collect ion t hrough int erviews ........................................................ 53
4.2.2 Transcript ion and language of conduct ................................................ 54
4.2.3 Transcript ion convent ions ........................................................................ 54
4.2.4 What did t he int erview sit uat ion look like?.......................................... 54
4.3 Dat a collect ion from t wo different count ries ................................................ 55
4.3.1 Select ion of part icipant s .......................................................................... 58
4.3.2 Recruit m ent of st udy part icipant s ......................................................... 58
4.4 I n Sweden ............................................................................................................ 59
4.4.1 Researching secret ive groups ................................................................. 60
4.4.2 Red Cross Sweden ..................................................................................... 60
4.5 I n England ............................................................................................................ 61
4.5.1 Me as m igrant in Sweden, or nat ive in England ................................. 61
4.6 I nt erpersonal aspect s: Self- Ot her in t he int erview wit h m e ..................... 62
4.6.1 I ssues of ‘access’ ....................................................................................... 63
4.6.2 Red Cross, England ................................................................................... 65
4.7 ‘Expert ’ int erviews .............................................................................................. 65
4.8 Et hical considerat ions ........................................................................................ 66
4.8.1 Et hical aspect s of t he writ ing up ............................................................ 67
4.9 I ssues of validit y/ reliabilit y .............................................................................. 68
4.9.1 Reliabilit y ..................................................................................................... 68
4.9.2 Validat ing t he analysis process .............................................................. 69
4.9.3 Underst anding t his act of narrat ion and t he analysis work ............. 70
4.10 An int roduct ion t o m y first int erpret at ions of som e of t he t hem es
raised in t he int erviews ............................................................................................ 71
5. The road t o refugeeship ...................................................................... 74
Account s of hist orical t raj ect ories .......................................................................... 74
5.1. The em phasis on life before m igrat ion ......................................................... 75
5.1.1 The negat ive and posit ive account - giving ........................................... 77
5.1.2 Conflict ual feelings over t he flight - a variat ion in t he account s...... 79
5.2 Legit im at isat ion of t he flight ............................................................................ 82
5.3 Escaping and Fleeing ......................................................................................... 85
5.4 Abandonm ent ...................................................................................................... 88
5.5 Sum m ary .............................................................................................................. 90
5.5. 1 The need for posit ive self- present at ions and earlier life
represent at ions ..................................................................................................... 92
6. The official asylum procedure - encount ering t he legal and
adm inist rat ive syst em and all t hat t his ent ails ................................... 94
6.1 Making t he init ial claim - I t didn’t feel like it was m e saying it ................ 95
6.2 Ent ering a legal bat t le ....................................................................................... 97
6.2.1 A t ransit ion of ident ificat ion .................................................................... 98
6.3 Screening int erviews: a new level of abandonm ent and loss................. 100
6.3.1 Deprived of all previous ident ificat ion cat egories wit h no obvious
replacem ent ......................................................................................................... 102
6.3.2 The param et ers of t he syst em in everyday life ................................ 104
6.4 Loss of m y count ry, cit izenship and nat ional ident it y: a furt her layer of
abandonm ent and loss ........................................................................................... 107
6.4.1 A considerat ion of ‘lim bo’ ...................................................................... 110
6.5 Trying t o underst and t he init ial findings ..................................................... 111
6.5.1 Mult i- layered abandonm ent .................................................................. 112
6.6 Erosion of Self ................................................................................................... 113
6.6.1 Uncert ain ident ificat ions- an exam ple of erosion of sense of self 116
6.7 The social posit ioning as ‘crim inal’ ............................................................... 116
7. Being a Refugee .................................................................................. 118
7.1 The grant ing of refugee ‘st at us’ .................................................................... 118
7.1.1 Trium phant ‘t alk’ ..................................................................................... 119
7.1.2 Transit ioning from ‘lim bo- ness’ t o ‘personhood’ .............................. 121
7.1.3 Legit im acy and acknowledgem ent as an aspect of refugee st at us
............................................................................................................................... 122
7.2 The challenges of refugee st at us- t he ‘label’ as ot her- conferred ......... 123
7.2.1 A sense of perm anency .......................................................................... 124
7.2.2 Refugee st at us- a relat ional t erm ........................................................ 126
7.2.3 I n relat ion t o ot her refugees ................................................................. 127
7.3 Com plexit ies of t he ‘st at us’ in t he refugee concept .................................. 128
7.3.1 Gaining cont rol over t he st at us- label: creat ing new st at us ........... 129
7.3.2 Space for a new life ................................................................................ 133
7.4 Refugee Dom ain ............................................................................................... 135
7.4.1 Gaining independence and being less of a refugee ......................... 137
7.4.2 St riving for som et hing ‘ordinary’ ......................................................... 139
7.5 The challenges of t he ‘ordinary’ life ............................................................. 141
7.5.1 ‘Passing’ in ‘ordinary’ life ....................................................................... 144
7.5.2 Lack of solidarit y in ‘ordinary’ life ........................................................ 146
7.6 Unpacking refugee ‘st at us’- a sum m ary so far .......................................... 147
7.6.1 Ent anglem ent of ‘social’ and ‘personal’ ident ificat ion ..................... 148
7.7 The m oral dim ension in refugeeship ............................................................ 149
7.8 Locked in t he discourse- filled label .............................................................. 150
8. Const ruct ing cont inuit y and discont inuit y in t he st ories of
‘beyond’ being a refugee ....................................................................... 153
Sum m ary of analysis .............................................................................................. 153
8.1 What const it ut es m oving ‘beyond’ ................................................................ 154
8.2 I dent it y work for m oving forward ................................................................. 156
8.2.1 Ridding oneself of t he refugee ‘bit ’ ...................................................... 156
8.2.2 Fluid posit ioning: a st rat egy of ident it y work ................................... 158
8.2.3 Hindrances t o ident it y work .................................................................. 160
8.2.4 I nt ersect ing posit ions of belonging wit h posit ions on t he out side 161
8.3 Meaning- m aking: past t o fut ure ................................................................... 162
8.3.1 I nt ersect ing t he ‘old’ count ry and t he ‘new’ count ry ....................... 166
8.3.2 Posit ioning wit hin ‘cit izenship’ .............................................................. 168
8.4 The challenge of polit ical act ivism / polit ical refugee cont ra an ‘ordinary’
life. Can t he various posit ions be com bined? .................................................... 170
8.5 Sum m ary ............................................................................................................ 172
9. Refugeeship and t he m oral course of event s ............................... 174
9.1 Generalisabilit y and t he lim it s of t his st udy ............................................... 174
9.2 Refugeeship ....................................................................................................... 176
9.2.1 Lost and re- gained recognit ion ............................................................. 178
9.2.2 I m plicit and explicit quest ioning .......................................................... 181
9.2.3 The series of j ust ificat ion ....................................................................... 182
9.3 Moral Career ...................................................................................................... 186
9.3.1 Moral career and need for j ust ificat ion ............................................... 186
9.3.2 Refugeeship and t he sense of self ....................................................... 187
9.4 England and Sweden- t wo different cont ext s ............................................ 188
9.4.1 The cont est ed cont ext of asylum and t he sense of self .................. 191
9.5 Transcending ‘old’ and ‘new’ – m ixed ident ificat ions ............................... 192
9.5.1 The agent ic capacit y of m y part icipant s ............................................. 194
9.6 Final word ........................................................................................................... 196
Bibliography .............................................................................................. 198
Appendix 1: ............................................................................................................... 207
1. Introduction - official migration systems
and the construction of asylum seekers
While it is a common belief that we live in an age of migration, it can
be argued that we have always lived in an age of population movement
where people have sought a safe haven in which to build a new life
(Castles and Miller, 1993/2003, Franzén, 2001; Schuster, 2003).
Therefore, the business of seeking asylum is not a modern
phenomenon. However, the legal concepts ‘asylum’ and ‘asylum
seeker’ are recent constructions (Clayton, 2006). Thus, what is new for
migration of our times, this thesis argues, is the introduction of novel
ways to label or categorise different groups of people migrating. For
example, people may be categorised in terms of asylum seeker, refugee
or economic migrant. Linked to these categorisations, systems to
control and restrict certain forms of migration have been introduced.
One influential body in this construction is the European Union (EU),
which has promoted policies enabling more freedom of movement for
those who are privileged enough to be a citizen of a member state and
excluding those who are not (Castles and Miller, 1993/2003). Another
is the United Nations (UN), which has a significant role in assisting
displaced persons in the world and controlling some parts of the global
refugee migration. Some categories which have emerged through the
legalisation and illegalisation of migration are voluntary/economic
migrant, asylum seeker, illegal migrant, failed or refused asylum seeker,
sometimes known as ‘bogus’ (Black and Koser, 1999), documentless
migrant, and refugee. 1 It is important to point out here that ‘voluntary’
or so-called ‘economic’ migrants may be third-country nationals. 2 The
fact that they do not belong to the European Union may make it
necessary for them to seek asylum in order to stay in the country. That
is to say, even those who are not intent on seeking asylum, but rather
wish to migrate for work-related purposes can be from third-countries.
A common consideration in EU migration law is skill levels. That is to
1
In Swedish the term ‘paperslös’ refers to undocumented and ‘avvisad’ asylum seeker
is a failed or refused asylum seeker.
2
‘Third country national’ is the term used by the European Commission to refer to any
person who is not a national of an EU member state or EEA/EFTA countries such as
Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
15
say, third-country nationals can be welcome if they can ‘prove’ that
they have the right skill sets or right number of ‘points’. Again the
emphasis is on restricting certain groups, and opening up borders to
others, who may be seen as a contribution to the country. This thesis is
concerned with seekers of asylum, categorised or labelled as ‘asylum
seekers’, and those who have been granted asylum and are officially
categorised as ‘refugee’.
Migration has also been argued to have ‘changed character’ (Castles
and Miller, 1993/2003; Franzén, 2001, Westin, 2006), as has people’s
belief systems regarding migration. Deaux (2006) writes:
Illegal immigrant has in fact become a highly stigmatized category,
adding an additional layer of negativity to the prevailing image of
immigrants. Refugees also do not fare well in attitude surveys, despite
what one might think would be some element of compassion for their
plight.
Both England and Sweden have a history of labour migration and
England, due to Britain’s colonial history, has witnessed migration
from former colonial countries since the mid-1940s. However, it was
from the early 1970s, until now, that immigration to Sweden has been
mainly of refugees (Westin, 2006). Refugees arriving in Sweden before
the mid-seventies, between 1945 and 1972 came from countries such as
Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia; however,
these ‘refugees’ were ‘classified’ as economic migrants and did not
have to seek asylum in order to stay (Westin, 1973, 2006). Refugee
migration began somewhat later in the United Kingdom, when an
increase in asylum claims became apparent in the 1980s (Castles and
Miller, 2003).
Although the terms ‘asylum’ and ‘refugee’ have their origin in Greek
terminology, the meaning ascribed to these terms today has changed,
born out of today’s greater focus on who has the right to seek asylum,
who fulfils the criteria for refugee status and who does not fulfil such
criteria (Schuster, 2003). It should be stated at the outset that the
concept of asylum is first of all a legal, administrative construct,
determining the regulation these migrants have to follow when entering
the new country. As a consequence, the meaning behind being a refugee
or seeking asylum is locally determined, and it varies from one legal
and administrative system to another. In everyday language, migrants
are categorised according to different more or less informal discourses.
A common characteristic of most legal systems is the assumption that
different types of migration exist based, first of all, on personal
intentions. This notion leaks into everyday discourse, and thus tends to
be seen as a ‘truth’. The process of migrant categorisation is however
16
quite complex. Third Country Nationals, for example, do not enjoy
primary benefit from freedom of movement, as do citizens of the EU
(Clayton, 2006). Those who are not members of the EU, citizens of
Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, but wish to enter a European country,
can feel forced, for example, to enter through seeking asylum whether
or not they see themselves in need of ‘protection’.
Another significant aspect of the local legal/administrative
regulations concerns border control. The aim of this system is to control
entry which in practice implies a restrictive stand with regard to the
process of claiming asylum. In the UK, 3 it is not uncommon at ports
and airports that border controls are in place to remove migrants on
entry. These work actively to stop the process of making the actual
claim (Black and Koser, 1999), as once the claim is made the claimant
cannot be removed from the country until the claim is processed.
Migrants who do not belong to the EU, EEA/EFTA 4 or cannot enter
through a work/study permit or visa, but who do succeed in entering,
are forced by law to claim asylum at the border. Those who do not
respect this law and enter on a false passport or without a visa are
considered ‘illegal immigrants’. Put very simply, the only way of
emigrating into the EU today, as a third country national, without a
work or study permit, or visa, is by claiming asylum. Once the asylum
application is processed, applicants will either be granted permission to
stay in the country or be rejected. In this sense, the refugee does not
have the right to decide about whether one is a refugee. If one is not
refused, one is categorised as refugee by immigration officials. If one is
refused, one is categorised as ‘a failed or refused asylum seeker’ and
faces deportation. Leudar et al (2008) postulate that the label refugee is
‘other conferred’, that is to say, it is given to the individual, it is not
something the individual can confer on him or herself. At the same
time, one may be refused asylum and therefore not granted refugee
status, but consider oneself to be a refugee. The research aim of this
thesis is to understand how these aspects of claiming asylum and of
being categorised as a refugee pervade one’s identifications and selfconceptions.
The character of migration to European countries turned in the early
1970s. However, it has taken time for the terms ‘asylum seeker’ and
‘refugee’ to come into public use. In England it was as late as the 1990s
(Castles and Miller, 2003). It was a little earlier in Sweden, in the mid1980s, that the terms became part of common language usage. Today,
3
This is practiced, according to Black and Koser (1999) in the UK and is not
uncommon in other countries. However, to my knowledge, this is not exercised in
Sweden.
4
EEA: European Economic Area, EFTA: European Free Trade Association
17
strong public discourse exists when it comes to the way the terms
‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’ are used. British tabloid newspapers
readily use terms such as ‘bogus’ in referring to people migrating,
inferring that their claims for protection are false. It can be argued that
public use of these terms comes as a result of migration becoming an
issue of policy and politics. The notion of asylum migration is readily
debated in the media today. This coverage contributes to the
conceptualisations of refugees in common-sense usage.
1.1 The refugee category definition and some differences
between asylum seeker and refugee
In terms of the categories ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’, three different
meanings can be ascribed to these terms: (1) an official meaning, which
is legal in content; (2) a common ‘knowledge’ meaning, which is based
on general, everyday notions surrounding the concepts; (3) selfdescription; that is to say, what a person labelled ‘asylum seeker’ or
‘refugee’ ascribes to the category label. This thesis aims to unpack the
third meaning, in relation to meanings one and two.
In terms of official definition, the category definition of an ‘asylum
seeker’ is not the same as the category definition ‘refugee’. Refugees,
officially speaking, are those who have been granted asylum, and the
right to stay in the new country indefinitely or temporarily, depending
on whether limited right to remain, Humanitarian Protection or
indefinite refugee status is applied. An asylum seeker is someone who
has asked, officially, for the protection of the state, but is still having
their claim processed. Refugees enjoy many rights which apply to
citizens of the country, however, with some differences. Most refugees
cannot apply for citizenship for up to five years after being granted
refugee status. An asylum seeker is not allowed to travel during the
claimant period, and lacks a passport or travel documents, which are
removed when one claims asylum. As a refugee, one does gain one’s
mobility back; that is to say, one is permitted to travel freely, with
certain exceptions as to travel to one’s country of origin. Before
receiving citizenship, refugees are issued with travel documents, which
resemble a passport in terms of format, but lack information about
nationality or citizenship. Those who have been granted limited right to
remain, may not however be permitted to travel freely.
The process of claiming asylum means asking another state for
protection because the individual argues one’s own state cannot or does
not provide this protection. Most asylum seekers coming to the EU
today are refused and the interpretation of the refugee definition has
become increasingly rigorous (Black and Koser, 1999). Castles and
Miller (2003) postulate that 90 per cent of asylum claims are rejected,
18
however, many cannot be deported as their countries of origin refuse to
allow them back into the country, or due to the fact they have no
passport.
Depending on where the participant is in the process of making an
asylum claim, means one is either categorised by migration authorities
as ‘asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’ or ‘failed asylum seeker’. Officially, the
definition of an asylum seeker is a person who has fled their country in
order to seek safety and the protection of another state. As an asylum
seeker the protection and right to take up residence permanently or for a
certain period of time has not been granted. As an asylum seeker, the
rights normally extended to refugees or citizens do not apply. During
the asylum seeking period the individual has limited mobility rights. An
asylum seeker has all their travel documentation removed at the onset
of the application. Asylum seekers are normally obliged to report to a
local police station regularly, up to once a week or as little as once a
month, depending on the case. Some asylum seekers are kept in
detention during the asylum seeking assessment period. Those that are
not held in detention can be housed together with other asylum seekers
and given a limited amount of funding with which to buy food; they are
not permitted to work as asylum seekers.
It is argued that the distinction between the two categories of
migrants, which exist within migration law in the United Kingdom and
Sweden; ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’, is a difficult delineation to
make, as the two categories overlap each other (Clayton, 2006,
Schuster, 2003, Castles and Miller, 1993/2003). The way in which
asylum cases are managed, in terms of interpreting who is in ‘genuine’
need of protection, contributes to common-knowledge understanding of
the ‘real’ refugee and the ‘bogus’ refugee.
Asylum claims are interpreted against the background of The
Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees. According to the
Convention 1951 (Article 1A(2) the definition of a refugee is a person
who:
Owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or
political opinion, is outside his country of nationality and is unable or,
owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that
country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country
of his former habitual residence is unable or, owing to such fear, is
unwilling to return to it.
Due to the restrictive nature of this definition, a new concept was
introduced to European asylum law in 2003 called ‘Humanitarian
Protection (HP)/Discretionary Leave (DL)’. Many states which have
agreed to the refugee convention’s definition have also made provisions
19
to provide a safety net status for those not qualifying for asylum
according to the convention definition. Sweden and UK both extend
their policies to include those falling outside of the above definition.
This opened up the interpretation of cases from a wider perspective than
that of the above definition. When refugee status is granted according to
HP, the individual claims do not agree in all respects with the limited
Refugee Convention definition, but compelling reasons to provide
protection still exist (Clayton, 2006). This, in itself, reveals the
restrictive character of the definition as Castles and Miller (2003) and
Black and Koser (1999) point out.
1.2 Swedish and UK asylum law in a European context
Legislation in the UK and Sweden is influenced by the Common
European Asylum System (CEAS). Both states implemented European
Union Law on migration and border controls into respective national
law, to create common practices and goals with regard to the treatment
of asylum seekers. Therefore, asylum law in the UK and Sweden has
mostly commonalities when it comes to assessments of who has the
right to remain and who does not.
The refugee determination process in Europe is centred on
individuals proving their case in a legalistic framework according to the
criteria in the 1959 UN Convention relating to the status of refugees.
This has led to a popular perception that a successful applicant is a
‘genuine’ refugee and an unsuccessful one is ‘bogus’. Some popular
thinking also equates the unsuccessful asylum claimant with an
‘economic migrant’.
As the EU has not had a migration policy which enables economic
entry, this motivation has not been regarded as legitimate. Europe’s
more recent recognition of its need for labour has only very marginally
penetrated asylum policy for fear that the asylum route will be used by
economic migrants (Clayton 2006: 139).
1.2.1 Complexities of assessing an asylum claim
In spite of the complexity described of categorisations of refugees and
asylum seekers, much of the official assessment of who has the right to
be granted refugee status or not, has its roots in understanding
migration in terms of a choice that migrants make, and by assessing
migration in terms of something voluntary or involuntary. The grounds
for this distinction, and the legal assessments based on this way of
thinking are firmly rooted in the notion of protection and
trustworthiness (Clayton, 2006). That is to say, the only grounds for
seeking asylum are supposed to be due to need of protection that the
20
home state cannot or is unwilling to provide and therefore the
individual feels the need to flee to another state for such protection.
This need is something that is interpreted against the background of
how reasonable the claim for protection is. This is a complex process
of interpretation according to Castles and Miller (2003) who argue that
this distinction between voluntary, economic migrant and political
forced refugee is ever increasingly difficult to make, as economic
factors and political factors most often are interconnected - something
to which globalisation is contributing more and more to. So, whilst
recognising the narrow official definition of the criteria for who is a
refugee and who is not, it is apparent that making this is becoming
progressively more complicated. Similarly, Clayton (2006) suggests
that countries which are experiencing rapid changes, be it due to war or
a natural disasters, may involve individuals fleeing for various reasons,
other than political, therefore rendering it difficult to make the
distinction Castles and Miller raise, the distinction between someone in
need of protection, a so-called ‘convention refugee’, and someone
looking for a more economic stable situation, a so-called ‘economic
migrant’.
1.3 Dialogical meaning-making
Categorisations such as asylum seeker and refugee and their meanings
are socially constructed through a complex interaction between
everyday discursive and legal systems. The introduction of such
distinctions has resulted in asylum seekers and refugees occupying a
more central role in policy, academic writings and the media in general.
Thus, legal categorisations and the discursive practices are basic
components of the dynamic meaning-making concerning refugees and
asylum seekers. Another dimension of these dynamics is constituted by
the dialogue of ‘Alter-ego’ (Marková, 2005). Here the ego definition
relates to how refugees or asylum seekers as individuals define
themselves, and the alter definition is the socially founded definition
that the refugee or asylum seeker encounters and to some extent may
internalise as part of his or her identification. Jenkins (2008) writes
about the internal moment of the identification dialectics, concerning,
self-image and the external moment of identification which refers to
public image. Interplay between the internal and external is an ongoing
process, according to Jenkins.
Evidence of this complex interaction of meaning-making can be
witnessed in the way the role of migration and the dilemma of refugees
are problematised within various academic disciplines as well as within
political rhetoric. As a result, new conceptualisations of the term
‘refugee’ emerge, including the notion that the asylum seeker and
refugee is a threat to welfare states (Schuster, 2003). Often, the
21
common-sense everyday meanings ascribed to the categories asylum
seeker or refugee, focus on questions of legitimacy to be in the new
country, and not on issues of empathy or how asylum seekers can be
supported (Goodman and Speer, 2007).
1.4 The problem area of the study and theoretical research
interest
The focus of this study lies in an interest to gain a deeper understanding
of how the complex systems of categorisation, affect meaning-making
concerning refugees and asylum seekers. More specifically, my
research interest is directed at the construction of identifications and
positioning work when experiencing asylum migration. There are a
number of studies focused on asylum migration carried out during the
past decade (some of these are accounted for in Chapter Two of this
study). It is however important to continuously re-examine this field,
particularly in light of the increased hysteria and panic expressed with
regard to the number of asylum seekers entering EU countries. We need
to be wary of the consequences of the encounters with legal /
administrative systems and negative media representations against the
background of the trauma associated with pre-flight contexts and the
trying experiences of the flight itself. The focal point of this study is on
the consequences of fleeing and encountering an unreceptive
environment made up of the procedure of claiming asylum, simplified
images disseminated by the media and other ill-informed
representations of asylum seekers, with regard to what this entails for
positioning and identification work of the asylum seeker or refugee.
My theoretical perspective has its place within a broader social
science scope, trying to understand how people make sense of
themselves and their world and how such meaning-making can be
influenced by other people, particular living conditions, as well as
policy and politics.
An important point of departure that will be outlined in more detail
in Chapter Three is that people’s sense-making processes are social and
dialogical. They encompass an interaction between the personal and the
social. Here, the social includes the interpersonal, as well as policy,
politics and societal systems, and the interaction between these. It is
precisely this encounter that is of interest here. The dialogical approach
of Self- Other used here draws on the work of Harré and Moghaddam,
(2003), where identity is revealed in dialogical encounters. I also refer
to Herman’s concept of ‘Dialogical Self’ (2004) seeing the Self as ‘a
multiplicity of parts’ which are performative and rhetorical and:
22
Have the potential of entertaining dialogical relationships with each
other (Hermans, 2004:13).
Our ‘utterances’ (Billig, 1997) are of a performative nature and reveal
and construct identity. These theories fall into the broader tradition of
discursive-narrative psychology, which is outlined in Chapter Three,
Theoretical point of departure.
Wetherell (2001) argues that the discursive formation of meaning is
created through practice and language in use, which are intertwined into
knowledge discourses. However, discourse here is understood not in the
strict linguistical sense, but rather as representations which are ascribed
meaning and which impact on people’s own understandings of their
situation. This is an aspect of identification processes. That is to say,
ideas around asylum seekers and migration only become meaningful
within such discourse. Thus, the meaning that is attributed to the
asylum seeking procedure is socially influenced and has significance
for the way in which the asylum seeker and refugee understand their
situation and their self-images, identification and the positions in which
they become located and locate themselves. The use of the term
‘identification’ rather than ‘identity’ is to illustrate the dynamic and
situational complexity of meaning-making and to raise the integrative
aspect of identity work in relation to discursive formations (Ibid). What
I would like to make clear here is that although this discursive aspect is
relevant for the way identification is understood, the theoretical
perspective informing my work, that of positioning theory (Davies and
Harré, 1990, Harré and Langenhove, 1999) acknowledges that people
are not solely and passively constructed in discursive structures, but
rather that people are agentic, and active in discourse and category
creation and use.
The narrow focus of this thesis is on the procedure of claiming
asylum and being granted refugee status. However this procedure is
first of all understood against the background of a longer and broader
process of leaving one’s native country and migrating to a new one,
with a special interest in how this process is experienced by the refugee
himself or herself. For the purpose of capturing the essence of the
process in becoming and being a refugee, I name this process
refugeeship. This term does not exist in the English language in the
same way as flyktingskap exists in Swedish. However, refugeeship is
not used as a literal translation of Flyktingskap. Rather, refugeeship
here refers to a more existential process, as well as the dialogical
process I accounted for earlier between the social and the personal
aspects of becoming a refugee. The general purpose of this thesis is to
gain a deeper understanding of the asylum claimant’s experience, the
23
official, legal asylum seeking procedure, and their own lived experience
of seeking and gaining asylum. This is explored in two European
countries: England and Sweden. Whilst it is part of the research design
that data from two different contexts contribute to contrast and diversity
for the analysis (Olin-Lauritzen, 1997), it needs to be stated that this is
not a comparative study in the traditional sense. The aim is, rather, to
use analytical comparisons; that is, to compare data and interpretations
from the two countries in order to raise important questions and to
generate hypotheses of how the informant’s experience can be
understood (see Chapter Four, Methodological considerations, for more
discussion around this).
Thus, this is a study about people in the process of refugeeship. It
examines the processes these people undergo, with a particular focus on
the constructions of identifications, dis-identifications and the
positioning present in their narratives of the asylum process. Through
interpretation, with a particular focus on rhetorical positioning and
subject positions taken up and resisted, my aim is to understand the way
the participants in this study make sense of their situation, how they
navigate within the asylum seeking legal/administrative framework, and
the impact such a system can have on identification and positional
work. This is examined first of all through studying the refugees’ and
asylum seekers’ own definitions and meaning-making of what this
procedure involves. Thus, beyond the general aim of contributing to a
greater understanding of how refugeeship is perceived and experienced
by refugees, a more specific aim is to explore how they self-identify in
the unique living conditions particular to the refugee situation. My main
data are constituted of their narratives of migration presented during the
interviews that they agreed to take part in. Fleeing, claiming asylum and
being recognised as a refugee is a process that involves administrative
practicalities and legal procedures. However, as aforementioned, it is
the meaning-making, identification and positioning processes that are
the primary study object of this thesis.
1.5 The ‘migrants’ in this study
This is a study about people who have felt compelled to migrate. That is
to say the participants in this study do not identify their migration as a
choice, rather they experience it as something ‘forced’ upon them,
making them ‘refugees’ rather than migrants in search of economic
opportunity. These people live today, in England or Sweden, either
intentionally or by chance. The participants in this study have been
interviewed because they first and foremost defined themselves as
asylum seekers or had been granted refugee status. It is the participants
themselves, who have felt and explained his or her migration as
24
something other than voluntary, and it is on these grounds that they
have participated in this study. In cases where a potential participant
has explained their migration as a ‘voluntary choice’, for example, in
order to study or work, I have chosen not to include that person in the
study, as the aim of the study is to understand the meaning-making and
identification processes involved in feeling ‘compelled’ to flee and also
the procedure of making an asylum claim.
This study includes both those who have been granted refugee status
according to the above Geneva Convention definition and those who
have been granted permission to stay, according to Humanitarian
Protection / Discretionary Leave. Although the majority of the
participants in this study hold refugee status, in order to gain a deeper
understanding of the complexity of the entire process, some asylum
seekers were also interviewed (see Chapter Four, Methodological
considerations).
Another important ‘category’ of refugees comprises those who have
not endured the process of claiming asylum, officially. In this study
there are some so-called ‘quota’ refugees who were granted refugee
status by United Nations officials, whilst living in hiding in a
neighbouring country, or in refugee camps. These participants have
been assisted by officials in moving to England or Sweden. This
involves proving their identity and cause for protection before arriving
in the new country, as opposed to those who flee and have to claim
asylum on arrival at ports and airports. Those who are granted refugee
status before arriving in England and Sweden do not have the
legitimacy aspects associated with making a claim on arrival. However,
they have experienced a ‘limbo’ situation similar to the one associated
with the asylum situation, whilst living in hiding or in refugee camps.
They do live without nationality, are only issued a temporary passport,
known as ‘travel documents’ and do not always choose their living
situation at the outset in the new country. Although legitimacy issues
are not experienced on arrival in the new countries, quota refugees do
have to put their cases forward to UN officials before being issued
protection and being moved to another country.
1.6 Structure and outline of the thesis
This introductory chapter, Chapter One: Introduction – official
migration systems and the construction of asylum seekers has presented
a brief background in terms of official migration systems, the
particularities of refugee migration and migration to Sweden and
England. It outlines the research problem and point of departure for the
study against the migration background given, and questions are raised
25
which this thesis will attempt to shed light upon. This chapter has
aimed at framing the study in terms of legal and common-sense
categorisations and the way in which the theoretical and other interests
of the study relate to such categorisation processes.
Chapter Two: Previous research presents the aim of this study in
relation to previous research studies which focus on the categorisation
processes of refugees and asylum seekers common to this kind of
migration.
Chapter Three: Theoretical point of departure places the study into
an established scientific and research field, namely that of discursivenarrative psychology which lifts the empirical data to another level.
Key concepts of Positioning and Identification are introduced, defined
and explained in terms of their usage in this research.
Chapter Four: Methodological considerations invites you, as the
reader, on my ‘methods journey’. Here insight is given into how the
data collection was approached, how the research field and context
were interpreted by myself, the researcher, and the methods which were
employed in order to gain empirical material which was going to help
me unravel the questions and problems outlined in Chapter One. The
way in which the empirical material has been processed analytically is
explained. The ethical aspects of the study, as well as my role as
researcher are illustrated through my discussion of methodological
considerations.
Chapter Five: The road to refugeeship is the first of the four results
chapters. This encompasses the processes of: self-presentations relating
to life before migration and fleeing from the country of origin. This
chapter introduces the layout of the results chapters, which consists of
descriptions relating to the participants’ narrated sequential events and
the meaning-making in the narratives.
Chapter Six: The official asylum procedure- encountering the legal
and administrative system and all that this entails is the second results
chapter and unravels what it entails to encounter the official, legal
system of claiming asylum.
Chapter Seven: Being a refugee, the third results chapter, sheds light
on the personal and social identification processes having been granted
refugee status. It illustrates the positioning work and meaning-making
present in the participants’ dialogues in relation to the concept ‘refugee
status’ and their understanding, and transitioning from asylum seeker to
refugee, in terms of identification and dis-identification processes.
Chapter Eight: Constructing continuity and discontinuity in the
stories of ‘beyond’ being a refugee, is the fourth results chapter, and
reveals how, having fought for the right for protection which comes
with refugee status, the participants enter a new phase of refugeeship,
26
that of the complexities of creating a new space, beyond the discoursefilled label ‘refugee’, in which to form other identities beyond such a
label.
Chapter Nine: Refugeeship and the moral course of events brings
together and integrates the findings presented in Chapters Five, Six,
Seven and Eight in order to discuss what indeed characterises
refugeeship.
27
2. Previous research
The following chapter provides an overview of previous research which
has a particular focus on asylum migration. Research on migration is
not difficult to find, and therefore I limit the previous research
presented here largely to studies which have concentrated on seekers of
asylum and refugees. However, some studies concerning migration and
identification in general, are also discussed. Migration, as a research
field, is approached from a number of disciplines: medical and health
sciences, political sciences, sociology, psychology, law, education,
economics, cultural geography and anthropology; just to name a few.
Within these disciplines there are hundreds of points of departure for
studying migration. For example, some focus on ethnicity, others are
concerned with policy or issues of political and public debate. Then
there are studies which, for example, attempt to map out variables
concerning patterns of migration or causes of discrimination. This
chapter frames the study and places it into an established research field,
whereby migration and, more specifically, asylum migration research is
of interest to the questions presented in this thesis.
2.1 Asylum migration
Over the past ten years, recognition of the ‘social construction’ of
asylum seeker or refugee categories has become more and more visible
in research from a discursive psychological and narrative perspective. It
concerns the consequences of categorisational processes common to
this kind of migration, as well as the discursive practices common to
today’s migration generally (Blommaert, 2001; Lynn and Lea, 2003;
Bloch and Schuster, 2005; Every and Augoustinos, 2007; Leudar,
Hayes, Nekvapil, Baker, 2008). The United Kingdom and Sweden have
witnessed a changing narrative of migration over the past decade, as
have other European countries. Asylum applications have increased
significantly and part of the changed narrative includes a growing
amount of opposition towards asylum migration. Particularly in the case
of the United Kingdom, but even in Sweden, 5 increased hostility
towards asylum seekers and refugees has become apparent through
5
The countries of focus in this study are Sweden and England. Other countries
belonging to the European Union are also oppressing asylum seekers and are active in
trying to hinder such migration, and therewith hostile towards these groups.
28
various media channels, as well as in political rhetoric. Thus, migration
of this sort is increasingly treated as a challenge, is often seen as
problematic, and quite frankly unwanted.
2.1.1 Discourse research- media and public debate on asylum
migration
Using discursive and rhetorical analysis, Lynn and Lea (2003) in their
study A Phantom Menace and the New Apartheid: The social
construction of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, interpreted, how
the asylum seeker is represented in British national newspapers. The
specific focus of their study was on readers’ letters, and the way in
which readers expressed, in writing, issues of asylum migration and
indeed their ‘opinions’ of asylum seekers living in the United Kingdom
today. Lynn and Lea, referencing to Hall (1978) and Gilroy (1993),
suggest that alongside a post-colonial decline, Britain has witnessed a
reaffirmation of national identity and a reinforcement of the concept of
‘place’. At the same time, the number of refugees coming to Britain has
increased, giving cause for more political and media attention in the
latter half of the 1990s. Goodman (2007) uses a similar point of
departure as Lynn and Lea, in his study constructing asylum seeker
families. Through a discourse analysis carried out on a UK internet
message board, like Lynn and Lea, Goodman captured constructions
about asylum seekers in public argumentation. Goodman found that
two different repertoires were constructed, of an opposing nature: The
loving family repertoire and the Breeding repertoire. The first
repertoire, loving family, normalised the asylum seeker family, through
talk of the asylum seeker family as ‘any’ ‘normal’ family, who wants
the best for their children. The second repertoire, breeding repertoire,
had an opposing view, dehumanizing the asylum seeker family through
questioning legitimacy. The ‘talk’ constructing the breeding repertoire
condoned the splitting up of families through asylum application
procedures and other brutal ways in which asylum seekers are treated
on entrance to the asylum system.
Leudar et al in their research Hostility themes in media, community
and refugee narratives collected three different data sets: (1) interviews
with asylum seekers/refugees (2) interviews with ‘locals’ and (3) news
narratives. Their Study sheds light on the context in which refugees and
asylum seekers were living. Like Goodman’s results, the analysis in
Leudar et al’s study also illustrated patterns of dehumanizing refugees
and asylum seekers through a number of ‘hostility themes’, found in the
data material. These themes included: potential lawbreakers, bad
29
parents, scroungers of the host country. Leudar et al raise an important
issue regarding these dehumanizing strategies, namely that:
It is, simply not a matter of discursive representation. The measures
introduced by the government create the social and legal environment in
which ‘they’ have to live (2008:194)
Through the analysis of the newspaper texts and ‘local’ narratives,
Leudar et al found:
The environment in which refugees/asylum seekers live in, in the UK is
mostly hostile (ibid: 204).
The newspaper texts analysed for the study were based on articles
found in two British daily newspapers: The Daily Mail and the
Guardian and concentrated on articles mentioning asylum seekers and
refugees during the months November and December of 2003. Due to
this specific time span, the articles were very much based on media
reactions to ‘measures’ introduced by the ruling labour party of that
time, with regard to a new asylum policy. The articles report the
controversies made apparent through the proposal which included the
following measures:
Their benefit payments should be withdrawn, and their children could
be taken into care if they refused to be repatriated; (2) they would be
forcibly screened for infectious diseases; (3) they could be tagged so
that their movements could be monitored; and finally (4) their access to
legal aid would be limited. (Leudar et al 2008: 193)
The analysis of these articles found the following hostility themes:
‘They’ are an economic drain,’ they’ lack basic human qualities such as
love for their own children and responsibility to the community,
potentially ‘they’ are criminals, and ’they’ are carriers of dangerous
diseases (ibid: 1999)
In Lynn and Lea’s analysis of letters to the editors of a national
newspaper, introduced earlier in this chapter, three discursive strategies
are identified, adopted by the letter writers in their positions taken up:
1) Differentiation of the Other
2) The ‘enemy’ in our midst
3) The differentiation of the self
The analysis also revealed that rather than going down the route of
being prejudiced or naming race, the authors of the letters constructed
their ‘grievances’ towards asylum seekers by making comparisons with
30
‘Britons’ living on the fringe of society, such as disabled people or
those claiming social benefits, and expressed the ‘unfairness and
inequality’ towards these other social groups in showing ‘generosity’ to
asylum seekers, through the “reconstruction and repositioning of other
social groups” (2003:447).
Although Lynn and Lea do not talk about hostility themes explicitly,
their study certainly supports the results found in Leudar et al’s project.
Lynn and Lea write for example in their conclusion that:
It is clear that the majority of the letter writers featured here actively
encourage discriminatory practices and the denial of basic freedoms to
those who would come here seeking asylum, all of which encourages
the creation of this ‘New Apartheid’. (2003:448)
Norman (2004) also revealed the construction of hostility themes in her
research: Equality and Exclusion: ‘Racism’ in a Swedish Town.
Norman conducted fieldwork in a small town in central Sweden, she
names ‘Gruvbo’ and sought to understand the processes of othering, in
relation to refugees and asylum seekers, as it appeared in local
discourse construction. By studying the way in which constructions of
refugees and ‘locals’ played out in various contexts within the
community, various themes relating to processes of ‘othering’ were
identified. These themes of othering came out through the use of
referring to gender, consumption ‘behaviour’, material presentation of
self and home, as well as clothes and manner. ‘Local’ residents
constructed the ‘difference’ between ‘We’ and ‘Them’ in terms of these
themes. A counter construction was formed by those in positions of
‘authority’, in an attempt to lessen the difference. As Norman argues,
however, this instead led to a construction of sameness. These
constructions of difference and sameness incorporated ‘knowledge’
from various public spheres, such as political debate and ‘explanation’
as a key aspect of the talk of ‘locals’ and ‘officials’ in Gruvbo. Norman
concludes that both the processes of difference, which were processes
of hostility and exclusion and sameness, which were attempts to reduce
difference and create inclusion, were forms of racializing processes.
The way in which the ‘locals’ incorporated common debate to defend
their positions on refugee migration, much like officials at an ‘antiracist manifestation’ held in Gruvbo, attempted to create a sense of
‘sameness’ , led to the same outcome, that of:
Ethnicity, culture and refugeeness came to resemble irreversible
(natural) traits, setting groups of people off from others and placing
them in a subordinate position. From that point of view, these varying
expressions could be conceptualized as racism even if they were not
based on racist ideology and even if they were unintentional or simply
well-meaning. (Norman, 2004:225)
31
2.1.2 Research on the ‘insider’: asylum seeker and refugee
constructions and experiences
Whilst there are numerous studies, some of which I have mentioned
above, which explore the social construction of asylum seekers and
refugees by studying outside processes, such as media representations,
there is a whole body of literature which has studied an ‘insider’
experience, that is to say the migrant’s experience (Westin, 1973;
Nyberg, E, 1993; Ehn, 2000; Blommaert, 2001; Verkuyten and de
Wolf, 2002; Benmayor and Skotnes, 2005)
Leudar et al’s study also had an ‘insider’ component, besides the
newspaper analysis and ‘local’ narratives’. Their study included
biographical narratives of refugees, living in the UK. Their study
attempted to shed light on narratives of refugees and the consequences
of the hostile context in which the refugees found themselves living.
They make the point that this negation and hostility is reflected in
refugees’ and asylum seekers’ biographical self-presentations and is
ultimately detrimental to what they call, psychological adjustment.
Leudar et al found that refugees and asylum seekers in their talk,
constructed their identities around such hostilities, drawing on the
hostility directed at them by ‘Others’, for example, in media debate. In
the interviews with asylum seekers and refugees they found that the
participants constructed contrary identities to media and hostile local
representations. Extreme-case formulations were also used by the
participants as a ‘device to contest contrary positions’ according to
Leudar et al. One aim of Leudar et al’s study was to explore the effects
of such ‘hostility’ directed towards refugees and asylum seekers on
their well-being. They found that refugees/asylum seekers orient to the
hostility themes in their narrative constructions of themselves. They
also conclude that:
Most of our refugee/asylum seeker informants reported psychological
problems and attributed them to their ‘problems of living’ in the UK
(2008:216).
Westin (1973) studied in his PhD thesis: Existens och identitet/
Existence and identity, letters written by migrants to a newspaper for
migrants, and examined the ‘identity aspects’ expressed in the letters.
Through interpretation of what Westin took to be ‘self-presentations’
found in all the letters, this study contributed to a valuable
understanding of how these migrants experienced their situation and life
conditions and the problems they faced.
Nyberg, E. (1993) Studied children families and their migration,
collecting data through interviews and observations, as well as carrying
32
out a field study in the region that the Chilean families in the study,
originated from. Broadly speaking, Nyberg explored the experience of
migration, through examining the different aspects associated with the
migration. A common theme of ‘loss’ was found. For example the
exposure to violence of persecution resulted in feeling a loss of safety
and security. Migration itself entailed a loss of closeness to friends and
relatives. Various other aspects of loss are raised in Nyberg’s results,
contributing to an understanding that this kind of migration can entail a
threatening picture for the individual, including threat of incompetence,
isolation and annihilation. Nyberg found that in order to deal with the
experience of persecution and indeed reduce the perpetrator’s attack, to
failure, it was important for the families to create meaningful goals and
pursue previous ones from the country of origin in the new context.
Interrupted continuity was associated with difficulties in finding
meaning, and Nyberg argues that in order to remove the hindrances to
creating new opportunity, this is tackled through seeking continuity.
2.2 Refugeeship as a process
The ambition of my research study is to examine the entire asylum
process: fleeing, claiming asylum, being granted refugee status and
creating a life beyond being just a refugee. In Chapter One, I introduced
the term refugeeship, and explained that it refers to the more existential
aspects of the events or actions encountered through the migration
process, such as those mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph,
and that refugeeship included identification, dis-identification and
positioning processes in relation to the various events or actions of this
kind of migration. Berg (2010) in her study: Eksilets stoppesteder, Fra
flukt og asyl till integrering og transnasjonale liv: Exile stops- from
fleeing and asylum to integration and a transnational life (own
translation), based on people living in exile in Norway, illustrates the
processes which can be involved in asylum migration and, moreover,
the processes associated with moving beyond the exile position. Her
work shows that this is not an uncomplicated process and this presented
itself in many forms. Berg examined the process of exile which may or
may not have an end. Her study shows that refugees experienced and
approached the question of exile differently. Whilst many of the
participants in her study had a relationship with their countries of
origin, this played out differently. In a small number of the cases, exile
was indeed terminated, literally, by the return to the country of origin.
However, in most of the cases, a combination was employed, whereby a
life was created in Norway, and at the same time, ties to the country of
origin maintained. These participants expressed something of a closure
on exile and a sense of ‘integration’. Some of the participants in Berg’s
33
study experienced this process of combination as a challenge and a
struggle, and others solved exile through a commuting-like process,
whereby they remained in Norway, but attempted to visit their ‘home
country’ as often as possible. Berg makes the point, that regardless of
how exile is approached and ‘solved’, most refugees are living
transnational lives. Graham and Khosravi (1997) also examined living
in exile, among Iranian refugees living in Sweden: Home is Where You
Make it: Repatriation and Diaspora Culture among Iranians in
Sweden. Their study unpacks the notion of home and homeland, as well
as home culture and investigates the creation of a diaspora culture in
Sweden or in other countries, in order to reconstruct certain aspects of
Iranian culture. The results of this study reveal the complexities of such
a reconstruction process and show that the Iranian diaspora context
consists of several ‘homes’. That is to say not everything can be found
in one ‘place’. The original home country, Iran, may represent mostly
nostalgia for some, whilst another country represents a sense of place,
in terms of practical aspects of life, like work, study or a place to raise
one’s children. Then there is a preferred place or final destination, be it
Iran, or somewhere else. Finally there is a home which is represented
by a place which best expresses Iranian culture, as recollected before
leaving Iran. Graham and Khosravi, argue, in this sense that:
In short, the Iranian diaspora is increasingly coming to resemble a
number of countries (Iran among them) with significant Iranian
populations which are informed about each other and which view each
other hierarchically depending on their cultural and economic
significance. Different parts of the diaspora are seen as satisfying
different individual and group needs and as providing different kinds of
opportunities. (1997:130)
The research I have presented so far, has illustrated the contexts in
which refugees/asylum seekers can find themselves living, and research
which examined this in terms of consequences for the refugee and
asylum seeker, as well as research which demonstrates the more
processual aspects of becoming a refugee, being a refugee and moving
beyond the refugee position. This next section looks further at these
processual aspects often called identification work, often associated
with the process, and which people readily find themselves doing as a
result of migration.
2.3 Migration, combining identifications and positioning
Asylum migration research is relatively recent, whilst research which
explores identity has been taking place for a lot longer, as has using
migration as an example for identity studies and the development of
34
identity in relation to ‘immigrant’ and ethnic populations is a growing
field (Nyberg, C, 2006; Aveling and Gillespie 2008; Ali and Sonn,
2010; Kadianaki, 2010).
Research on migration has shown that the process of change linked
to moving to another country is always associated with some sort of reorganisation of the sense of self (Westin, 1973, Nyberg, E. 1993;
Benmayor and Skotnes, 2005; Nyberg, C. 2006; Borgström &
Goldstein-Kyaga, 2006; Taylor, 2010). During the last decade an
interesting theoretical discussion has developed concerning the space
for new mixtures of identifications and belongings regarding the self reorganisation, when it comes to migrants, and the way in which migrants
represent themselves as social actors in transcending boundaries
through the use of concepts such as ‘cultural citizen’ or ‘cosmopolitan’
(Borgström & Goldstein-Kyaga, 2006). The ‘immigrant’ identity is
therefore understood as fluid and contextualised. Kadianaki (2010),
drawing on the work of Aveling and Gillespie, (2008); Bhatia, (2002);
Deaux, (2006), Howarth, (2002, 2006); Verkuyten, (2005) writes:
There is more and more evidence in favour of a fluid and contextualised
immigrant identity, negotiated and constructed in particular social
contexts, forged through social representations, dominant social
discourses and specific social structures, and affected by issues of
power (2010:438).
Borgström & Goldstein-Kyaga (2006), in their study about how
globalisation impacts on people’s identity work, illustrates the way
young people, growing up in multicultural environments are forced to
integrate several, sometimes opposing, aspects into their identities. The
results show that this leads to opportunity, rather than conflict of
identity. Nyberg, C. (2006) studied the identification processes of
young people, who had grown up in Sweden and had collective
historical migration experience, due to their parent’s migration history
of migrating to Sweden from Uganda as a result of the expulsion of
Asians from Uganda in 1972.
In her study: Pluri-cultural
Identifications in a Swedish-Ugandan-Indian Context she illustrates the
multiple identity categories or Pluri-cultural identifications found in
young people’s accounts of themselves, and shows that on the one hand
they were agentic in their social identity work and in integrating various
identifications, even opposing, at the same time as engaging in an
ongoing activity of negotiating self-definitions with regard to family
and other social relations and contexts. Nyberg found that integrating
various identifications was not so problematic for the individual’s selfimage; rather the problem occurred in self-presentation work to others.
König (2009) supports Nyberg’s notion of people’s capacity to move
between several ‘cultural positions’. König explored the notion of self
35
in relation to the lived experience of culture, by studying those he calls
‘multicultural individuals’ to see if they could identify personal cultural
positions as their own. In his study, drawing on the theoretical ideas of
Bakhtin and Herman’s concept of the dialogical self, König wanted to
explore:
The consequences of a dialogue between personal cultural positions in a
spatial opposition, instead of as they are usually construed, as
temporally dispersed events. (König, 2009: 104)
The aim of the study was to delve into the inner emotional work
multicultural people do whilst shifting cultural contexts. Those who
were considered ‘multicultural’ in the context of König’s study were
those who had the lived experience, as a child, adolescent or adult, of
living in at least two countries other than their country of origin. König
argues that the dialogical self exposed to cultural contexts constructs an
encompassing multicultural self, whereby various cultures are grouped.
The various ‘positions’ may be conflictual and may merge based on
what he calls ‘idiosyncratic reasoning’. König makes an important point
about the capacity of the inter-and intrapersonal dialogue and its
powerfulness to assist the acculturation process. ‘Integration
programmes’ for asylum seekers, (and he states Holland as an example,
although there are a number of contexts which easily serve as examples
such as the ‘Swedish for immigrant’ [SFI] 6courses in Sweden) ascribe
the ‘immigrant’ knowledge about the ‘new country’. There is little or
no opportunity to explore the personal background of the individual or
as König puts it:
invite him or her to gently oscillate in a personal dialogue between then
and there and here and now. The only relevant questions asked are to
determine if the individual has the right to assume legal asylum
(2009:117).
König concludes that supporting dialogue between ‘personal cultural
positions’ with regard to how and why people define their personal
cultural choices facilitates acculturation in multicultural societies.
Despite the ever increasing focus on the flexibility of self to move
between various positions or the capacity to create and combine
multiple identifications, we should not ignore the contextual existence
of individuals either, and in this sense there are two sides to this coin. It
is not always possible to move freely between various arenas which
6
SFI: Svenska för invandrare (Swedish for immigrants) although a language acquisition
course, does tend to become a context whereby the immigrant finds him or herself
exposed to ‘knowledge’ regarding the ‘new’ country within the limited context of the
classroom
36
may allow for this somewhat ‘luxury’ project of combined
identifications. Rather, some individuals, as well as facing a lack of
cultural or even economic resources, to enact multiple identifications,
also face the parameters placed on them, by being up against collective
knowledge, or macro story lines (Deaux, 2001). The somewhat
‘stigmatised identity’ (Howarth, 2002, 2006) an asylum seeker has,
with no opportunity to travel outside the new context during the asylum
claim, hardly puts him/her in a position to descend on the project of
mixed identifications, instead he/she engages in a process of resistance
to stigmatised identifications.
2.4 Final comment
My research concerning asylum seekers and refugees contributes to
these investigations of the self re-organisations, for example how one
deals with the mixtures of identifications and belongings and how one’s
positioning work in everyday discourse and narratives, tends towards an
overall coherence. The point of departure for my empirical analysis is a
desire to understand more about the identification and positioning work
of asylum seekers and refugees, who are living in what can be
expressed as a largely hostile environment, which does not commonly
facilitate the process of complex identification work associated with
changing worlds and globalisation. This study aims to examine these
processes of multiple identifications and fluid positioning work, in the
limited space asylum seekers and refugees often have to create such a
‘luxury’ mix of identifications. In current research, and in my study,
identity work implies the unfinished business of identity in
construction. That is to say, identity is understood as a work in progress
Talk is an important context where identity work takes place and where
identities are constituted, everyday life interaction is another. In the
case of refugees, it is quite obvious that both self-and alter-defined
identity work takes place within a context of legal and economic
structures, which limit the space for personal and linguistic innovations.
The next chapter will explore in more detail the theoretical framework
employed here to enable the study of such processes.
37
3. Theoretical point of departure
The theoretical grounds, supporting my analysis presented in the
empirical chapters, Five, Six, Seven and Eight are broadly speaking,
inspired by social psychological theories, using theories which are
usually summarised within the discursive-narrative tradition. These
theories provide conceptual guidance in my exploration of the process
of social meaning-making concerning refugeeship, as expressed by the
participants.
3.1 Introduction to discursive psychology
Discursive social psychology 7 as a research tradition (see Edwards and
Potter, 1992; Harré and Gillet,1994 for an overview of the tradition),
can be understood as a response to finding new ways of understanding
and studying social psychological phenomena, rather than those
methods common in traditional psychology. Discursive social
psychology is commonly used in what is known as the ‘new paradigm’
of social psychology and is a shift away from the study and image of a
self-contained, solitary individual psyche. Billig (1999) postulates that
we may sit alone and think, but our thoughts are saturated with dialogue
and social contexts. What is meant here is that language and thoughts
are not inseparable, according to a discursive psychological approach.
Discursive psychology’s criticism of traditional psychology lies in the
way traditional psychology studies the individual and her thinking as
something first of all cognitive, taking place in the individual’s head,
and ignores social context and human encounters, and the way in which
the psychological processes are largely dependent on the context and
human interaction.
The perspective used here, is concerned with how people construct
identity, represent their experiences, life situations and social reality, in
interaction with others. Language is central in ‘getting at’ an
understanding of these processes. However, although language is a
fundamental tool here, it is not only the language itself that has been
analysed, thoughts, are also of interest. Perhaps not in a cognitive sense,
but in order to gain an interpretative understanding, as understood
within the tradition of phenomenological sociology (Schutz,1972),
7
Often referred to as just discursive psychology
38
whereby the understanding of the life world, and how it is formed, is a
concern, as well as how we interpret others, and our own actions as
meaningful.
3.1.1 Discourse-oriented narrative analysis
The narrative tradition is broad, with several approaches and points of
departure to understanding what a narrative is, as well as the knowledge
which can be ‘generated’ through the interpretation of narratives. The
study of health and illness experience has, for example a long tradition
of using a narrative approach, and looks at the movement of stories and
metaphoric constructions (Hydén and Hydén, 1997; Kleinman, 1998).
The narrative approach employed in this thesis (Bruner, 1990, Mischler,
1999; Gergen, 1988; Taylor, 2010), has a discursive-narrative
psychological point of departure. Although, my own approach cannot
be described as strictly discursive narrative, I draw rather on these
theories in an interpretative analysis, aiming at understanding the
experiences of refugeeship, that to a large extent seem to be influenced
by social meaning-making, within the contexts of the participants’
ordinary, everyday life. The data I have used has a lot in common with
life stories and narratives and illustrates the way research participants,
for instance draw on wider discourse or ‘master narratives’ (Mischler,
1999) in talk about their experience and situation. Specific to the
discursive-narrative approach, is that rather than seeing a narrative as
representing a ‘whole person’ or as illustrating a particular intention or
mental state, the talk in the discursive-narrative approach is seen as
something we present and do, in relation to our on-going identity
construction. This is sometimes described as doing identity. As Gergen
(1988) argues, we talk ourselves into ‘being’.
This approach is concerned with the resources available, culturally
and discursively, as something which allows and shapes our talk.
Another aspect of the discursive dimension is the assumption that it is
not a single person behind the talk. What this means is that in talk,
culturally available meanings are drawn upon, making the talk more
social, rather than individual. What and how we draw on particular
meanings and culturally available resources, is part of the construction
of identity.
The identity is emergent and co-constructed. (Wetherell, 2001:186).
That is to say, I can carve out positions for myself as well as, making
positions available by others for others. As we will see, this is precisely
what goes on in the lives of people fleeing from their country of origin.
They are born in a certain type of universe of socially shared meanings.
39
Their decision to leave their country is often discussed with others
sharing the counter-discourses in opposition to the regime of the
specific country. Seeking asylum means encountering a meaningmaking system of inquiry – namely, the legal and official system of
asylum. Receiving refugee status means gaining access to a new space
of meaning-making, influenced by official decisions and everyday life
encounters, between refugees and residents born in a country.
Common to this narrative perspective, is an understanding that
people order their experiences as stories (Hermans, 2004), sometimes
known as ‘storying’ (Bruner, 1990). Storying our experience gives a
sense of self, as it: (1) leads to self-understanding and (2) gives the
opportunity to share our experiences with others. Stories often also
include values and thus people mirror themselves and others in these
values, ending up with a given set of statuses. All this is part of human
meaning-making. When people story their experiences, the ‘telling’, in
itself, is understood as a process of meaning-making. Hermans (2004)
suggests that the construction of ‘self’ is assisted in a number of ways.
One of these ways is that when we talk about our experiences to others,
we do not only ‘tell’ our story, rather, we also ‘hear’ our story. Through
telling our story and hearing the reflections of the ‘Other’ to our
narrative, we rehear our own story, gaining insight into its meaning and
new perspectives.
3.2 Story lines
Our personal stories not only include autobiographical meaningmaking. There is also what Davies and Harré (1999) call the ‘braided
development’ of several meaning-makings. These are created and
organised in conversation. For example, events which have happened,
the various characters, moral dilemmas and controversy.
The contexts of acts and positions are story lines (Slocum and Van
Langenhove, 2003:225). Building story lines are accomplished through
the employment of discursive tools, such as concepts, metaphors,
simile, tropes and so forth (Ibid: 228)
Plummer (2001:188) describes themes and story lines as being
closely linked to the plots that ‘start to organise a life’. Life is placed
into major themes or story lines, whereby ‘belonging’ or ‘exclusion’
can become themes or story lines running through a life narrative.
On a more macro level, various newspapers’ repeated stories of the
growing numbers of asylum seekers can lead to a story line of ‘asylum
seekers as a social problem to be solved’. Slocum and Van Langenhove,
when analysing what they call ‘integration speak’, give an example of a
macro story line, namely, an EU story line as ‘an even closer union’
(Ibid). This can be understood as a theme which arises through the
40
process of interpretation, studying the way in which an institution such
as the EU talks about integration. Here we see that story lines and
positioning can take place on an institutional level and often the
positions people take up are an act of rhetorical positioning in resistance
to such macro-level story lines. Even if the macro story lines are not
stated, the speaker may assume the context, such as the one given
above: ‘asylum seekers as a social problem to be solved’ and direct
their talk to this story line. This is what Bakhtin called ‘hidden
polemics’ (Bakhtin, 1986).
3.3 Self-concept, dialogical self and positioning
Self is understood here as flexible and dynamic. It encompasses a
cluster of multiple I-positions and voices, rather than seen as a static,
internal state. Hermans and Dimaggio (2004), referring to the theory of
‘Dialogical Self’, draw on the work of James (1890/1950) and Bakhtin
(1973, 1981) and write:
Given the intrinsic interwovenness of internal and external dialogues,
the self does not function as a ‘container’ of cognition, thought and
emotion centralized in its self. It does not operate as a unified agency in
a multivoiced environment. Rather, the self is multivoiced because the
multiplicity of voices is also in the self and their mutual relationships
characterise the self as a ‘society of mind’ (2004: 2)
The positions and voices of ‘Self’ are understood here, as in constant
dialogue with each other. In this sense the self is not understood as
something which is static and located in the minds of individuals. It is
rather socially contingent and dynamic. I-positions first of all refer to
where a person finds him/herself in a specific context, in terms of what
he or she says or does. Voices refer more specifically to different types
of expressions from a specific I-position. ‘Dialogical self’ intertwines
the concepts Self and Dialogue. Traditionally, self is understood as an
internal state, and dialogue as an external process, whereas the theory of
dialogical self looks beyond this distinction of internal and external,
and instead recognises the interconnectedness of internal-external
processes. The ‘self’ is extended to include individuals and groups from
one’s wider societal context and includes therefore internal and external
positions. This is known as the ‘extended self’ in dialogical self
terminology (Ibid).
3.3.1 Relationship between social and personal identification
Jenkins (2008) sees the collective (social) and the personal (individual)
identifications as entangled with one another and in an ongoing process
41
of identification creation. Wetherell (2008:76) writes along similar lines
and poses the question:
Do we want to keep encouraging forms of work that corral the social
and the study of identity to roles and categories and separate the
subjective from the study of the social?
Davies and Harré (1990:263) claim that development of a sense of who
one is and how the world is interpreted, involves certain processes.
They describe these identification processes as:
1. Learning of the categories which include some people and exclude
others, e.g. male/female, father/daughter;
2. Participating in the various discursive practices through which
meanings are allocated to those categories. These include the
interactional meaning-making through which different subject positions
are elaborated;
3. Positioning of self in terms of the categories and interactional
meaning-making. This involves imaginatively positioning oneself as if
one belongs in one category and not in the other ( e.g. as girl and not
boy, or good girl and not bad girl);
4. Recognition of oneself as having the characteristics that locate
oneself as a member of various sub classes of dichotomous categories
and not of others- i.e. the development of a sense of oneself as
belonging in the world in certain ways and thus seeing the world from
the perspective of one so positioned. This recognition entails an
emotional commitment to the category membership and the
development of a moral system organized around the belonging.
3.3.2 Interactional episodes and the presentation of self
Understanding psychological phenomena is something born out of the
‘interactional episodes’ (Harré, 1993). Goffman’s work on the
presentation of self in everyday interaction places emphasis on the
importance of how we are perceived by others in our maintenance and
construction of self. To some extent we have agency over presenting
ourselves in a particular way, in particular contexts. However if we are
not successful in convincing others of our identifications, then this has
consequences for our identifications. It is not enough to attempt to
assert certain identifications; we depend on the validation of others, if
we are to be successful at this task (Jenkins, 2008). Goffman’s theory of
‘self’, exemplifies a person’s capacity to perform a multiplicity of
‘roles’ in various contexts. Through these performances our
impressions are monitored in order to convey the ‘right’ impression in
the ‘right’ context. Goffman’s famous term ‘Impression management’
42
is drawn on by Harré (1993) who calls this interactive work of selfpresentations, ‘Presentational activity’. Much like Harré’s theory of
social being, which includes positioning theory, Goffman’s theory of
self in everyday life, focuses on studying ‘episodes’ in everyday
contexts:
Episodes as the structures of social encounters are like melodies in that
they come into existence sequentially. If one wants to understand how
psychological phenomena are created in the sequential development of
structured sequences of act-actions, one has to understand the dynamics
of social episodes. This is what positioning theory aims at (Harré and
Van Langenhove, 1999:5).
Goffman focused on interaction between individuals in their social
context. Positioning theory also looks to this interaction. It includes,
however, the specific dynamics of the particular episodes. Harré and
Van Langenhove postulate that by looking at three aspects of
interaction, one can gain a deeper understanding of what is going on
and how social and psychic phenomena are constructed. These three
features of interaction outlined by Harré Van Langenhove are:
(1) The moral positions of the participants and the rights and duties they
have to say certain things; (2) The conversational history and the
sequence of things already being said; (3) The actual sayings with their
power to shape certain aspects of the social world (ibid: 6)
3.3.3 Positioning theory and discursive practice
One central question of this study is how the participants identify and
dis-identify in making sense of, ‘refugee status’. Refugee status is here
roughly understood as a socially constructed category influenced by
both official and everyday life meanings. Positioning theory can help
shed light upon how the participants position themselves in relation to
the dominating discourses and socially constructed categories offered to
refugees and asylum seekers. The concept of agency is central to the
dynamic way in which positioning theory sees ‘social being’ (Harré,
1979/1993). Positioning theory is useful for understanding the influence
that dominating discourses can have on people, as well as how the
person relates to different discursive affordances. For example, the
ways in which people resist macro-story lines:
Looked at in terms of what is logically and what is socially possible, a
position can be looked at as a loose set of rights and duties that limit the
possibilities of action. A position implicitly limits how much of what is
logically possible for a given person to say and do and is properly a part
of that person’s repertoire of actions at a certain moment in a certain
43
context, including other people. This bounds the content of the
repertoire of socially possible actions (Harré and Moghaddam, 2003:5)
Taylor (2010), when discussing the power of positioning oneself and
others through discursive practice, talks about resources, referring to
the implication that some discourses are more ‘established’ than others.
Therefore, breaking through strong, or established discourse which is
difficult to change, can be challenging as a ‘member’ of a particular
‘category’, making it difficult to manoeuvre and take up new or old
positions. Social categorisation is basic to positioning theory. People,
who appear within a specific context, tend to be categorised according
to prevailing social and linguistic conventions. The category of
‘refugee’ tends to be linked to strong discourses, at least in certain parts
of society. Having said this, Harré and Van Langenhove (1999)
challenge the term ‘categorisation’, referencing to Billig (1987) and
Potter and Wetherell (1987). Their concern lies in understanding the
categorisation process as ‘a ‘necessary cognitive process’ and assuming
categories have a ‘fixed structure’. Categorisation is not seen as a
cognitive process here, rather as a social process, and categories here
are understood to have a changeable nature, over time and space.
Positioning theory has a similar point of departure as Goffman’s
‘Dramaturgical’ theory. The term ‘role’ is dismissed, as being more
static, and replaced with position, as something more flexible, dynamic
and fluid. Positioning theory is useful in my study for understanding the
way the asylum system positions claimants and the capacity and
agency of people fleeing from their country of origin and seeking
asylum in another, and thus gradually taking up different positions in
interaction with ‘Others’. These positions can be analysed to understand
more about the construction of social and personal identifications and
the way in which subject positions are used in order to say something
about one’s identities (Burr, 1996, Davies and Harré, 1990). Thus,
positioning theory relates more to the interactional work which takes
place between people, in taking up positions or the ‘voice of others’, for
example, in order to convey a particular standpoint (Harré &
Langenhove, 1999). Billig (1996) makes a similar point, in his concept
‘rhetorical talk’. ‘Rhetorical talk’ illustrates the way in which our talk
can be ‘shaped’ or directed towards ‘Others’, despite the ‘Other’ may
not be present. This may be in response, for example to feeling
challenged by a particular notion or anticipating the response or
challenge from the ‘Other’, all these practices in talk, construct and
reveal identity. Again, concepts such as ‘positioning’, ‘presentation of
self’ and the ideas of Billig in terms of ‘rhetorical talk’ are all points of
departure for the approach to the narrative analysis carried out in this
thesis.
44
3.4 Ontological assumptions
The ontological standpoint in this study rests upon the assumption that
human beings are to a large extent products of social processes. The
experiences, acts and products of human beings are always influenced
by human meaning-making, and that this meaning-making is heavily
influenced by socially shared understandings.
These social encounters are processes of interaction. Within these
social processes people, groups and institutions understand and position
themselves, as well as are being positioned by others. People, as
products of social processes are also understood here as active agents,
with the capacity to take up and resist positions, as well as re-position
themselves, and others, in interaction. Therefore they are active agents
in using their shared knowledge to reach these ends.
The linguistic turn, the ‘turn’ towards a more social view of
language, which has greatly influenced the social sciences during the
last half century (Gustavsson, 2008), takes as its point of departure the
understanding that human life worlds are shaped by linguistic form and
content. Within this tradition, concepts like discourse have been
developed, referring to social patterns of talking about and conceiving
something in a specific context. As we shall see, discursive practices
concerning asylum seekers and refugees heavily influenced the lives
and experiences of the participants in this study. However, in discursive
psychology, individuals are not merely passive recipients of external
discursive practices, there is space for individual agency, whereby, one
can accept or reject understandings and positions offered or even
ascribed by others, In fact, individuals even seem to be able to invent
new understandings and positions which will, in turn, be understood
and reacted upon by others in a continuous social dialogue.
When studying the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers, it
becomes obvious that their lives, to a large extent have also been
influenced by societal and sometimes economic structures. These
structures are, to some extent also, of course, influenced by meaningmaking. However, it is imperative to stress that imprisonment, torture
and the kind of persecution many refugees have suffered, have a special
kind of reality of their own, in the sense that they for instance affect the
human body, causing pain. Stating that such experiences, for example
pain and torture are social constructions, can naturally be understood as
provocative. When I stress the importance of social meaning-making in
this thesis, I do not at all deny the reality of societal structures like
prisons or similar institutions used for asylum seekers. Neither do I
question the reality of physical pain or the damage which can be caused
through such institutions. These realities constitute a background of life
45
experiences, often characteristic to the experience of becoming a
refugee. However, this study does not focus on these experiences, but
on experiences of the asylum migration process in relation to, for
example, sense of self and the dialogue of meaning-making linked to
the experience of the transitions involved.
3.5 Summarising some of the key concepts used in this study
Here I will briefly summarise some of the key concepts utilised in this
thesis.
The term self-presentation and identification are used in the thesis
primarily by drawing on the work of Goffman (1959) and Jenkins
(2008). Goffman in his book: The Presentation of Self in Everyday
Life introduces observations of daily life and interaction for the creation
of self. Daily scenes and the metaphor of theatre is used to exemplify
the way people ‘perform’ or manage their ‘impressions’ in front of
others. Goffman’s concepts, public and private self, are based on the
idea that public self is performed while the private self is aware that
these performances are necessary for maintaining identity in the eyes of
others, and even maintaining respect in social interaction.
Identification is understood and used here to emphasise the more
dynamic, fluid aspects of ‘who we are’ rather than the term identity,
which has become a contested term in the social sciences in recent
years. According to Hall, in du Gay et al:
Identification turns out to be one of the least well-understood conceptsalmost as tricky as, though preferable to, ‘identity’ itself; and certainly
no guarantee against the conceptual difficulties which have beset the
latter (2008: 16)
Although identification is a challenging concept, it is understood in
processual terms as an ongoing construction, a process never complete
(Ibid). Identity or identification, deployed here is fragmented and
changeable over time and space and not singular but multiple. Jenkins
writes:
With respect to identification, the individually unique and the
collectively shared can be understood as similar in important respects
(2008:37).
Jenkins sees the individual and collective identifications as entangled
with each other and therefore he postulates that the theorisation of
identification must take consideration to both aspects, and equally.
Wetherell (2008), likewise, takes this important theoretical stance, of
the difficulties of making simple distinctions between ‘I’ and ‘me’. In
46
this thesis social and personal identification are seen as being in
constant dialogue with each other. This understanding constitutes the
basis of the study object of this thesis. Hall, in Hall and du Gay (1996)
writes:
I use ‘identity’ to refer to the meeting point, the point of suture,
between on the one hand the discourses and practices which attempt to
‘interpellate’, speak to us or hail us into place as the social subjects of
particular discourse, and on the other hand, the processes which
produce subjectivities, which construct us as subjects which can be
‘spoken’ (1996:5-6).
Position and positioning are concepts which have been used within
several disciplines. This thesis, using the works of Davies and Harré
(1990), Harré (1993), Harré and Moghaddam (2003) and Hollway
(1984), adopts positioning theory to understand the way in which the
participants in this study locate themselves and others through talk, the
expression of feeling positioned within discourse, and the practice of
resisting or adopting particular positions within particular discourses.
This thesis, whilst recognising the force of discursive practice, sees the
individual as agentic in her or his positioning work and identification
construction, and not merely a victim of discourse. At the same time,
the constraints certain societal practices place on individuals and their
identity work are recognised.
As I have made clear in the above sections, people are, to some
extent, understood as products of social processes. The so-called
linguistic turn, placing emphasis on an increased understanding of the
significance of language for human thought and action (Gustavsson,
2008), is a point of departure here. The experiences of seekers of
asylum and refugees are understood here as something which is
constructed due to the social processes common to asylum migration,
rather than solely as the experience of the individual. People are
acknowledged as agents in the creation of these processes, Harré (1993)
writes:
The fact that people are created by other people and that their
actions are in essence joint actions does not mean that the actions
people perform are socially caused. People, as we construct them, are
built to be capable of autonomous action, to engage, usually with
others, in reflective discourse on possible courses of action, and to be
competent in the discursive presentation of and taking up of personal
responsibility (1993:3).
The agentic capacity of people implies to take up and locate others in
dialogue, construct and maintain discourse and position oneself and
others in relation to discourse. This does not mean that taking up certain
47
positions or resisting them, cannot be challenging, due to constraints
allocated to particular individuals, groups or institutions. Thus, the
theoretical landscape in which my analysis is conducted is characterised
by complex tensions between social factors and personal agency.
48
4. Methodological considerations
The previous chapter placed the study into a theoretical frame; it serves
as a guide to analyse and understand the narratives collected for this
study. This chapter will take you, the reader, on my method’s journey,
in an attempt to illustrate how the study was conducted and the kind of
material I collected to answer the questions outlined at the beginning of
this chapter.
4.1 The study’s point of departure in relation to the theory
outlined in Chapter Three
People, who flee their countries of origin in search of a safe haven, find
themselves in a position of having to embark on the legal and
administrative procedure of asking another country for protection.
Listening to the way in which asylum seekers and refugees talk about
this procedure is a way to gain deeper understanding, insight and
knowledge of what this process involves for refugees. The data
collected sheds light on the legal and administrative procedure, as
experienced by the claimant. The official categorisations have
implications in the public and political spheres, circumstancing the
potential room in which the participants have to manoeuvre.
The object of study is more specifically to explore the experiential
process which the participants of my study express in their transition
from their country of origin to their new country - What I call
refugeeship. This means I am interested in their refugee stories and
meaning- making concerning fleeing, claiming asylum, being granted
refugee status etc. My exploration brought my focus to the positioning
and identification processes found in the participants’ stories. This
approach utilised in my analysis is influenced by a discursive
psychological perspective. By analysing the participants talk, allows to
uncover the meaning ascribed to the experience. More specifically, I
explore what elements the stories consists of, what people are brought
into the account and how relationships are described with a special
focus on how the participants present themselves in their story.
49
4.1.1 The aim, objectives and questions of the study
Against the background of the theoretical framework outlined in
Chapter Three, the study aims to explore how refugeeship, as a process,
is articulated and experienced, starting from life before leaving one’s
country of origin, fleeing that country and seeking protection in
another, including the official asylum procedure, and what it involves to
be categorised as a ‘refugee’. The focus is on the experience of fleeing
and claiming asylum in order to live in Sweden or England, and the
transition to becoming and being a refugee. Hence, my broad research
question is:
What meaning do refugees and asylum seekers ascribe to the
transitional aspects of fleeing, making an asylum claim and being
granted refugee status in a new country and how do they make sense of
the transitions they go through?
How we experience a specific situation is related to how we perceive
the general situation we are in. This, in turn is influenced by ‘Others’,
how they make sense of the specific transition a refugee undertakes.
Thus, social meanings are also a focus in my study as they appear in the
stories of the persons who have experienced this type of transition. An
important part of the social meanings of fleeing and becoming a refugee
concerns the official procedure of seeking asylum, and what it involves
to be ‘labelled’ refugee. In my analysis of the refugeeship
identification, dis-identification and positioning processes that are taken
up in the stories of refugeeship, emerged as key findings and was
further explored. This focus on identifications, dis-identifications and
positioning in the analysis is linked to my more theoretical interest in
self-constructions under particular living conditions.
The more specific objectives of the study are to explore:
(1) Refugeeship as an official process and as a lived experience; (2)The
meaning-making of these processes which are central to the study’s
focus, and involve several actors or parties which are in interaction with
each other; a) the official part/actor, b) the asylum seeker c)‘others’
attempting to make sense of asylum migration. All this is explored
through the stories of the refugees themselves. The theoretical
perspective employed in this study sees this interaction as dialogical
meaning-making, and is essentially about the creation of
categorisations, positioning and identification work, whereby Alter and
Ego come into play.
50
Thus, more specific, important questions for exploration are:
What identity talk is present in the participant’s talk of refugeeship?
How does the category ‘refugee’ play out in the participants’ stories,
and how are current representations and the framing up of the concept
‘refugee’ talked about by the participants in this study?
What identifications and positions do the participants take up when they
talk of their experience?
This study has a qualitative, explorative point of departure and
analytically draws on a narrative-discursive approach. According to this
approach stories are understood as situated ‘tellings’. An area of interest
was to understand what participant’s are doing in their account-giving.
Through talk identities are performed and constructed. A basic notion,
upon which this study rests, is that people in dialogue construct their
identities and take up, as well as resist, different positions. People are
not static, passive receivers of identity and life situations, but, at least to
some extent, active and agentic in their construction of identifications.
This is both a personal and social continuous process. In order to ‘get
at’ these processes I set out to generate dialogue with refugees and
asylum seekers. These dialogues, thus collected contain story
descriptions of the participants’ migration and asylum seeking
experience. Reaching an understanding of their experiences involves
gaining an understanding about the subject matter. A basic assumption
here is that language is central and that it is through language that social
reality, understanding and meaning-making are constructed. The fact
that others have important roles in the meaning-making concerning
fleeing and becoming a refugee motivates a closer study of social
meanings per se. However, my interest in the refugeeship, as the
experiential process of the refugees themselves, led me to the decision
that I should concentrate on their stories and the expressions of social
meaning-making only as it appeared in their stories. Studies with a
focus on the social meaning are important, and I hope to continue
researching about these processes.
4.2 Understanding the interview context
Since I sought answers to my research questions through analysing talk,
it was a natural choice to carry out interviews. Focus groups are of
course also compatible with my ‘dialogical’ interest, but given the
sensitive, somewhat private nature of the research subject, I felt it
51
would not have been appropriate to employ focus groups. Sometimes, I
felt that it would have been interesting to follow my participants in their
everyday lives, in order to learn more about the influence of other
people and environments, (such as refugee reception centres), on the
refugee stories. However, observations of the participants everyday
lives in both England and Sweden would have been very time
consuming and impossible to carry out within the frame of the present
study. Consequently I chose to focus only on interviews. Having said
that, in some cases where more than one interview was not possible to
conduct, time spent ‘in the field’ enriched the interviews, even in the
cases of those I only met once. By being with my participants in various
situations, like accompanying them to talk to a housing officer, or by
helping them look up activities in their local area, gave valuable insight
into some of the challenges they faced and the opportunities or lack of
opportunities available to them to solve their daily challenges. I could
see for myself how they approached this, as well as how they were
approached and treated by ‘Others’. For example, as a white ‘native’ in
the company of my participants, persons of ‘authority’ would on
occasion talk through me, rather than talking directly to my participant.
Such manner disclosed what I interpreted as a lack of respect for my
participant’s ability to take in the information being given, or answer
questions about themselves by themselves.
An ambition of mine was to keep the interview situation as open and
interactional as possible so the interviews I carried out represent an
interactive and dialogic process. Mishler (1999) sees participants’
accounts as ‘co-produced’. These interpersonal aspects which are
present between interviewee and interviewer are sometimes named
reflexivity (Aull Davies, 2003). According to Fairclough (1989)
interviewing consists of three levels; discourse, text and interaction.
These levels, Fairclough postulates, are not inseparable; rather, they
have a relationship with each other. In the interview situation, discourse
is produced, and in the interaction between interviewer and interviewee
interpretation processes take place. The interview is set within a social
context of significance to the interaction between the interviewer and
interviewee. Using Faircloughs’ idea of the three levels, issues of
equality are part of the social conditions present in an interview
situation.
The interview situation in this study was complex in many ways,
when it came to these interpersonal aspects. For example, the dynamics
of equality and inequality were not uncomplicated. Asylum seekers and
refugees have a great deal of experience when it comes to being
‘interviewed’ by migration authorities of various kinds, for example, in
52
‘screening interviews’ 8. Therefore, I made a conscious effort to
establish a ‘climate’ within the interview, which did not resemble that
of a migration authority interview or whereby I was betrayed as a
person on the side of migration authorities. Unfortunately, I felt at times
very aware that the interview could take on the shape of an
‘authoritative’ context, probably due to a combination of my failing
efforts to create a different (more lenient) atmosphere, and partly a
pattern response easy for the participants to fall into, given their
experience of having to present a more ‘scripted-like’ version to
migration authorities. Having said this, the interview did not naturally
take on the form of me, the interviewer, always being seen as the
authority. This was especially the case of those who had long
experiences of being politically active, organisational leaders, or of
working with issues of asylum and refugee rights. In these cases the
interview could easily become that of a ‘lecture’ in human rights, given
by the interviewee. So, it is in this sense that I mean that the balance of
equality in the interview situation did not always coincide with the
traditional allocation of roles between interviewer and interviewee, it
was rather like a continuous pendulum, swinging back and fourth
between me as the interviewer, seen as the ‘leader’ of the interview, and
the interviewee, as someone with the ‘knowledge’. As for the ‘scripted’
version this will be taken up later on in the chapter. I now turn to the
method of data collection.
4.2.1 Data collection through interviews
In order to collect these stories, 25 interviews were carried out. 19
recorded interviews are presented in this study, ten from England and
nine from Sweden. In England, all the interviews were conducted in
English. In Sweden, six were carried out in Swedish and three were
conducted in English, always according to the participant’s preference.
The remaining six interviews carried out both in Sweden and England,
have been left out because of incoherency or because the participant did
not allow me to record the interview. Those who did not allow a
recording all expressed that this was due to fear of further persecution.
Immediately after these interviews, I talked into my digital recorder
what I recalled from the conversation. However, this resulted in a
summary of my ‘impressions’ of what the participant had expressed,
8
In the words of Clayton (2006:395) “the screening interview does not deal with the
substance of the claim, but in current practice is to establish the identity and nationality
of the applicant, to take fingerprints and photographs and decide whether their route of
travel suggests that they could be returned to a safe third country.”
53
rather than the actual words the participant had used. Since I was
interested in the dialogical aspects of how the participant had talked
about their experiences, interviews really needed to be transcribed
verbatim for analytical purposes. The only use I made of this data was
for checking my results, after the analysis of the transcribed interviews.
This gave an opportunity to look for important contradiction and
contrast, in terms of the refugeeship and its interpretation.
4.2.2 Transcription and language of conduct
Transcripts were produced in the interview language, and the analysis
was carried out in English. In Swedish interview excerpts were
translated into English. When the interviews were in Swedish this
meant that neither interviewer nor interviewee was speaking their
mother tongue. Although I consider that I have transcribed verbatim, I
have edited certain grammatical errors such as “but I always interested
in political circumstances in my country” to “But I was ….”. Since such
corrections do not involve changing the content of what was being said.
I did not include these small errors in transcription out of respect to my
participants.
4.2.3 Transcription conventions
In accordance with my choice of method and analytical approach, and
in order to understand the stories collected as dialogues, it was
important to transcribe the interviews verbatim with as much detail as
possible. Pauses, therefore, in terms of minutes, were accounted for, by
putting the number of minutes in brackets, such as; (2), and emphasis
on words or raised voice was made apparent in the interview texts by
underlining. To illustrate laughter, (***) was inserted. Names were
replaced by country initials and numbers, such as, UK1 or SW2. The
reason for this somewhat impersonal approach is to protect identity, but
a further reason, in line with the discursive narrative approach is to
avoid using personal names which can lead to associations and
therewith preconceived notions about the participants. Square brackets [
] indicates when the interviewer talks during an excerpt and XXX
represents when a name, location or organisation has been omitted for
confidential reasons.
4.2.4 What did the interview situation look like?
I was keen to keep the interview situation open, to allow it to assume a
rather low key climate. By low key, I mean I was cautious that many of
my participants had suffered extreme trauma in their countries of origin
54
and this was extended when encountering the asylum system in the new
contexts. The asylum system involves a series of interviews, whereby
the purpose is to establish the identity of the claimant, the
‘trustworthiness’ of his/her case and whether or not there are clear
grounds to grant asylum. With this in mind, I was keen to create a
completely different point of departure in our interviews together, and
make clear that this was a space where personal experience was of
interest 9. It therefore goes without saying that in terms of method, the
interviews were of an open-ended character. An interview guide was
not used. The interview was prompted by me asking about life in one’s
country of origin or about arriving in England or Sweden, but only if
the participants showed that he or she was expecting me to take the lead
at the beginning of the interview. Many of the participants took their
own lead, however, and began the interview by saying “I will begin by
telling you about…”, for example. When participants told me about a
particular situation or experience such as how one engaged smugglers
to get out of one’s country of origin, I might then follow this up by
asking “did you know which country you were going to?” So in this
sense the interview was more ‘ad hoc’ than a structured or semistructured interview and this was intentional. Towards the end of the
interview I would ask for some background information such as age.
This was asked deliberately towards the end, so as not to give the
interview such a formal feel at the outset, and most of the background
information came forward throughout the interview anyway, such as “I
come from...”.
With five participants, several interviews were carried out. Besides
these ‘formal’ interviews, I met most of the participants informally
between interviews. Recorded interviews lasted between 40 minutes
and 134 minutes (2 hours and 14 minutes). The participants talked
about life prior to migration, claiming asylum and what it was like to
arrive in the new context and what their lives looked like today. The
interview ended when the participant gave signs of not wanting to
continue. This could be through them clearly stating, “Are we finished
now?” to not really talking anymore or by asking, “I think I have
already talked about that, haven’t I?”
4.3 Data collection from two different countries
Although data were collected in two European countries; the intention
was not to carry out a comparative study in the traditional sense, but
rather to add contrast to the analysis work (Olin-Lauritzen, 1997). Since
the interest of the study was to understand people’s experiences of a
9
Official interviews in relation to making a legal claim for asylum, do not tend include
room for personal explanation.
55
particular official system, claiming asylum, it seemed important to
collect data in more than one country, so as to avoid the risk of
collecting data material which only illustrated migration from one
country to another. The following table gives an overview of the
participants in this study, in terms of: migrant status, country of origin,
number of interviews, new country, previous background/today, age
and sex. I do not indicate who the participant is in this table, in terms of
UK1, SW1 and so on. This is to protect identity and ensure
confidentiality.
Table of participants (Migrant status, Country of origin, Number of
interviews, New Country, Occupation/background, Age, Sex
Migrant Country
status
of origin
Number of New
interviews / country
informal
encounters
1 recorded
England
interview,
plus 1
informal
Background /
and today
Age
Sex
PhD in
Agriculture /
Unemployed
working as
volunteer
Living in
refugee camp /
Student
50+
M
22
M
Refugee
Ethiopia
Refugee
Kenya
1 recorded
interview
England
Refugee
CongoKinshasa
1 recorded
interview,
3 informal
England
Working for a
travel agents/
Refugee
advisor/
Project coordinator
40+
M
Asylum
seeker
(at time
of
intervie
w: now
refugee)
Refugee
Kurdistan- 1 recorded
Turkey
interview
1 informal
England
Unemployed/
Unemployed
30+
F
Iran
England
Political
activist/Volunt
ary worker
with refugee
40+
F
56
2 recorded
interviews,
3 informal
Refugee
1 recorded
interview,
3 informal
Zimbabwe 1 recorded
interview
1 informal
Rwanda
1 recorded
interview
England
Asylum
seeker at
time of
intervie
w/ later
‘refused
’
Refugee
Albania
1 recorded
interview
England
Burma
1 recorded
interview
2 informal
Sweden
Refugee
Iraq
Sweden
Refugee
Kurdistan
Iraq
1 recorded
interview
2 recorded
interviews
Refugee
Iran
3 recorded
interviews
3 informal
Sweden
Refugee
Iraq
Sweden
Refused
asylum
seeker
Refugee
Lebanon
1 recorded
interview
1 recorded
interview
Kurdistan
Iran
2 recorded
interviews
Sweden
Refugee
Iran
2 recorded
interviews
Sweden
Asylum
seeker
Refugee
Iraq
England
England
Sweden
Sweden
and women’s
rights
Law degree
and diplomat /
Unemployed
Property
developer
/Unemployed
House wife /
Student
50+
M
50+
F
40+
F
Builder /
Unemployed
40+
M
Student,
politically
active / PhD
working for
UN
Lawyer /
Student
Political
activist /
Working for
local council
Stockholm
Political
activist /
Student/
Care worker
Professor /
Unemployed
Marketing
graduate /
Unemployed
Political
activist /
Unemployed
Political
activist / Pre-
40+
M
30+
M
40+
M
40+
M
50+
M
30+
M
50+
M
50+
F
57
Asylum
seeker
Refugee
Iraq
Iran
2 informal
1 recorded
interview
1 recorded
interview
2 informal
England
Sweden
school teacher
Medical doctor
/ Unemployed
Psychologist /
Psychologist
30+
M
40+
F
4.3.1 Selection of participants
The participants have been included first and foremost because they
defined themselves as feeling compelled to flee their country of origin
and as someone who had experience of claiming asylum in England or
Sweden. The imbalance, in the ratio of men and women is purely an
issue of access, as is age, country of origin and background. In total,
these differences contribute to the variation I wanted in order to have
data from different types of refugee backgrounds.
4.3.2 Recruitment of study participants
Finding the participants for the study was extremely challenging,
mainly due to the practicality of access. Many refugees’ and asylum
seekers’ life situations are uncertain and each day is taken as it comes
with new challenges arising. Committing oneself to an interview time
was therefore often difficult. Besides these more practical issues, access
has a more complex side to it, which I understand to do with my ability
as a researcher, to gain the trust of the participants and be someone
they feel comfortable with, and indeed feel it is ‘worth’ telling their
story to. Initially the interviews had a rather formal and matter-of-fact
feel to them. However, over time, the participants talked candidly about
what it had meant to them, to flee their country and to be labelled
‘refugee’.
For a while I toyed with the idea of only interviewing those who had
received refugee status, but decided to include even those who were
still in the claimant phase. This was partly an issue of access, that is to
say, it was difficult to find sufficiently many participants to take part in
the study who had refugee status. Partly to do with the consideration
that stories from those still in the midst of the process, could enrich the
material rather than only collecting retrospective experiences.
Therefore, I opened up the study to include asylum seekers. Had I had a
larger number of participants from different phases of the refugeeship,
it would have been interesting to compare their perspectives from each
phase, but here I use the different perspective as a way to enrich the
data of the whole process. In terms of data which gave insight to the
entire process, refugeeship, I reached a point where the data was
58
becoming more of the same, this steered me to end the data collection
phase of the study.
Data were collected between 2006-2008. Some of the participants
were interviewed several times during this period. To begin with,
snowballing technique was employed. One participant would put me in
touch with another potential participant. This was helpful in terms of
access to a field in which I was looking to interview people regarding a
sensitive subject (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981). Having a gatekeeper,
who was himself/herself a refugee, gave status to me as the researcher,
and as someone who could be trusted. In order to enrich the data, and
not to fall into the limiting trap of the snowballing procedure, whereby
the data can become increasingly uniform, as the participants tend to
belong to the same group and know each other, I additionally turned to
refugee organisations and the Red Cross drop-in centres for refugees in
Norwich, England and in Stockholm, Sweden.
4.4 In Sweden
In 2006 I began interviewing refugees living in Stockholm and
Uppsala. They were recruited through using snowballing technique and
word of mouth. Non-refugees or refugees recommended people they
knew, who may know someone who had the kind of migration
experience I was seeking. In order to open up new avenues to find
refugees and asylum seekers, who would be willing to talk to me, I
searched amongst refugee organisations and contacted them to see if I
could come in contact with potential participants. Some organisations
invited me to attend meetings and conferences they organised. In the
spring of 2007, I attended a conference arranged by an international
refugee organisation operating from Stockholm 10. The conference
delegates ranged from asylum seekers in need of support, to Swedish
lawyers and doctors, who volunteered their services in terms of legal
advice or medical attention to asylum seekers, as well as journalists, or
asylum and refugee organisations promoting the refugee cause.
Attending two days of this conference gave me the opportunity to
understand more about the contexts that asylum seekers and refugees
had fled from and what they had fled to. I learnt about the type of
organising which can take place amongst refugees and asylum seekers,
and I was given the opportunity to talk informally with refugees and
asylum seekers about their experiences. I took names and telephone
numbers and attempted to book some formal interviews with people I
met during these two conference days.
10
The names of organisations have been omitted in order to ensure confidentiality
59
4.4.1 Researching secretive groups
Proceeding to book formal interviews with people I had met through
my participation at the conference, opened up a whole new dimension
to my understanding of the experiences and life conditions of refugees
and asylum seekers. These refugees and asylum seekers were
continuing the political project which had caused them to flee their
countries and this put them at risk even in their new society. For
instance, on several occasions a different person showed up for the
interview than the person I had thought I had made arrangements with
on the phone and whom I had spoken to at the conference. It took some
time for me to make sense of what was happening. These refugees and
asylum seekers would swap mobile phones and change their names
readily in order to help conceal their identities. This made it difficult for
me to keep track of who was who. On the other hand it provided
valuable insight into refugee life and the continued fear of persecution
they had to live with. Follow-up interviews became interesting. When I
called someone who I thought I had already interviewed and agreed on
a time to meet again, another person turned up, whom I had never met
before! When I felt sufficient trust had been gained between myself and
these participants, I inquired into this behaviour. It was explained that
constantly changing names and exchanging mobile phones made it hard
to be traced. This fear of persecution, lived on as one continued to be
politically active in the new context. In some of my cases, asylum
seekers were living in Sweden illegally, and therefore concealing
identity was even more important 11.
4.4.2 Red Cross Sweden
Eventually, in 2008, I turned to the Red Cross in Sweden, as an
alternative source for recruiting participants to the study. It was
arranged for me to come to a refugee drop-in centre for asylum seekers
and refugees requesting advice regarding their claims or issues, such as
housing or employment.
This Red Cross centre runs a number of services including
everything from Swedish language for asylum seekers and refugees
who are not admitted to Swedish language course for immigrants
(Svenska för invandrare [SFI]) to a friendly person to talk to over a cup
of coffee. The centre also runs medical services for asylum seekers
without documentation 12. I began by meeting up with a group of people
working at the Red Cross with refugee and asylum issues. They ranged
11
I discuss more fully, ethical issues later in this chapter.
Known as ’paperslösa’ in Swedish, asylum seekers without documentation, at the
time of data collection did not have the right to free health-care services.
12
60
from project leaders to lawyers. I presented my research and got
permission to carry out interviews at the centre. The centre’s staff
helped by putting me in touch with, and introducing me to potential
participants, which led to a number of interviews, that took place at the
Red Cross drop-in centre in Stockholm.
Visiting the Red Cross gave insight into yet another context that
refugees and asylum seekers readily find themselves a part of. I was
able to observe the way in which the ‘clients’ of the Red Cross made
use of the services and their thoughts about what the centre was for, as
well as the views and the approaches that the staff had towards the
‘clients’. I was made aware of the way in which ‘refugee challenges’
are talked about by those working with the issues. Although, these
observations do not provide enough data to analyse, they did provide a
compass for making sense of issues arising in the data, which I may not
have made sense of otherwise.
4.5 In England
One of the participants living in Sweden moved from Stockholm to
London, so I contacted him, and in the autumn of 2006 I went to
London and met up with him. He became a key participant and
gatekeeper for this part of the study. He took me to the home of various
friends and contacts, living in London, who agreed to meet with me for
interviews. During this visit it occurred to me how challenging it is to
carry out social research with people who are in a marginalised
position, and on a daily basis have to deal with the challenges the
refugee situation entails. The refugees I met with during this visit saw
themselves as political human rights activists and spent much of their
time helping asylum seekers or refugees who were struggling with
issues of housing, poverty and trauma. To put it frankly, this made me
feel that my position as a researcher was really challenging. I was faced
with feeling guilt and a strong sense of wanting to help and support
them in their daily and in the longer term political fight to improve the
situation of refugees and asylum seekers. I also found myself faced with
issues of feeling privileged and spoilt as a white Western woman, and I
began questioning whether or not anyone can research anything?
4.5.1 Me as migrant in Sweden, or native in England
Understanding the perceptions of my participants, is naturally, based on
my interpretation of their perceptions. However, my interpretations are
based on a great deal of conversation whereby participants showed their
curiosity about who I was. Out of these conversations came often their
own interpretations of who they thought I was. In the ethics notice
61
(appendix 1), I introduced myself as a PhD student, from the University
of Stockholm, which I re-iterated in our first encounter. It was not
unusual for the participants to then ask me if I was Swedish, in Sweden,
or if I was English, in England. In Sweden, when I explained I was
indeed not Swedish, this gave a positive response from the participants,
and I soon became ‘almost’ one of them, a migrant at least, if not, a socalled ‘privileged migrant’. The participants in Sweden then took an
interest in how it was to live in England and what it was like for
refugees and asylum seekers living there. Some offered their own
interpretations of England. The common representation of England, was
that of offering ‘opportunity’ to educated people, but a country, which
was not as ‘humanitarian’ as Sweden. Some spoke of relatives who had
fled to England and their experiences of the asylum system there.
In England, some asked where I was from; it was natural for many to
assume that I was Swedish, as they were introduced to me as a
researcher from Stockholm. This seemed advantageous at first, as they
also showed a positive reaction to me as someone who was not English,
but also an ‘outsider’. When I explained that I lived in Sweden, but I
was in fact English, this was initially taken as something less positive,
and I was seen as a ‘native’. However this often passed rather quickly
and the participants began to talk quite frankly about their experiences
of England, positive and negative. Some expressed that they did not
think I seemed ’typically’ English, but instead seemed ‘open’ and
‘friendly’ and ‘not afraid of difference’, to mention some of their
explanations, as to why I did not seem ‘typical’.
4.6 Interpersonal aspects: Self-Other in the interview with me
The position taken by the participants in the interview situation with me
resembles, I suspect, the way my participants manage the demands they
experience made on them: (1) in the official interview with the
migration authorities in claiming asylum; (2) in interaction with society
at large; (3) their interpretation of the media and the general notions
surrounding asylum seekers. These were experiences which initially
affected the interview situation. To them, I represented something more
than just a researcher. For example I was also a member of the ‘general
public’ in the new context, a context in which many of the participants
expressed as hostile towards them. The official migration interviews do
not allow the opportunity for the participants to express the more
personal aspects of their cause for protection. The interview situation
with me often became a forum for the participants to take the
opportunity to express who they ‘really’ were, and also a space in
which they could put forward their side of the argument for why they
needed asylum or even their ‘opinion’ of asylum policy. Sometimes as
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the interviewer, I was positioned as a caring person who understood
their situation, and in the Swedish field-work context even as someone
who understood as the participants assigned me the position of also
being a ‘migrant’. However, as aforementioned, sometimes I was
positioned as a ‘privileged migrant’ or ‘high status migrant’, one of
those who ‘belong’ to the EU and therefore entitled to move freely. In
the English field work context I would be positioned rather differently,
as in England I was not seen as a migrant but rather as representing the
wider society. Initially this entailed that the participants talked less
candidly about their experience of claiming asylum in England, until
the trust was built up. Thereafter, I would find myself being positioned
as ‘not like the rest of the English’, and more as someone who was
trying to represent them and give the asylum seeker and refugee
‘voice’. Interpretation of the interview context and the interpersonal
aspects of it, has given me insight into how the participants experienced
the interview with officials, as this sometimes played out, at times in
taking on a similar form in the interview with me. The interview and its
positioning work which was carried out in our conversations, also
disclosed how the participants position themselves in interaction with
others.
4.6.1 Issues of ‘access’
The concept of access began to take on a whole new meaning to me at
this stage of the data collection. In research literature the term ‘access’
is often discussed in terms of being allowed to enter a field, something
that an ‘external’ body has the authority to allow (Bogdan and Biklen,
1992). This study has impelled me several times to reflect on the
meaning of ‘access’. Gaining access to a field implied in this case
finding people to interview and gathering data. However it occurred to
me that there is another side to access, which is about whether any
subject can be researched’? Are people willing to talk about all their
experiences or are some topics too private? Can all researchers,
research all subjects is another question that concerns issues of access.
Are participants willing and able to share their experiences with me,
and am I, as a researcher, able to handle and process what I am being
told? When I began, in 2006, interviewing asylum seekers and refugees,
what occurred to me, after some time, was the fact that I was being
presented with a ‘scripted’ version of these people’s experiences.
Asylum seekers were more willing to describe the migration and what
this process had meant to them. Refugees, however, were more
reluctant to‘re-live’ their experience and it took time with them to cross
what I call the access threshold. This threshold can be described as the
difference between the scripted outer descriptions and the more
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personal, reflective, inner descriptions of what migration has involved
for them and their life situation. Crossing the threshold is very much an
issue of trust, and I spent many hours philosophising over what the
issue of trust and the access threshold involved for my participants, and
indeed what it meant to me as a researcher. I would like to explain why
trust as an issue existed in this field. In ethnological terms this field
would be described as a ‘sensitive subject’. Sensitive in the words of
Renzetti and Lee (1993:6) because:
the research intrudes into the private sphere or delves into some deeply
personal experience
The refugees and asylum seekers in this study had escaped and fled
their countries under dangerous circumstances. Many had been and still
were part of the political organisation that put them at risk. This meant
that, I found myself studying a secretive group of participants, many of
whom went to great lengths to cover up their identity. At times I
experienced this as somewhat of a fiasco and wondered how I would
ever gain ‘access’ to the field as a white, non-refugee researcher. When
I carried out some of the first interviews, I was painfully aware that I
was being seen as ‘one of the authorities’ and again a scripted tale was
told. However, once we crossed the threshold, this meant I was
presented with another type of material, and the participant’s
experience of torture, imprisonments and trauma came to the fore. This
was a new level in the research interview process which involved
making decisions about what to do with the material I found myself
collecting. How could these descriptions of detailed torture be used, and
indeed should they be used 13, and how should the interview situation be
tackled, when I found it transforming into a therapeutic space? When I
found myself in this situation, I repeatedly asked my participants during
such interviews if they wished to end the interview. Sometimes the
recording was interrupted while participants cried, but they always
wanted to continue and several even stated they were glad they had
talked about their trauma. I always attempted to contact the participants
after interviews to ask how they had felt, having done the interview.
Some explained that the interview with me was the first time they had
talked about how their experiences had affected them. By allowing the
data collection to take the time necessary, in order to gain trust, made
13
I decided not to incorporate my participant’s humiliating stories of torture in the
thesis; it is a topic in itself and would require a different kind of analysis from that
carried out here. However, from the stories I was told, I would like to agree with
Professor Charles Westin, who wrote in his report on Torture and Existence: “Torture to
which they were subjected even is a source of strength and confirmation. The point
must be made that the torturers do not always succeed or come off victorious” (1991:4)
64
the study possible, and the issue of accessibility and crossing the access
threshold, from scripted interviews to a rich data set, was overcome.
4.6.2 Red Cross, England
Having decided that snowballing technique had reached its peak, I
turned to a Red Cross drop-in centre in Norwich, England and started
off, having filled in forms regarding ethics and confidentiality, by
‘blending in’ with the volunteers. This tended to open up the question
from the side of the refugee or asylum seeker as to who I was, which
served as my cue to introduce the subject of my research. Those who
wanted to talk to me were given a time to meet with me, and the Red
Cross provided us with a room for interviews. Many, especially asylum
seekers, had a great need to tell their stories; some refugees took longer
to consider whether or not to talk to me, before coming forward for an
interview.
In order to find more participants for the study, through the help of
the Red Cross, I then proceeded to attend a meeting where social
workers, police officers, housing officers, and others gathered to
discuss concerns regarding how to ‘deal with’ and ‘assist’ refugees and
asylum seekers. This put me in touch with potential gatekeepers to the
field. Again, much like my encounters with the Red Cross in Sweden, I
also learnt about how refugees and asylum seekers are talked about and
constructed by authorities. Again, although this is not analysed, it gave
further understanding to the refugee situation and contexts my
participants make reference to in their talk. Through such organisations
and by attending meetings I would be introduced to potential
participants. One particularly fertile contact became a gatekeeper, who I
interviewed subsequently and led to contacts with a number of persons
who he thought might agree to be interviewed. This participant
explained that many might decline my request for an interview, as they
did not wish to talk about the fact they are refugees.
4.7 ‘Expert’ interviews
Besides deepening by knowledge on migration policy, legalities and the
administrative aspects of claiming asylum in the United Kingdom and
Sweden, through extensive reading, in order to enrich my
understanding of this somewhat complex system, I carried out some
interviews with ‘experts’ working with asylum policy. This part of the
study was carried out both before interviewing refugees and asylum
seekers and during the data collection period. This entailed an interview
at the House of Commons in London, in 2005, with a Labour politician,
working with integration, as well as a policy administrator working for
the Refugee Council, England and a project manager for integration
65
issues at the Red Cross, in Stockholm. These interviews are not used
empirically, as a contribution to analysis (and therefore I have not
attempted to interview a politician or policy maker in Sweden), but
rather the interviews were carried out to complement my own
knowledge and understanding of the application of migration policy
and law, again to understand more about what the system imposes on
asylum seekers.
4.8 Ethical considerations
Following ethical guidelines is often more complex, than the guidelines
themselves allow. When researching a sensitive topic, it is impossible
to stay detached. Feeling involved in people’s lives, and wanting to
support them in their situation is inevitable. So some consideration
needs to be given. An awareness of the situation in which you find
yourself a part, your own behaviour as researcher is necessary to reflect
upon. When I set out on the interviewing process, I had an ethics notice
prepared, but it soon became apparent that the content of this notice had
different meanings for different people. I therefore tried to explain in
conversation with my participants what I was doing and why. This gave
the opportunity to convey my purpose in a way which would be
meaningful to the participant. Many of my participants were highly
educated and could relate to the business of doing a PhD. Others found
it more helpful to understand that I was writing a book about asylum
seekers. When we had finished talking about the ethics notice, I asked
my participants if they understood what it would involve taking part in
the interview, and in some cases we talked in more detail about what
kind of book the material would be used for, or who would be likely to
read it. Some participants stated that they would like to be named in the
book and that they were not afraid of the consequences of their
participation, whereas others were keen to convey that they would not
like to be identified. I always explained that none of the participants
would be identified regardless of whether they desired this or not.
Here I would like to re-address the issue and definitions of what
makes a particular research subject a sensitive one. This, I learnt, was
somewhat of a subjective experience in relation to the participants in
this study. Whilst one participant experienced being interviewed as a
‘sensitive’ issue, another participant acknowledged the interview was
empowering. This was not only recognised by the participants
themselves, but also by Red Cross staff, who conveyed the positive
reaction of the participant. This links to yet another ethical
consideration, that of understanding what meaning the participants
ascribed to their participation, and whether or not the end result, in the
form of a PhD thesis, would fulfil their expectations of what it would
entail to participate. I therefore explained that whilst I would go to great
66
lengths to ensure that participation would not bring them to any harm,
their participation would not at the same time lead to any direct positive
consequences for them as individuals, as refugees or as asylum seekers.
Potentially the thesis could raise awareness, as an academic piece of
work; but quite possibly would not even do that.
Another complexity I faced in some interview settings was the issue
of family and friends remaining present after the interview had
commenced. On one occasion, I turned up at a participant’s home in
London for a scheduled interview and the room was full of family
members and friends. I waited an hour or so before raising the issue of
the interview. The participant showed me that she was ready to be
interviewed, so I asked where she wished to be interviewed and if I
could record the interview, whereupon, she readily agreed to be
recorded and said that we could do the interview in the same room
where we were sitting, along with her family and friends. It occurred to
me then that the ethical guidelines of respecting confidentiality are
defined according to Western culture. If these participants were going
to talk to me, they could do it with their nearest and dearest present.
4.8.1 Ethical aspects of the writing up
When we read research reports of various kinds it is easy to get the
impression that research is a painless process, where everything goes
according to the research design and plan, and participants are readily
available and willing to be researched. This is of course seldom the
case, but research reports are edited versions of what has gone into
collecting data. This is primarily not to protect the researcher from
being labelled clumsy and incompetent; it has above all to do with
one’s ethical responsibility as a social researcher, researching social
subjects. An example of this is my earlier discussion about the
challenges involved in researching ‘secretive’ groups. In order to give a
rich description of the life conditions of the participants in this study,
and how life conditions played a role in the data collection process,
where I started to describe some of the scenarios of which I could
readily find myself a part. However giving such examples can be
problematic and contribute to negative common discourse. The purpose
of presenting such examples is to highlight challenges and opportunities
that my research came up against. I hope that it has become clear that
these scenarios exemplify genuine fear on the part of the participants,
and the difficulties asylum seekers commonly face in their life
situations. Another ethical aspect of writing up is raised by Kvale
(1996). He makes the point that a moral question is raised about what
impact a research report has and what it can lead to.
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4.9 Issues of validity/reliability
Validity and reliability will be discussed in two ways: 1) both as
questions relating to credibility and a process of control; 2) specifically
in relation to this study and my use of an interpretative narrative
approach. Kvale (1996) relates validation to seven stages which
characterise the entire research process: Thematizing, designing,
interviewing, transcribing, analysing, validating, and reporting. Most of
theses aspects are documented throughout this thesis. However, a more
specific discussion relating to my options will be conducted here, as
will a discussion of the analysis process, so as to make more visible
how the interpretations were arrived at. Generalisability will not be
discussed in this chapter; rather, this question is raised at the end of this
thesis, in Chapter Nine.
The task of securing credibility in this study, and therewith its
validity and reliability, has already begun to take form through the
process of thoroughly documenting the study, how it was conducted,
the results and the process by which the results were reached at. Issues
of validity become visible through critically evaluating the decisions
made in the study’s design and implementation. Kvale (1996) argues
that validity should not be raised as an ‘aspect’ or ‘stage’ in the
research; rather, it should permeate every stage of the process. Hence he
raises the issue of validation in relation to his seven stages. This I
attempt to fulfil through careful explanation throughout the entire
thesis.
4.9.1 Reliability
This study is about the asylum seekers and refugees themselves. It is
about the experience of fleeing one’s country, encountering with the
procedure of claiming asylum, as well as the process of being granted
refugee status. Since my objective was to understand, through talk,
what meaning this experience took on for my participants, as well as
it’s consequences for identification and positioning work, the most
valid method of data collection was to collect stories through carrying
out interviews with asylum seekers and refugees. My strategy to
establish trusting relations with all of my participants (which took some
time before we could really start talking about the topic of the study),
aimed at securing reliability in our dialogue and reaching
understanding. When I felt I did not understand a participant correctly, I
made a special effort to check the interview content and meet or talk
with the participant again. The recording of our talks and the
transcription verbatim aimed at ensuring reliability, in terms of
collecting data as accurately as possible. In transcription, I carefully
68
checked for mistakes and misunderstandings, and the transcript excerpts
aim to give a correct representation of the participants talk through
stating pauses and emphasis on words etc. Once embarking on the
interpretation process, my interpretations were tested out on my
supervisors, at seminars and through the presentation of analysis in
conference papers. An aspect of reliability according to Kvale (1996), is
to choose one’s methods giving due consideration to ethics. Given the
conditions of informed consent and carefully protecting anonymity, the
informal and rich relationships of the interview appeared to provide the
best opportunities for me to listen to my participant’s wishes and
demands regarding the research situation.
4.9.2 Validating the analysis process
One of Kvale’s seven stages of research in relation to validation is
‘Analysing’. To follow is some description of the way I have
approached analytically the empirical data. Here I attempt to take you
on the analytical journey upon which I embarked in processing the data.
Although very hard to put into words, we are dealing with an abstract
process which swings back and forth. I try to open up this process and
reveal some of its more concrete aspects. I describe it in terms of
‘aspects’ rather than ‘stages’ to capture the complexity of analysis as
something which is not as straight forward as ‘stages’ or steps.
Having transcribed all interviews verbatim, I began by carrying out a
rather simple content analysis. This involved an initial reading of each
interview set, openly, and with no more than the research aim in mind.
Drawing attention to parts of the interview that appeared at first glance,
to be of interest in understanding the participant’s experience of
‘refugeeship’.
Then, I identified a structure given to the narratives by the
participants, which was later repeatedly checked in the data. This
structure consists of four aspects. These aspects, set out below, are
alternated when participants give meaning to their experiences and
become intertwined to form a broad narrative of refugeeship:
1) Life in one’s country of origin is expressed through a number of
accounts, self-presentation and story lines, which illustrate who one is
and how one perceived oneself and one’s life before migration. The
self-presentations relate to the country of origin and participants make
use of biographical events to say something about life before a
‘negative’ turning point. They construct identification through the
accounts, in the sense that this story form is used to identify themselves
to me and others. These early biographical aspects relate, for example,
to profession, political activism, family life and childhood. These
themes are discussed in Chapter Five.
69
2) Towards becoming a refugee and encountering the official legal
asylum system describes the circumstances of the decision to leave, the
fleeing process and the official procedure of claiming asylum. The
fleeing process often includes many different places one passed in the
country of origin and before crossing the border. This aspect includes a
double realisation of the idea to flee one’s country. First, crossing the
border means taking concrete measures to really leave. Secondly,
asking for asylum means taking seriously the act of fleeing once again,
expressing officially that one wants to leave one’s country. On a
personal level this means leaving a part of oneself behind by leaving
behind the identification framework which characterised their life
situation before migration. At the same time this aspect is a space of
limbo whereby the participant can find him- or herself stripped of all
previous citizenship and other identifications and not yet having
received confirmation of a new belonging. ‘Proving’ one’s position in
relation to one’s claims is dominant here in the participants’
descriptions and discussion with me in the interview.
3) The granting of refugee status implies to some extent a sense of
hope, but at the same time it involves a new life situation and new
challenges in starting a new life. This was expressed in talk that appears
to be about making sense of what the ‘status’ involved, concerning
identification, social and personal, as well as being positioned socially
and institutionally. This includes loss of status through being granted
refugee status, and gain of status, in terms of being recognised as
legitimate.
4) Talk of the future in the narratives involves description of the way
the participants try to move beyond the refugee position. Moving
beyond being a refugee is described both socially, in terms of seeking
belonging in social groups which are not necessarily associated with
refugees, and personally with regard to making sense of ones’
experiences of persecution and fear which at this stage are not part of
one’s new situation as refugee. The participants almost seemed to be
posing the question ‘can I ever stop being a refugee?’
4.9.3 Understanding this act of narration and the analysis work
When the participants told their stories, several things were
accomplished. Simply, one could say that the narration included
descriptions of events that had happened in the participants’ lives, as
well as meaning was given to the events, through accounting, selfpresentations, and forming story lines. The meaning-making identified
in the material, is with regards to various contexts and biographical
events. In this thesis the story lines which have emerged through
analysis have been themes, if you like, that are common to all the
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participants’ histories of refugeeship, and re-occurring throughout their
histories.
Thus, apart from structuring analysis of the participant’s refugee
stories, which resulted in four chronological aspects of refugeeship, all
interviews were also analysed for experiential themes relating to the
research questions. First these themes were interpreted from an
experience-near perspective (Gustavsson, 1996, 2000; Geertz, 1973) in
other words I tried to understand the thematic descriptions of
refugeeship as they had been understood by the participants themselves.
These experience-near interpretations were presented as cases in order
to make it possible to understand them in a personal context.
In my next step of analysis, I compared the case studies for
similarities and differences in order to transcend the personal
perspective and get sight of the common dynamics of the refugeeship.
Here, more experience-distant (Ibid) interpretations were developed in
order to make visible the more general characteristics of the refugee
process. Interpretations were continuously checked against all the data.
Sometimes, contradicting data led to abandonment of a preliminary
interpretation. On other occasions, a more in-depth analysis revealed
new facts that allowed for a development of the interpretation that was
more in line with the information I had.
4.10 An introduction to my first interpretations of some of
the themes raised in the interviews
In all my data material, a striking theme of self-presentations emerged,
for example in the stories about life before migration, selfpresentations played an important role in expressing who one ‘really’ is.
This interpretation, that the repeated self-presentations aimed at proving
who the participants are, was grounded both on numerous
presentations, many of them unexpectedly rich and argumentative, and
on the repeated findings of an erosion of sense of self, experienced by
the participants throughout the transition from their country of origin to
the new country and becoming refugees. These finding, indicated that
the participants felt a need to show who they are to others and to
themselves and confirmed so to speak, the interpretation that their selfpresentations were founded in the refugeeship itself.
In a further step, this interpretation of the self-presentations was
deepened in a more detailed analysis of loss of earlier selfidentifications and difficult encounters with discrediting social
categorisations associated with refugees and asylum seekers. From the
perspective of this interpretation, the participants’ lengthy talk about
who they had been before the ‘turning point’ could be understood as
71
attempts to reconstruct a more familiar sense of self, associated with
self respect and esteem.
As we shall see in Chapter Five, a sense of self within this life
before, what I identify as ‘a negative turning point’ in all the narratives
is constructed and portrayed. This turning point refers to the
circumstances which the participants describe as something that had
changed for the worst in their life situation and which forced them to
flee. This need for self-presentation and reconstruction of the sense of
self is an important part of their experience of the migration trajectory
which was not typically given a lot of attention in the official interviews
with migration authorities.
In a more general sense, one could say that the narration expressed
basic existential themes, for example a change or threatened sense of
self, experienced during the refugeeship, similar to Goffman’s spoiled
identity concept. In my interpretation, I found the participants to be
preoccupied by a number of personal existential changes relating to this
kind of migration that seemed to involve some key themes about loss of
one’s past, striving to justify the refugee project and managing the great
deal of discreditation and exclusion, as asylum seekers and refugees in
one’s new country. These series of existential themes were raised
during the course of the story-telling, characterising what meaning the
participants ascribe refugeeship. They illustrate the identification and
positional movement present in narratives. These included moral
challenges and conflictual feelings over the migration and how one
feels one is seen today in the new situation. The meaning-making
aspects of refugeeship described here, were not, at the outset, expressed
clearly by all participants, but nevertheless seemed to be something that
participants touched on when having crossed, ‘the threshold’. These
interpretations are based on a close comparative analysis of direct and
indirect expressions. Here I was attentive to the more interactive aspects
of their talk in terms of Self-Other, and by interpreting positions taken
up or resisted. Also contexts and concepts frequently referred to, like
‘refugee status’ and how such concepts were used by the participants
served as input to interpretations of these meaning-making aspects.
In retrospect, I can see that several dimensions of interpretations
have emerged in my analysis. One of which describes a series of events
relating to refugeeship, in a chronological order. In this dimension,
legalistic, political and social aspects relating to official norms and
conventions surrounding various aspects of refugeeship are topics that
enter into virtually all narratives. On another level of interpretation,
there are meaning-making aspects, illustrated by account-giving and
self-presentation, relating to the more fluid, processual aspects of
refugeeship. Here we uncover what meaning the official process to
becoming a refugee and being a refugee carries for the participants and
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others in their surroundings in terms of positioning and identification
work. As will be described in Chapter Seven, Eight and Nine, the
interpretative dimensions of the experiential refugeeship could be
organised around what could be called a core dimension that I refer to
as the moral career of refugeeship. Again, this interpretative dimension
is grounded on several different, direct and indirect expressions of the
refugee stories. Exploring these expressions one by one, comparing
them to each other and trying to understand them as a whole in terms of
a moral career describes the basic components of my interpretive
analysis.
The presentation of these interpretations aims to illustrate basic
characteristics of refugeeship. I will follow the temporal structure of
events, given by the participants in their story-telling. My analysis is
presented in the four chapters entitled: The road to refugeeship (chapter
5); The official asylum procedure- Encountering the legal and
administrative system and all that this entails (chapter 6); Being a
refugee (chapter 7); Constructing continuity and discontinuity in the
stories of ‘beyond’ being a refugee (chapter 8).
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5. The road to refugeeship
Accounts of historical trajectories
The accounts in the participants’ narratives tell the story of their
migration, partly as something historical, and partly as something
ongoing today. These parts of their narratives are to a large extent
referring to ‘factual’ events, structuring the way the participants re-call
the process of refugeeship. This narrative structure is maintained among
other things, by the fact that the participants obviously were aware that
some steps in their refugeeship process are officially recognised and
well-known to many people. They drew upon this in conversation with
me. The narrative structures and sequential events are also used for my
presentation of the empirical data, found in the interviews.
These events have their point of departure in life before the
participant had begun feeling compelled to flee and they continue
beyond being granted refugee status. As the introductory chapter points
out, becoming a refugee is often understood as legal in terms of a
sequence of changes in official status. These various status categories
refer, legally, to a person’s citizenship rights and duties. The most
important phases included in gaining official refugee status are: (1)
leaving the country of origin, which in some cases, in actual practice
means giving up one’s citizenship from the country of origin; (2)
applying for protection by making a claim for asylum in a new country;
(3) waiting for the official, legal and administrative decision of being or
not being recognised as a refugee in a new country; and later, perhaps,
(4) becoming a citizen. The participants’ trajectories relating to this
process of migration commonly mirrored the official phases of
becoming a refugee. This is hardly surprising, given that participants
had a tendency to slip into a ‘scripted’-like version of what I can
imagine the interview with migration authorities would have looked
like, (see Chapter Four). In these official interviews, questions would
be raised about the circumstances of the migration, proof of one’s
identity, and reasons for one’s need for protection. However, the
narratives I collected also included two phases that are not commonly
included in an official refugee process, namely, a rather inclusive and
detailed account of one’s life before the flight had become necessary, as
well as reflections on and descriptions of life in the new country,
74
beyond being recognised as a refugee, with the granted status (see
Chapter Eight). These events of refugeeship make up a trajectory which
represents both the migration process as a whole and a narrative, an
autobiographical structure hooked onto this trajectory. The story told
includes a turning point, which I regard as a significant interruption in
one’s life circumstances, ultimately triggering a flow of decisions
leading to one’s migration. The narratives placed much emphasis on
this turning point.
5.1. The emphasis on life before migration
The participants in my study gave a lot of emphasis on their life before
it became necessary to seek refuge. To some extent, this aspect of their
narratives was invited by my questions concerning the road to
refugeeship, and about their lives in their countries of origin. An
unexpected finding was that many of the participants gave most
emphasis on life before seeking refuge was even necessary. The way
the stories were expressed gave the impression that this phase of their
lives was the most important for me to understand about their migration
process. I begin with these descriptions, because the participants all
began their narratives with these self-presentations, almost as if it was
important to them to portray who, what and how they were before the
migration was even necessary; and moreover, to have this established
before sharing the more tragic aspects of their life narratives of life after
a turning point. These aspects of their stories can be said to highlight
life before becoming a refugee. They concern experiences which to
some extent were linked to events preceding the flight, leading up to a
sort of turning point in the participants’ lives, a turning point that was
often associated with some kind of persecution or threat by a
dominating regime or its authorities. In most cases, this is the beginning
of the migration history for these participants. Besides descriptions of
biographical events, they gave self-presentations relating to contexts
before the turning point. These self-presentations made use of adverbs
and adjectives explaining who and what they were, before the turning
point. The self-presentations convey them not only as individuals, but
also relationally, in terms of who they were in their societies in relation
to others, and how they perceived others as seeing them. Through these
self-presentations the participants constructed their previous
identifications, through multiple I-positions, such as; ‘I was a mother, I
was a wife and I was working full time, I was successful, or ‘I’ as
expert of human rights or ‘I’ as respectable citizen.
The fact that the participants give self-presentations is in itself, not
particularly surprising, given the situation of being interviewed and
meeting me for the first time. However, the extent to which the
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participants occupied themselves with earlier self-characteristics can be
understood as a more or less conscious desire to add at least some
positive self-identifications to the poor social status they thought they
currently held. Another observation is that these self-presentations were
always associated with positive core identifications 14 which, the
participants returned to throughout all the interviews and in subsequent
interviews. They portrayed the level of independence they enjoyed, and
some pointed out that they were not a burden to anyone before the
turning point. The following two excerpts show the typical ways in
which the participants talked about their earlier lives before the turning
point. These examples also show how they described their lives and
how they perceive they were seen by others and saw themselves; this
past description often links onto their present situation as asylum
seekers or refugees:
UK 10 In my country I was a respected man in the community (.)
everybody liked me (.) even the government and then er I mean
everything changed for me (.) I had to flee from being in a position of
high status to being in a very very very bad living standard
UK 6 When the war broke out (sighing (2)) my life at this time from
finishing my education until 2003 (.) it was wonderful (.) I can’t
describe it (1) I had a house (2) a house with a garden I had influence
because I was a member of the party system and er I felt secure I grew
up there (1) how can I explain this (.) I hadn’t thought (1) I hadn’t
thought that (.) one day I will be a refugee
Both these quotes give an account of life before, expressing who they
were, and how they felt about their lives The new national contexts and
position repertoire available to the participants in their new societies, as
asylum seekers, seemed very limited, first of all in relation to the
identification as asylum seeker, and later, often in their identification as
refugee. My participants therefore engaged in a process of resistance
and dis-identification around the connotations attached to the refugee
concept. They did this by anchoring the narrative to earlier core
identifications. In contrast to the rich variety of complex identifications
that most of the participants had experienced earlier in life, the
simplified and limited self-identifications connected to categorisations
given in the asylum system seemed somewhat impoverished. As this
chapter unravels, we will witness the very nature of the asylum system
seemed to erode individualism and uniqueness, categorising all asylum
seekers in a standardised way, which gave rise to these attempts by the
14
Core identification refers to identifications such as I am a father, a political activist
and come from Iran. Here, core identification is not referring to something static and
unchangeable.
76
participants to hold onto earlier aspects of self which made them
unique.
5.1.1 The negative and positive account-giving
The accounts given by the participants regarding life before the turning
point, how they perceived their life situations, themselves and how they
were seen by others, could be characterised as positive in the sense that
these accounts are imbued with positive connotations and on the whole
of good feelings. Life seemed to have its sense of direction, be it
politically or professionally.
One important meaning relating to the turning point was loss of
highly valued earlier life circumstances. In fact, my close analysis of
the interviews indicated that the participants’ emphasis on this earlier,
highly valued life was an indirect way of expressing the loss they
experienced in relation to the flight. As we will see in more detail later,
the talk about the positive life before becoming a refugee could not only
be understood as a description of the past, it served equally well the
purpose of characterising the time after the turning point. In some cases
the present, as an asylum seeker, was portrayed as something far worse.
The examples from the data material also illustrate an aspect not
commonly included in refugee discourse that of a happy life situation
before a catastrophe or significant political change had taken place. The
following excerpt illustrates such positive memories of life before the
turning point:
UK10 I was living a very high standard life (.) I had my private home
(.) my car (.) my private surgery (.) and my job at the hospital so I don’t
care about money actually (.) my children were in private schools there
(.) and ermm (.) I think that (.) leaving Iraq at this time is a life saving
measure
This man had planned to move to England, in search of protection, as a
life saving measure. He was hoping to regain his occupation as a doctor
in England, but learned on arrival that, as a third country national he
was not in a position to make this choice, rather, he must claim asylum.
Thus, he went from a situation of independency, before the turning
point to one of dependency due to the legislation controlling third
country entry to the European Union. The loss he experienced in having
to flee can also be described as a radical change in identification
framework, as well as in terms of life style. Another point of interest in
this quote is when the participant says “so I don’t care about money
actually”. In saying this he takes up the position as someone affluent
and independent of economic support, thus advertising that he certainly
is in no need of money. The bottom line is that he did not come to
77
England as a ‘needy’ asylum seeker in search of economic gain. Again,
we see that the talk about the past has relevance for our understanding
of the present, and the positioning shows its rhetorical qualities. The
participants’ ‘aim’, besides presenting the life they once had and who
they were, seems moreover to defy a positioning as voluntary,
economic migrant. These participants seem keen to stress that their
intention was not to be a burden on the welfare system in the new
country. This is particularly interesting against the background of
current representations of asylum seekers, whereby the migration
discourse typically includes notions of the asylum seeker as someone in
need of economic support. All of the above quotes are from
participants living in England; where an economic strand within the
migration discourse is particularly salient. However, in the next quote, a
similar positioning movement is seen from a participant living in
Sweden:
SW5 er you know (4) er nobody er (.) normal would ever do this (.)
claim asylum unless they really really had to [no] because you know I
left the prestige of professor now I’m a refugee this is a huge difference
as professor I had two thousand something (salary) and as an asylum
seeker I had two hundred or something
The following participant described her life situation even in positive
terms, and herself as an independent person. She too gives a description
of a successful life before the turning point, and she resists being
positioned as someone who would claim asylum for economic gain, by
describing her happy, prosperous life situation before the turning point.
This participant had only quite recently arrived in England at the time
of data collection which might explain her use of present tense when
describing who and what she was before migration:
UK7 First of all I’m a housewife (.) a mother and I work (.) I am
employed (.) this would have been my 40th year this year [wow] I’m a
property administrator [ok] (1) I look after properties
She went on to describe in detail her work responsibilities and then told
me:
So I have a good job and I work from home [mm] and the company has
an office (1) I haven’t had a problem all my life
This quote ends by the participant saying “I haven’t had a problem all
my life” at the same time, communicating that the situation she now
finds herself in is out of her control. She also, like many of the
examples in my material, positions herself in this statement as someone
who did not need assistance due to ‘problems’ until the turning point.
78
What has been described so far may seem surprising given that these
participants have fled their countries. Many would probably have
expected to hear stories of a life, which was so unbearable that one was
left with no choice but to flee. However, the participants’ emphasis on
their earlier, more appreciated personal and social positions seem to
function as compensation for experiences of less appreciated positions
ascribed to them in their capacity as asylum seekers, an ascription with
which the participants clearly do not identify. This initial finding will
be explored in more detail as this chapter unravels.
5.1.2 Conflictual feelings over the flight- a variation in the
accounts
Despite what is said in the above examples, the stories present a far
more nuanced picture than that of just positive self-presentations of life
before the turning point and life today as asylum seekers or refugees.
Firstly, not all participants give a positive and affluent picture of their
lives before the turning point. For example, many self-identifying as
political activists described their lives as more or less always involving
a fight or struggle. Here, on the other hand positive aspects described
before the turning point, rather stands for a sense of hope. Secondly,
even those who re-collect a positive life before the turning point can
vacillate in descriptions of life in the past in relation to current
conditions. This gives a rich description of conflictual feelings over
good and bad times experienced by the participants. The positive sides
of one’s earlier life, transfers into something negative. The stories
illustrate the inevitable complexity of the migration process and the
decisions it entails for the participants. This is illustrated by the way the
participants talk about the migration choice, understanding the
migration as something which has saved their lives, yet at the same
time deprived them of things that meant a lot to them. In this sense
most descriptions of life after the turning point and during the initial
asylum claiming procedure are characterised by a sense of regression.
The almost contradictory feeling which exists in their meaning-making
processes comes through partly in the various I-positions taken up,
which they also vacillate between, sometimes expressing the positive
sides of the migration and sometimes describing feelings of confusion
over whether or not the decision to flee was right, sometimes seeing
themselves as heroic survivors, and sometimes as victims of wider
political conflicts. This seems to be very much linked to the feeling of
loss that the participants struggle to understand. While recognising that
one had to flee, one struggles with an underlying feeling of loss
occasioned by migration.
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Even those who had been politically active, having experienced
injustice, escape from prison and the torturous conditions in detention,
expressed this sense of loss resulting from having to flee one’s country,
family and friends. Ultimately this loss is about not being able to live in
the country to which one feels a sense of belonging. To illustrate this
sense of loss, I quote two participants verbatim. First a man, living in
Sweden today describes his feeling of giving up his political fight:
SW3 The regime knew I was alive they said to my organisation “you
are active” they said “we are going to arrest him” but anyway I
succeeded in networking again but in the end they arrested my brother
and some others (.) because I had a family now (.) children and a wife it
became much more dangerous for me to continue
After some time he fled from his country. This was not an easy decision
to make and he describes the moral dilemma involved in having to
leave his country and abandon political work to secure the safety of his
family and himself. Part of him felt that he should have stayed on to
continue his important political work, yet another part realised that he
had no choice but to flee:
I thought it’s not good to leave the people like this (.) when you have
experience and know how to do things it is a big deal building an
organisation and democratising society (.) I thought maybe it is stupid
but anyway (.) to stay to fight on maybe I should have (.) but when you
have children (.) a family as well (1) this needs consideration (.) If I’d
been alone then I would have liked to have stayed but when I think
about my children my family as well
In this above quote a revealing I-positional movement takes place. This
man says “if I had been alone” which is used to position himself as
someone who was occupied in important work and not planning to flee.
However, at the same time he positions himself as the ‘family man’
who takes responsibility for his family, and therefore must flee for their
sake. He expressed a sense of abandonment in relation to his political
work, but justified this abandonment through his explanation of the
danger the political work was putting his family in.
Secondly a quote from a woman living in England today, who was
sentenced to prison at the age of 20 for her political activism. She
escaped prison and fled by foot to a neighbouring country. Some years
later she fled to England:
UK5 I was forced as I see it because I didn’t want to become a refugee
(.) I didn’t want to leave Iran (1) I wanted to live in Iran I wanted to
work as an Iranian resident (.) I wasn’t planning to come to Europe or
any other country but because of (2) being at risk (1) you know of
danger (.) you know it wasn’t my choice you know I didn’t want this
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(1) it’s quite complicated you know for a lot of people (1) because you
miss your family (.) you had a group (.) a job and well much of my life
is the same here because I er well like it was before(.) apart from the
fact that I’m safe here it is er still feels like I’m struggling for my rights
and my identity and knowing yourself and er what you are going to do
UK 9 We had to leave (.) a lot of people were killed (.) my personal er
was er my case was very hard (.) my wife er she was raped (1) they cut
her hair (crying) [mm] (3) We left our country and I am very happy for
this country because it is safe (.) safe for the children (.) but we have
been here for seven years as asylum seekers my youngest son was born
here it is very very hard to leave your country(.) we had to do
everything illegally I’m happy we are here it’s safe but(.) but I’m not
happy waiting(.) not knowing(.) I’m mean for the children (.) not
knowing
These quotes from participants SW3, UK5 and UK9 swing between
justifying the necessity to flee and sadness about the loss it involved.
UK5 comes to the conclusion that she is safe in the new country and
allowed to express her political opinions, but she is still struggling,
however, in a different way today. She is finding it difficult to recover a
sense of belonging, experiencing that she must struggle today too, to
assert her rights as a refugee. Illustrated is a sense of abandonment
experienced in leaving one’s country of origin. To some extent a sense
of shame is present in their talk about having to leave their country or
their political work. UK5 expresses in her talk that “she was not
planning to come to Europe”. I get the impression that she wants to
emphasise that this was forced migration and not a luxury move to
“Europe”.
Whilst some participants talked about life before the turning point as
unfair or unjust, they described hope in striving for a better life, either
personally or politically. Others describe their life situation as
successful and prosperous. Regardless of how one’s previous life was
experienced, common to all the descriptions, is that self-presentations
disclose an active, hard-working, conscientious and independent
person, either politically or professionally and a person who was never
planning to ‘move’ from their countries of origin. A sense of purpose
shines through in these descriptions, political, or not.
The positive-negative aspects of the narratives appeared in a third
variation, focusing on the image of the asylum seeker and refugee as
hard-working, and as someone who is a contributing member of
society. This theme is opposed to the typical social image of the asylum
seeker and refugee as a person who does not support him-herself and at
worse, does not want to. What the excerpts teach us is that all
participants give representations of themselves as someone who was
contributing to the societies in which one used to live:
81
UK2 I worked with agricultural development I was a general economist
I worked there for about six years and then er (.) there was an
advertisement to start a postgraduate programme in agriculture which
was in my area and er I said er (.) because we were working on
production and we had insect and disease problems I wanted to study
agriculture and protection (.) I gained my MSc in 1981 and moved from
XXX to a plant protection institute; because of my qualifications I was
placed there. While I was there I still wanted to learn more so I thought
I would try to do a PhD
The above quote displays the development in UK2’s life before the
turning point. It illustrates the hard-working nature many participants
attribute to themselves. In a similar vein the next quote is from a
woman who calls herself a political activist. She explained how she was
dedicated to change for the sake of her society:
SW7 Everywhere I looked I saw injustice (.) I looked around in my
society and thought (.) well I really needed to do something (.) and it
was the revolution and I was really active (.) I was about 19 years old
and they always wanted me as part of the demonstrations and I did (.)
So I became a kind of leader (.) I had been in prison and everyone knew
I had been in prison so they made me a kind of hero (.) I felt really good
about this (.) I could make change
I have cited these examples because they are representative of my
material. Participants give accounts which reflect how they contributed
to their societies through work or politics, and at the same time were
ambitious and hard-working. For example quotes of SW7 and SW3
both take up the position of ‘leader/representative of the people’. These
stories may be seen as accounts of who one was and what one did
before the turning point. These excerpts also illustrate the positions
taken in narratives before the turning point. Desirable positions are
contrasted with the less desirable position repertoire experienced as
asylum seekers. The first quote takes up the position of ‘I’ as
‘environmental manager, in charge of landscape protection in his
country. The second quote takes up the position of ‘I’ as ‘justice
organiser’. These positions present personal attributes and serve the
purpose of expressing the ways in which these persons were committed
to their countries and were competent enough in their earlier lives to be
a contributing citizen. These narrative excerpts are representations of
who one was, but they are also argumentative, constructing justification
to flee and establish one’s worth in the new context.
5.2 Legitimatisation of the flight
Accounts of one’s flight and of its legitimacy occurred frequently in the
narratives. These seemed to address an implicit question, over and over
82
again pertaining to one’s responsibility for the flight. Many
explanations looked back to the turning point, and the reasons for
becoming asylum seekers were explained as something which one did
not fully control. Some participants experienced the necessity to flee as
something completely out of their control. Others could partially relate
the indispensability to migrate as something which could be explained
partly as a consequence of their own actions. For example, political
activists could explain their reasons to flee as a sequel of the beliefs
they held, and the organisations within which they were active. They
understood forced migration as springing from their activism. At the
same time they see their activism as something they inevitably had to
participate in. It was their nature to recognise injustice and to take
practical action to combat it. Whatever the mixture of reasons and
responsibilities, most participants felt a need to explain why they had
left their countries of origin.
Some examples to follow show this construction of explanations
relates to how one understands the need in the end to flee one’s country:
UK5 who had been in prison before and exposed to daily torture,
now found herself facing imprisonment again:
UK5 I had become involved in working with these questions again (.)
er I had been involved again and it became dangerous again (.) I had my
children and er although this time we were very careful not to be
discovered by the police again they found out (.) I don’t know how (.)
they found my husband’s family (.) er they kept me for three days (.)
they gave me a chance to give them all the information (.) they
interrogated me then on and off for a whole year (1) I realised that I
couldn’t cope any more with this and then er I realised I couldn’t bare it
anymore and it was getting worse and worse (2) so I decided to go into
hiding again (.) I could tell by their questions that they were waiting to
catch me out I knew it was a matter of time they were going to take me
again it was a very hard decision to make (.) especially leaving my
children but I thought it would only be for a couple of months
The next participant not only constructs an explanation for the
migration relating to the circumstances he was living under, but also
supports his reasons by talking about his encounters with migration
authorities on entry to Sweden:
SW2 I left Iraq 2006 when I was injured in Baghdad they were
targeting me they put small bombs in my car it was not a big explosion
but is was a car explosion it damaged my eyes and there was no
medicine no health care in Baghdad no one could help me (.) I had to
travel I had to have five operations (.) I had been working had set up an
office in human rights we were supported to do this and it was me and
another we were two guys with the assistance of a human rights
manager of an organisation we wrote lots of reports and sent them to
83
UN er after that I feared I would lose everything if I stay there er
because we were fighting alone just me and my friend against millions
of people who don’t like what we are doing (.) I came here (3) in 2007
(.) to Sweden and er at that time the immigration office wanted Iraqi
people to prove his nationality and why he left Iraq (2) because they
wanted real reasons to let them stay (.) not just “I’m from Baghdad and
people are being killed there” but the immigration officer told me I was
a special case and I was granted refugee status from Geneva
The above quote not only gives explanation, SW2 also positions
himself as ‘genuine’ and in need of protection due to his human rights
work, rather than someone who ‘just’ left Baghdad because people were
being killed there.
The following excerpt provides an additional illustration of the kind
of explanation in the material, relating to the feeling of lack of choice:
SW3 I didn’t want to come er (.) here (.) I wasn’t thinking of moving to
another country but suddenly I was forced to leave my country and
during this process I thought often how can I get back to my country (.)
I had to leave I lived for several years before leaving under ground (.) in
hiding I was fighting after being released from prison for 3 or 4 years
from hiding (.) against the government (.) but they were getting more
and more suspicious and they arrested my brother and tortured him for
information about me and I was told to flee (1) but it wasn’t my will (.)
my wish (.) I was against fleeing (.) I felt why I have to flee
The explanation, much like self-presentations of life before the turning
point recurs throughout the interview. Following the general narrated
sequence of events, the participants having engaged in these meaningmaking processes of explanation exemplified above, told me about the
actual events surrounding their own flight and encounters with official
migration authorities in the new country. Here, then, a new historical
aspect was introduced to the narrative, but also these descriptions were
characterised by self-presentations, identification construction and
explanatory meaning-making. The participants explained to me how
they drew on concepts such as ‘political refugee’ in seeking to position
themselves as asylum seeker or refugee in the new society. This seemed
to explain acceptability in interaction with others, why they had to flee.
SW3 uses the concept ‘political refugee’ to justify his position as
refugee today:
SW3 When I first came here I came in contact with the label political
refugee (.) I still use this term when I have to return to the reason why I
came here (.) so then I use this term (.) I was a political refugee actually
and even now in the future when I discuss why I came here (.) I call
myself political refugee
84
Here political refugee first of all seems to stand as an explanation to
others that he is not an economic or voluntary migrant. SW3 explains
how he still draws on the concept of ‘political refugee’ when he gives
his ‘reasons’ for why he lives in Sweden. Having to give an explanation
as to why he is a refugee living in Sweden is still, after over 10 years,
part of his daily experience.
5.3 Escaping and Fleeing
SW7 being on the run is part of the thing(.) er when we decided to leave
for good and go to another country we thought we have to (.) er we
thought if we stay living in the camp we can’t do anything (.) our time
is just going and we thought we have to get out of here go somewhere
we can’t live you can’t live when you are in hiding we have to go where
we are allowed to do something it is awful living like this (.) knowing
you will never develop never being able to live (1) in hiding (.) it’s
terrible and we had a child we had to do something in hiding she could
never have gone to school
The special conditions of seeking asylum, which make this migration
differ from other forms of migration is that it involves an escape. All
but three of the participants in this study, have endured escaping as part
of fleeing. Escaping means taking risks, the risk of being caught, the
risk of being deceived by a smuggler, risks in the transportation
process, not to mention the risk of deportation on arrival or a refused
asylum claim 15.
The reality of fleeing is that it is a long and drawn-out process, likely
to involve many stages over several years, as exemplified in SW7’s
quote above, often living in hiding in neighbouring countries and
refugee camps along the way, as is evident in several examples in this
study.
UK4 It took 12 days to arrive in England by lorry I took a little bit of
food with us but we were without food or water for 3 days (2) Kurdistan
does not allow us to leave (.) but we knew we must leave because they
want to destroy us (.) there is no help for the Kurdish people (.) they
want to finish us off we had to leave (.) we had to pay
The above quote is from a married couple I interviewed, who spoke a
lot about their flight, giving me the impression it had been traumatic for
them. They had to escape because their ethnic identity as Kurdish
people living in Turkey put their lives in jeopardy. They could not
15
An asylum claim can in some cases be treated as an act of hostility from the claimant
towards their country of origin, sometimes meaning that someone who is deported due
to a ‘failed’ asylum claim can risk facing persecution on return, for the act of making
the claim (Clayton, 2006).
85
freely leave the country, so they had to get out through an organised
escape. They explained that they did not know where they were being
taken; when they were dropped off at the destination, they discovered
they were in England. They were aware that they had risked their lives
escaping, but understood that staying on as Kurdish people in the region
in which they were living, was going to cost them their lives anyway.
So they took the risk.
Another participant living as a refugee in Sweden today described
his fleeing in detail to me. He fled because of his political engagement.
His description highlights the risk aspect of fleeing, as well as the
existential aspects of leaving behind loved ones and relinquishing one’s
life as one knew it up until then:
SW1 I just left my apartment (.) just left it like it was and actually er (2)
one thing was that er which prevented me from travelling on public
transport in XXXXX is that to travel er you have to show your ID card
to buy tickets and to take a train and everything because everything is
kind of political (2) so I could not buy a ticket (.) but at that time I was
lucky (1) there was a celebration at that time so a lot of people came
and they were taking the train (.) so I pretended to see them off and got
onto the train (.) I took the train from XXX to XXX (1) it was
December and very cold (.) freezing point (.) very cold very windy (1) I
had to avoid the military avoid completely so I walked and walked and
one day I came to the border and then I realised I wanted to say
goodbye to my mother so I went all the way back [you went all the way
back] yes all the way back to say to my mother goodbye (.) bye (1) and
then it was Christmas so I spent Christmas with my mother and then the
next morning I got up and started again for 6 days of walking ******
but it was good [returning to say goodbye] yes (1) because that was the
last time I saw my mother
This next participant talks about making the decision to flee. She first
escaped prison when she was temporarily released to attend a mass
burial which took place after mass killings in Iran. Her quote illustrates
the length of time many participants spent escaping and in hiding before
reaching England or Sweden. UK5, having escaped this time round,
lived for several years in another part of her country before escaping for
England:
UK5 Even though I had guards there (.) there were so many crowds that
it was my auntie that said to me (.) look it is now or never (.) you have
to escape now (.) if you go back there you never know what would
happen to you (.) I was ready to go (2) it was winter (.) they didn’t
allow us to wear our warmer clothes (.) it just took a few minutes (2) I
thought (2) and then I asked my sister (.) shall we go (.) she said yes I
think we should go it is our only chance and we don’t have anything to
lose everything is lost we are going back there anyway if they find us
they will just take us back to prison so what have we lost we are going
86
back there with them anyway so why not take our chance (.) so then we
slowly (2) er we started putting ourselves amongst the crowd to get lost
amongst the people the only friend we could trust was a childhood
friend I went to school with her I went to her house we walked there it
took us three hours (2) we were walking but then we found a way to get
from one city to the next and that night we stayed there (3) it was gone
midnight er they opened the door and they knew (.) they were also
political and they just knew something horrible had happened to us and
the mother said just go to the basement (.) because she was so scared of
being caught and then she said I’m sorry I can’t keep you here you must
leave tomorrow because they are already after my children this house is
not safe if they come here for my children then they are going to find
you (1) so we were looking all the time for somewhere to stay at night
when it was dark so we were on the run like this for nearly 2 months
When participants talked about ‘the leaving’, it was often, with a great
deal of emotion. At the same time as surviving the fear and danger,
often involved in escaping, they are leaving behind their life and people
dear to them. I tried to understand what fleeing really involves and what
meaning it takes on for my participants. What seems to being expressed
besides risk and fear is a deep sense of abandonment. This idea of
abandonment was touched on earlier in the chapter and will be explored
as the chapter progresses.
First, I would like to go into more detail here concerning fleeing. We
launch straight into another quote giving further illustration of what the
flight can look like. Some of the participants fled with children, which
added to an already high level of stress, as the children were also at
risk. Whilst the following woman was living in hiding she had given
birth to a baby. Her story picks up at the point of leaving her life in
hiding and attempting to escape with her husband and child:
SW7 My daughter was one and a half now and was talking all the time
and the whole time we had to do like this (puts her finger to her mouth
to illustrate how she tried to keep her child quiet) anyway that night we
had to hide in the hills roughly 11 o’clock in the evening they (an
escort) came and er so we knew we came to a village and the people
were really nice and we got food (.) er because I had a (.) you know
small luggage with my daughter’s clothes in but after some time they
said that we couldn’t have that luggage you just have to take some
nappies and extra clothes they said otherwise it won’t be possible we
left our things we took a few bits for her and the (1) the conditions er
well there was a war going on (.) fighting (.) military (.) on one side
Iraq and the other was Iran and there was a war between them so it was
quite dangerous and I remember er I had no idea how I was going to
manage but I thought ah I will manage (1) but still after 25 years it is a
nightmare (participant begins to cry)
87
This quote describes the first part of this family’s fleeing process. Some
members of a political organisation to which this mother and father
belonged to, were experienced in helping people escape persecution for
their political activity and assisted this couple in fleeing. This mother
had already spent some time in prison and was later released. The
couple then lived in a camp together, with their child, for some years
before managing to leave the country altogether. United Nation officials
in the country of origin placed the family in Sweden. When this mother
was describing her flight she began to cry; after 25 years she was still
deeply affected by her journey.
These stories convey some of the aspects of fleeing.
As
aforementioned, what seems to surface when the participant’s flight is
talked about is a great deal of fear, but also a strong sense of survival. I
cannot help feeling that there is more to the feelings of fear and
survival, and wonder how escape plays out in refugeeship as a lived
experience. I will therefore dig a little deeper into how the stories of
fleeing develop and what meaning the flight takes on for the
participants.
5.4 Abandonment
Fleeing seems to involve a lot more than just making a journey or
leaving a country; it involves abandoning certain things. The drastic
nature of fleeing often means escaping secretly with no way of saying
goodbye to close friends and family. The ‘walking away’ (sometimes
literally), from a political cause or from a profession, as well as leaving
behind personal belongings and a home and workplace, are just some of
the special conditions attached to this kind of migration. A sense of
abandonment therefore dominates these narratives. However, this does
not play out fully in the material until the participants talk about
arriving in a new country and had begun to realise what this had really
entailed for them. It was at the point of making the claim, that it became
clear to the participants what they had lost, and even felt they had
abandoned. The aspect of doubt around fleeing such as; was the
decision to flee the right one or not becomes apparent, especially when
encountering the official system which places demands on the claimant
to justify why one fled and why one needs protection. The quotes
demonstrate this sense of abandonment and loss, which are feelings
intrinsically embedded in the flight.
The following quote is from UK5 who left her children and husband
behind, when fleeing for a second time, this time to England, hoping
that her family would follow her shortly after she had escaped.
However it took over five years for her asylum application to be
processed, which meant it was impossible for her to bring her children
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to England before this, I pick up her story where she is telling me about
life as an asylum seeker, without her children:
UK5 I didn’t send any photos because of the regime (1) sometimes I
called them but it was a really scary time because they had arrested my
husband and my mother-in-law looked after the children they er they er
didn’t let them go to school the first year after I left so they were in a
really bad situation after I left (.) I had made trouble for them (.) but
once I knew my husband can manage er well we knew what was going
to happen (.) you know (.) otherwise we had already experienced that
er (1) they moved to another city and they started a new school I knew
this because I called my mother and I would speak to her sometimes (.)
then er it wasn’t safe to contact them too much (2 )I don’t know if I was
right or now maybe it has affected them a lot er I don’t know (.) maybe
but er (1) I think I did the right thing
This woman, who has been living in England for over 10 years now,
still questions her decision and her quote emphasises the uncertainty
present in her talk of whether she was right to abandon everything for
her own safety. She points out that she “had made trouble for them”,
referring to her family members and, much like the previous stories
presented here, her decision is characterised by a sense of compulsion
at the same time as she queries the decision, expressing uncertainty
over whether or not it was the right thing to do. Fleeing often entails a
moral dilemma for the participants. Deciding to stay may put the family
in danger, but fleeing can mean a sense of abandoning the political
organisation or other important commitments. Some participants
position their families as victims of their activities, rather than
themselves. This sometimes becomes their justification to flee;
expressed almost as if it is easier to flee for the sake of others, than for
one’s own sake. At the same time a lot of guilt is expressed by many of
the participants over their decision to flee or the predicament in which
they feel they have placed their families in.
This sense of abandonment is conveyed in descriptions of fleeing,
leaving a country and its regime, leaving behind family and loved ones
as well as giving up a political activity or a professional occupation.
This then translates into the feeling that one has abandoned one’s
personal autonomy, at an individual level. A lack of autonomy at a
social level casts its shadow over one’s life in the country of origin
curtailing ones freedom of choice or political options. This, however,
was something different from the experienced lack of autonomy as
asylum seekers (more on this in Chapter Six).
The participants made sense of the necessity to flee as something
that was linked to the safety of others, for the sake of family members,
or sometimes for the safety of the political organisation, to which they
belonged, rather than something they were ‘only’ doing for themselves.
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The fleeing process is given meaning through the way in which the
participants narrate the events leading up to their flight. This is done
through selecting events which give purpose to the necessity to flee,
events which justify the sense of ‘selfishness’ some accused themselves
of. These events illustrate the persecution and fear under which they
were living and the risk at which it was putting their children or parents.
Fleeing, then, is a special part of becoming a refugee. Having made a
decision to leave, most fugitives 16 need assistance in leaving their
countries of origin. The fleeing process is one full of practicalities as
well as involving a more lived experience of an existential nature.
Therefore, the term ‘fleeing’ does not only refer to the actual departure,
but also to the processes surrounding this, such as leaving behind a
mother and father whom they are aware they might never see again, a
professional or political affiliation and indeed a sense of self, based on
these affiliations and relationships. Ultimately all those acts seem to be
experienced as abandonment.
5.5 Summary
In summary, it seems reasonable to suggest that the participants once
embarking on their stories of the actual migration process, engaged in
conversations of a somewhat argumentative nature. The participants
construct a number of explanations and answers to implicit questions
concerning who they actually were. In order to understand this
explanation work, one must be aware of the limited position repertoire
they were offered when fleeing (which can involve several years of
living in hiding and in refugee camps) and as asylum seekers. They lost
almost all earlier positions and identifications and the recognition with
which they were associated. In light of their collective experiences of
what life had become, as an asylum seeker, it was not difficult to see
that one point of departure for these explanations has to do with
amending the rather one-dimensional position experienced as available
to them as asylum seekers or refugees. This will be explored in more
depth in Chapter Six, but is already indicated here; namely, that for all
participants, losing one’s country of origin meant experiencing a sense
of loss of ones’ self, in the sense of the repertoire of positions available
to take up, identifications and recognitions associated with the life one
had to leave behind.
An important aspect of the explanations concerning who the
participants really were seemed to be their own responsibility for
having left their country of origin. On a general level, they were all
convinced that they had been forced to leave and thus did not have any
personal responsibility. A typical way in which the participants stated
16
In leaving one’s country, one is not officially yet an asylum seeker
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this was by referring to refugeeship as something political. However, in
each of the participant’s personal histories, there had always been space
for personal choices. This raised questions for the participants regarding
whether or not, they in any way, were responsible for the consequences
associated with the flight. This plight was often indirectly illustrated in
the explanation given for the flight, but at the same time voicing
uncertainty whether or not they had done the right thing in fleeing.
Thus, in this phase of the refugeeship, participants’ refugee
narratives seemed to highlight a preoccupation with sense of self,
drawing on positive I- positions associated with life before the turning
point. The narratives were based on a process of meaning-making,
where the participants tried to position themselves in relation to the
representations and categorisations offered by people they encountered.
To some extent, this preoccupation can be understood as a response to
what seemed to be an almost implicit question of legitimacy associated
with refugeeship: what right do I have to abandon my country for a
better life? This question will be returned to many times in the analysis
of the narratives. Here, I just want to point to the general pattern that
the participants were occupied by, and what is sometimes referred to as
identity work (Taylor, 2010). As we shall see, this occupation with selfpresentations seemed to be part of an ongoing reconstruction of the
participants’ selves in their talk. It is first of all based on retrospective
reinforcement of current self identifications linking onto identifications
and affiliations from life before leaving one’s country of origin. This
can be understood as an ongoing dialogue and negotiation between
present and earlier I-positions (Hermans, 2004). This becomes apparent
in the process of questions and answers being posed and presented, or
agreement and disagreement in the way the participants talk about their
experiences.
The empirical material comprises partly of what Lawler (2008) calls
‘raw materials’ of identity, such as ‘Where I was born’ and other
biographical details. The accounts given by the participants also
disclose a fixation with earlier positive identifications and affiliations,
which they draw on continuously when giving their accounts of
migration. I interpret this as a response to the gradual loss of sense of
agency experienced by the participants as a result of refugeeship.
During the asylum procedure, at the same time as proving one’s
identity, a loss of earlier identifications is experienced.
One key finding of Chapter Five is constituted by the indirect
expressions of a sense of involuntary abandonment.
1) A basic sense of abandonment in relation to everyday lives is
expressed through the realisation of having to escape from an ordinary
life and its routines including: relationships, life projects, professions,
home and belonging, be it to the wider society or to a political
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organisation. This layer of abandonment is experienced by the
participants in relation to their earlier everyday sense of belonging.
2) A specific layer of abandonment concerns previous
responsibilities, in relation to family, friends and political projects.
Some express guilt having to abandon a political organisation or family
members, and the responsibilities implicated.
5.5. 1 The need for positive self-presentations and earlier life
representations
The participants’ rich self-presentations appear to boil down to the
feeling of being cut off from an earlier life and an identification
framework which existed in the country of origin. Typical expressions
of this, in the accounts given by the participants, were that experiences
of the present were complemented by presentations of the past and vice
versa. One of the key existential themes appears to be how the
participants’ self-understandings had been affected by the flight and
how they struggle to reconstruct new positive self-identifications. The
positions illustrate another function of the need for positive selfpresentations, and that is to strengthen one’s position as a ‘genuine’
asylum seeker, who does not fall into the one dimensional designation
of the asylum seeker represented in the new context. Van Langenhove
and Harré claim that deliberate self positioning takes place
in every conversation where one wants to express his/her personal
identity” (1999: 24).
They go on to explain that this can be achieved in three different ways:
by stressing one’s agency (that is, presenting one’s course of action as
one from among various possibilities), by referring to one’s unique
point of view, or by referring to events in one’s biography(Ibid).
The material is made up of self presentations, and these are
performative (Goffman, 1959) They serve the purpose of monitoring
the impressions that participants give in interaction with others, in the
sometimes futile attempt to restore a level of respect previously
experienced in one‘s country of origin, as political activists or as ‘high
status’ professionals. Quite a few participants remark that they feel
unsuccessful in maintaining their identifications and find themselves
ever increasingly seen as something other than the person of high status
they were before the turning point.
Breaking off from the past meant abandoning friends, family, a
familiar home and neighbourhood, in fact the whole life the participants
had before fleeing. However, in my analysis of the existential aspects of
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refugeeship, I see that all these losses also have an even more important
personal meaning. Not only had one fled from one’s earlier life, one
had also fled from certain sides of one’s sense of self, that is to say
positions previously taken up as professionals, political activists or
human rights activists. These positions were important for selfdefinition by providing sense of belonging, self-esteem and recognition.
Missing these categories in which to locate one’s identifications came
across in the interview situation with me, as an erosion of one’s sense
of self. This predicament seemed to constitute a basic existential
challenge to the participants, expressed in their stories as well as in their
everyday lives in the new countries. An interesting expression was that
most of the participants attempted to find a way to master this challenge
in one way or another. This existential theme still characterised the
lives of the participants when I met them, even if they by this time,
already had been granted refugee status in their new countries. In their
stories this played out, in the way the participants were still occupied by
presenting their previous life when asked about refugeeship, rather than
talking about their current situation as refugees.
The next chapter continues to explore the positioning and
identification work of my participants, now in relation to encounters
with the official, legal and administrative system of claiming asylum.
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6. The official asylum procedure encountering the legal and administrative
system and all that this entails
In this study two categories relating to entrance to a new country exist
in the material. These categories are:
1) Not all refugees in this study have experienced the ‘official’
procedure of seeking asylum on arrival, as some were assisted by the
United Nations in a border country. It was the UNHCR that decided to
recognise them as legitimate refugees in need of protection and to grant
asylum. Others were assisted by UN officials from refugee camps in
border countries or from prison 17.
2) The other category of refugees/asylum seekers in this study, fled
by paying a smuggler to assist them out of their country and to in
reaching a country of destination. Some participants in this study
claimed asylum on arrival to the destination country as legally required
of them; others entered ‘illegally’ using a false passport or a tourist visa
to visit relatives who already live in the country and then proceeded to
claim asylum after some time in the country. Two participants in this
study have claimed ‘Sur Place’ 18
There are a number of ways of entering another country in order to
seek a safe haven. It became apparent by listening to the stories told for
this study, that the business of seeking asylum can be implemented in a
number of ways by those feeling compelled to leave their country of
origin. This is hardly surprising, bearing in mind the complexity of the
legalities (outlined in Chapter One) involved in migration from outside
the European Union. Those who entered through assistance from the
United Nations may not experience the ‘official’ administrative
procedure in the same way as those who had to seek asylum on entry.
However, the participants’ stories also illustrated the enormity of the
transition, be it from a refugee camp or prison or from professional
17
The UN does not have jurisdiction over any state or territory. UNHCR recognises
persons in need of protection and in co-operation with states administer refugee camps.
18
Sur Place means an individual was not fleeing when they left their country of origin
nor intending to claim asylum, but due to a change of circumstances whilst out of their
country they feel they cannot return, placing them in a position of needing to claim
asylum.
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status, to ‘safety’, in a new unfamiliar country, and the categorisation
processes involved in the transition.
6.1 Making the initial claim - It didn’t feel like it was me
saying it
Making the actual claim was described in some detail by most of the
participants, often including long descriptions of encountering
immigration officials and how this was experienced. By making the
claim, a shift of space takes place. The participant has left his/her
country of origin and has normally just arrived in the new country,
(unless the claim was Sur Place). This geographical shift of space, with
the identification work involved is a new point in the process of
becoming refugees. Having to ask for asylum means leaving one’s ‘old’
life behind. This transition has profound implications for identification
work. For example, many with prior political or/and professional
identifications, and then in the position of helping others, find
themselves in a reversed position of having to ask others for help. The
participants reported that making a claim was experienced as involving
loss of dignity and status. The initial reaction many had was that of
‘what have I really gained?’ or ‘what have I lost?’ through fleeing and
claiming asylum in another country. The question, ‘what have I done?’
seemed to repeat itself time and time again. As we saw in Chapter Five,
much of the conversation with me includes explanation for fleeing as
something one simply had to do in order to save one’s own life or those
of family members. To justify one’s migration is important not only to
others, but above all to oneself in order to make sense of the traumatic
experiences associated with the asylum seeking procedure.
Participants found themselves faced, in their countries of origin, with
a decision they felt compelled to make. However, encountering the new
situation and making the claim felt at times almost impossible and it
appeared immediately that the asylum situation placed great limitations
on the participants’ sense of freedom. It led them to question what
opportunities the new life situation really had to offer. The following
quote illustrates the shame some experienced in asking officially for
help:
UK3 Well er I was given instructions about the documents and that
was(.) that when I was on the plane to the UK that I should destroy
these documents [mm] it is to protect the people that have issued the
documents (.) so I destroyed the documents on the plane [mm] when I
arrived I was thinking a lot (.) about what I was going to do [yes] I
really felt so ashamed of having to do this so I let everyone else in the
queue go first and I was nearly the last person to get to the immigration
er and er I think it was about 10:30 something like that (.) so it was not
really busy [mm] it (.) was not really busy [mm] you know er and er we
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got to the passport control [mm] er and er (2) they asked me er passport
and er I said (2) I don’t have a passport (2) [mm] er so they said your
documents and I said I don’t have any documents so they said how did
you er then er and I said (3) er I want to claim asylum er (1) it was very
hard to say this actually er to say these words (1)it didn’t feel like it was
me saying it
This next quote is from UK5 describing her initial encounter with
immigration officers at a large international airport in England:
UK5 I had the company of the man who got the money (.) who we paid
to help me escape and er I er I (.) he told me that I will have to go to the
immigration office at XXXX (airport name) and that er they are going
to ask me questions (1) but I was surprised (.) I wanted them to ask me
(.) why don’t they ask me why I’m here (2) he asked if I had any money
and I told him that I had (.) he said I should use the money to buy a
ticket back to Iran (.) when I heard him say Iran (.) I was shocked (.)
panicking and I was shaking (.) I’m not going back (.) I’m not safe there
(.) I‘m an asylum seeker (.) I’m a political asylum seeker (.) I can’t go
back to my country
It is usual for the participants to question their decision to flee a second
time when encountering the abrupt asylum system. Many draw parallels
between the life of oppression they had escaped from and the treatment
received when claiming asylum. The above woman went on to describe
this:
I didn’t know what to do everything was going through my mind (she
went on to explain that the immigration officers wanted to put her in a
prison cell for the night) then I said you can’t take me there (.) I’m not
going anywhere with you (.) by this time it must have been 3’oclock in
the morning and four police officers came (.) they were very large they
had big bodies and they said let’s go (2) I didn’t know where they were
going to take me (.) to the jail (.) I thought I had got away from that I
thought I was in London (.) I was safe I never er expected this (2) but
they came and they forced me
Clearly, arriving in a new country with the intention of claiming asylum
is a terrifying and daunting experience and some of the participants
express great shame in asking for this. When making the initial claim, it
is not unusual for the participants to experience being denied time and
space to tell their story, and to explain the real complexity of the
reasons behind their claim, as illustrated in UK5’s quote above. Often,
the reasons given by participants for having to leave their countries
entail long, political and historical explanations and the limited format
of the standardised immigration interviews does not give room for these
explanations to be fully conveyed. The participants, in telling me about
this during our interviews, also said that with me they were able to tell
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their whole story uninterrupted and to go into the details they had
wished to convey to the immigration authorities. Explanatory
expressions, in the participants’ conversations with me, as we saw in
Chapter Five, involve placing emphasis on their cause for migration, for
instance by referring to their political background, or by pointing out
the impossible conditions of their lives after the turning point and just
before migration. The asylum system places considerable demands on
claimants in terms of quickly learning to handle what the system
requires of them. When the participants talked about fighting for their
case, their talk resembled that of a lawyer defending his or her client.
The participants find themselves in a position of having to defend their
flight, justify their need for protection as well as provide evidence to
back up their allegations.
6.2 Entering a legal battle
SW5 nobody looks for this (.) asks for this to be an asylum seeker but
what could I do (.) what could I do
Making an asylum claim, means then entering a legal battle. When the
participants talked about this, they almost took on the position of
defence counsel and self advocacy, defending their right to protection
from another state. Whilst talking about the shame and the humiliation
of being maligned in the process of claiming asylum, the participants
characterise themselves, as hard-working persons, contributing citizens
or as a competent professional, as ‘good’ and as someone who has
‘never been in trouble’, much like a lawyer defending her or his client.
I suspect the entirety of the details conveyed to me by the participants,
resembles the kind of information the official interview is intended to
extract, such as the history of persecution, journey and documentation
to prove one’s identity. However, in the official interviews the
opportunity was not given for participants to convey their
‘virtuousness’, honesty and hard-working nature. Neither was one given
the opportunity to dwell on the situation after the turning point, which
dominated so much of the descriptions around the narrated sequential
events of refugeeship with me:
SW7 It isn’t easy (.) I hadn’t done anything wrong but you have to
prove everything you are like your own lawyer (.) I met with them (UN
officials) and they act like lawyers but you don’t feel (.) er I didn’t feel
they were my lawyer (.) I had to be my lawyer it is like an
interrogation” why did you come here, when did you come here” you
can’t remember you are under so much stress fleeing (.) really sick (.)
you are really tired how are you meant to remember (.) they want
details all the time I had been through so much many situations so much
had happened to me why can’t they understand that I couldn’t
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remember (.) I was away I was in hiding for almost three years (.)
underground (.) on the run (.) I didn’t have contact with anyone no
relatives not my parents (1) do you understand the whole time you have
to convince them of your case show them that you are for real (1) but
anyway in the end it worked out and they accepted our case
6.2.1 A transition of identification
Having endured all that the fleeing process entails, forced migrants are
then faced with the task of claiming asylum. At this stage of the
narratives, when describing the claim making, a transition occurs in
terms of being a person who was respected for their political or
professional role in the country of origin, to finding themselves having
to convince authorities that they were worthy of protection. When
participants talked about themselves and their lives before the turning
point the narratives included positive anticipations of the future,
whereby the participants placed emphasis on life events and positive
identifications before things changed. However, when describing life
after the turning point a negative tone was taken and then when
describing claiming asylum the narrative tone changes again, to an even
more despondent mode, illustrating lack of control and a breaking down
of one’s sense of who one is, in being required to take up temporary
expedient identifications which are not part of one’s authentic self. The
following quote illustrates the way many participants portrayed this
transition:
UK10 I’m sad now because I can’t work (.) I’m a doctor and can’t work
(.) I don’t have status anymore (.) in this country I can’t work (1) I’m
sad to interrupt from my work for a long time because as a doctor it is
very difficult to interrupt your work (1) I used to work day and night in
my previous life (.) but now I spend all my time at home (.) just
thinking what happened to me (.) I’m miserable if they could just let me
work here because that is what I really want (.) I can’t stand not
working (.) because a doctor who is not working is not a doctor
This man refers to life before the turning point as “my previous life” He
is clearly expressing an interruption in his narrative and therewith a
changed sense of identification. He does not feel he is still a doctor if he
is not practicing medicine, and he elucidates the transition in terms of
the position he occupied before the turning point and the position he is
ascribed as an asylum seeker.
SW5 There are so many sacrifices (2) the sacrifices for my family the
sacrifice of leaving family there (.) the sacrifice of my work and
economically
SW5 later explained:
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as an asylum seeker I tried to do things which would help me forget the
old life [you wanted to forget] I wanted to forget the old life because I
couldn’t work here and I couldn’t get that life again here (2) I tried to
learn Swedish (.) drank a little and slept
SW5, much like UK10, talks as if the life he had led had come to an
end. SW5 called it the “old life” and UK10 the “previous life”.
At the same time as the participants experienced this sense of loss of
life, and loss of agency, they found themselves having to convince
authorities of their need for asylum. In order to enter the asylum claim
procedure forced migrants are literally stripped of previous identity by
being forced to hand over identification cards, passports and other
personal documents to the authorities. These identity documents are
replaced with a standardised asylum seeker identity card 19:
UK6 Yes so they took my papers (.) they took my passport and they er
they took it and they gave me an ID er an asylum ID they call it ARC (.)
they said you have to report to the police as an asylum seeker but we
will make it once a month instead of once a week (2) I said ok (3) I’ll
tell you something actually you know (4) I almost cried (2) when they
told me and they took my passport (.) and give me this ID it was like
someone (3) had taken off my clothes [mm] (3) something (sighing(3))I
had lost what I had worked for more than 35 years of my life [mm] (2)
it is er I lost my choice (2) my er this was not my choice (.) at the same
time there was no choice
UK6 takes up the position of a more reliable asylum seeker in this
quote, when he explains this rather usual act of having to report to the
police station, every week as an asylum seeker, he says in his case the
police were more lenient and as a result he only had to report once a
month. The above quote expresses the quite literal sense of losing one’s
life that many experienced in making an asylum claim. This man uses
several metaphors to convey his experience, like a sense of nakedness
and loss of life, which has taken 35 years to build, being taken away
from him. This quote exemplifies moreover the conflict between feeling
compelled to flee, to escape powerlessness on the one hand and the loss
of agency, involved in the claim to asylum on the other.
19
In the UK, in official terms this identity card is called: Asylum Registration Card
(ARC)
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6.3 Screening interviews: a new level of abandonment and
loss
I introduced in chapter Five the idea of fleeing as involving a sense of
abandonment. This sense of abandonment is reinforced and deepened
during the claim period; this will now be explored in more depth.
Asylum screening interviews, which are carried out to establish the
identity and nationality of the applicant, are often described by the
participants as something they were unprepared for in terms of being
treated like a criminal, and having personal belongings removed. The
participants told me that the screening interview was the first point
when they started to understand the full significance of having fled and
what it was going to involve. This was being tried and tested in terms of
identity and nationality, and then literally to hand over this identity and
nationality to migration authorities in a new country, and have it
replaced with an asylum registration card. It was almost as though they
were describing a new level or depth to the sense of abandonment and
loss already felt through fleeing, which was reinforced by having to
give up previous identification and be labelled asylum seeker. It was at
this point that the participants really found themselves in a new
situation, the asylum claim period, and their new identity was now one
of asylum seeker until refugee status was granted, or deportation back
to the country of origin as ‘failed’ asylum seeker was ordered.
Below we meet a participant who illustrates these descriptions of the
event of claiming asylum; she is describing her screening interview.
This participant’s description is enriched with the positioning work
many others also convey, in terms of locating themselves as a ‘good’
person. This quotation testifies to how terrifying these sequences of
events after fleeing were. The process of stripping away one’s
uniqueness and personhood in this categorisation process induces great
fear:
UK7 When I went to the screening interview they said “you are now
liable to be detained because you are seeking asylum here” (.) I said I
understand and when I left I took an overnight bag I didn’t know where
I would be staying so I just took an overnight bag you know they said
“you will be detained you are not allowed to leave (3) from where we
will put you”
Oh god, (.) my dignity went (.) the first day that I arrived to the
screening interview [yes] maybe because I was never one (2) to be in
trouble (.) I was always a good person I was a decent person (.) I don’t
know what I can say but that day I lost all my dignity [mm, mm] (1)
(whispering) it was terrifying (3) and er and (.) and (.) and (.) having all
those questions put to you (1) you’re nervous (1) you worry (.) then the
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mug shots and then finger prints and taking away all your passport (.)
giving a statement
Here, this woman positions herself as a ‘good’ and ‘decent’ person,
who was never in trouble. She is trying to make sense of why this is
happening to her and even why she is experiencing it so strongly,
“maybe because I was never one to be in trouble” she explains. Being a
dignified person is something she obviously feels characterised her and
now she experiences a loss of dignity and to some extent then, a loss of
who she was and what made up her identifications. She indicates that
she sensed being seen as someone who has done something wrong in
needing to flee her country and she is uncomfortable with being located
in such a position. The categorisation attributed to her, she is
experiencing as undesirable because it does not resonate with who she
feels she really is. The treatment the participants undergo during the
claiming procedure was described in terms of being positioned as ‘bad’
or as a ‘liar’ and the participants often resist this position and locate
themselves as ‘the good one’. This is also illustrated in the way they
attempt to give meaning to why they reacted to the procedure so
negatively.
UK7 repeatedly talked about her experience of the screening
interview and describes the shock of finding herself in this situation,
being socially reduced to ‘nothing’ as she enters the life of an asylum
seeker:
UK7 It was really scary Nicola, like er (1) I should have (1) I should
have er (4) how could I say (.) researched it properly, er but if you
research (2) these things they wouldn’t have told these details (.) we had
had all the screening er which was not the nice part of it (.) they took
mug shots we had finger prints taken again but when we went to the
screening interview they said we are going to take the pictures (.) we
were put into a room (1) ok [mm](2) mug shots taken and the finger
prints and we were issued with a card(.) I can show you the card with
our finger prints on it and our passports were taken away (.) well mine
was (.) and all travel documents were taken away (.) and after all this (.)
everything (.) everything was taken away (1) we had to be screened (.),
I don’t know maybe I’m naive but I didn’t know what I was in for [no]
The screening interview was equally drawn upon by my participants
who had claimed asylum in Sweden, also expressing the dramatic
entry into the asylum system and the removal of personal belongings:
SW6 I didn’t know they were going to take photos I would have had a
shave***** [**] they take away your passport (.) because I came
legally if I had come illegally they couldn’t take my passport sometimes
I feel the wrong is good and the right is wrong here (1) they took all my
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papers like my education er degree papers they take it all away because
it is the first procedure in the claim to prove your identity
What does it involve for the participants to encounter and endure the
official asylum system? What meaning are these individuals ascribing
to this system? It seems reasonable to suspect that this is a dramatic
encounter which haunts the participants and becomes part of their lived
experience of refugeeship. The screening interview or the first
interview with immigration officials at the airport was the point where
they encountered their new life situation, and encountered feeling
robbed of their familiar identifications. Having experienced loss
through fleeing, they now met a new level of loss, through a
categorisation process which ascribed identification to them they did
not recognise. Encountering this system seems to offer little preparation
for becoming refugees; on the contrary it appears to be the beginning of
a process of breaking down self-esteem and confidence, locking
participants into this asylum position, with little opportunity to form a
sense of self and relevance in the new context. More on this will be
discussed in the next chapter: Being a refugee.
6.3.1 Deprived of all previous identification categories with no
obvious replacement
I see dispossession of nationality and citizenship as a transition in
identification. This is paralleled with a lack of trust shown to asylum
seekers’ stories, as a transition to deprived pride and dignity. Previous
citizenship is given up and replaced with something that feels ‘identityless’ for the participants. They find themselves in a space of limbo,
waiting, without any citizenship rights, in any country, and an identity
card revealing them as an asylum seeker. This process is characterised
as a restricted space without a specific identification. Not being able to
work, not being able to make decisions about accommodation, not
being able to travel, and in most cases, having to report to the police
station, involves not being able to take up any position other than that
of the asylum seeker. Every day is defined by one’s position as asylum
seeker, which ascribes them a position lacking in status and rights.
Having been ‘screened’ the participants were placed into temporary
accommodation.
This man describes how his everyday routine became defined by his
life as an asylum seeker, living in the ‘reception’ centre:
UK3 Er so we arrived at the asylum centre place it was where they were
putting asylum seekers (.) accommodation (1) we arrived there and
there were other asylum seekers there (1) we were given a room (.) my
daughter and I stayed in that room for about 2 months [ok] and er we
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were actually er it was boring and we were fed chicken and chips
almost everyday [oh] yeah or sausage when they wanted to give us a
change** [can you eat that today or are you put off now] ***** er
sometimes**** (.) well after a long time**** [***] and being a parent
in this situation er there were other families but not any other children
of her age so she didn’t have anyone to play with er she had some
grown up ladies that you know er that liked to play with her so that was
fine but it was a really difficult (.) it was really very difficult that time
(.) especially you know you don’t know what to do and you have
everything done for you and it is not just that it’s done for you er you er
you have no control and you don’t have money and you can’t answer
your child’s questions (1) hard to treat your daughter like that er but for
her age I would say she understood the situation she understood a lot
even though she was asking a lot (.) she knew Dad is still Dad and she
knew I was her parent and even though she was asking a lot of things
she understood the answer that er this was not possible and there is a
reason for this (2) but for me the situation was very hard I was not used
to just being there and not having anything to do I’m not used to that
life to just sit there.
Being placed into group housing or an asylum centre 20 is a usual aspect
of refugeeship during the claim period, which can take up to several
years to be finalised. Understandably, this is a challenging situation for
many asylum seekers. The above quote illustrates the continuous loss of
agency, independency and sense of control over usual, everyday
choices. This situation adds a new dynamic to his parenting. The
following man is single at this time, as he became estranged from his
family during migration; he explains the impact of moving into group
housing on his identifications and sense of agency, having to live in a
small space with other asylum seekers:
UK6 I thought it was accommodation for private people (.) it was
shared for asylum seekers (.)a car comes to get you (.) the car came the
driver told me where I would be living he asked do you know how
many people you will be living with in your bit (.) I said what (2) I was
on my way to share a house with four people (.) I couldn’t work and I
find myself for the first time in my life living in a house with people I
don’t know(3) I got to the house and it was a tip (2) Kurdish (.)
Africans (.) there was one man a very nice man (3) he said it will be
alright I will arrange something for you I was shocked er er how could
they put me in this situation he showed me there were two beds in each
room for sharing and one room only with one bed in it he said you can
have this room (.) it was very hard to be in this situation I lived like this
for two and half years I thought I was going crazy
The living conditions alone, impact on the participant’s experience of
refugeeship and sense of self. Being placed into group housing is
20
Often referred to in official terms as a reception centre
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significant to the categorisation process of being an asylum seeker. Not
all participants see themselves as asylum seekers. A classic “us” and
“them” differentiation arises in the above quote, when the participant is
suggesting that Kurdish and Africans are more the stereotypical
category of ‘asylum seeker’ whereas he does not identify with the
category.
This next participant described the accommodation procedure having
made her initial claim:
UK7 So what happened is some screening women they send you to a
migrant home (.) it is like a hotel (1) ok they took me there(1) drop me
there (.) er I had a bed in a room I shared a bedroom with another girl
and we’re all in the same situation we had claimed asylum and we were
now waiting to be er to be er (.) you know (1) the next move sort of
thing [yes] and er I stayed there for two nights (.) on the third day a note
came er a fax that I had been transferred from XXXXX to XXXXX [
south England to north England] er I stayed there for 25 days it was
very nice I had freedom I could go into town the staff were wonderful
they helped with clothing they were just very supportive but apparently
the stay with them is not more than 25 days but we were free to move
around I felt much better there (1) then I got a letter saying I would be
dispersed to another place I was overwhelmed I moved in with another
girl in a house
Besides the impact on identification and sense of agency, the
participants show how they our continuously confronted with new
terminology concerning the procedures belonging to the asylum
system. Just in the three quotes cited above regarding the reception
centre, all of these participants had their own way of understanding
where they were living: asylum centre, shared accommodation for
asylum seekers and a migrant home, just to name the above.
6.3.2 The parameters of the system in everyday life
Lack of autonomy is a theme running through these stories. The asylum
situation represents a great lack of autonomy in that asylum seekers are
frequently placed into group housing or detention centres at the ouset of
the claim. This situation implies that even daily choices over what to eat
and when to sleep are decided for the asylum seeker. Living with
strangers is all part of the experience of claiming asylum. Being placed
together with other asylum seekers seems to strengthen their experience
of being categorised as an asylum seeker, thus feeling even further
removed from earlier identifications. Freedom of mobility is restricted
during the claim period, as well as the opportunity to work. 21 This
21
At the time this study was conducted it was forbidden to work as an asylum seeker. A
debate is currently taking place in Sweden and England which questions this principle,
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restriction is an obstacle to creating new identifications, for instance by
taking up previous positions in the new contexts. The new context
limits one’s means to organise a new life situation as an individual.
There are rules and regulations to observe. Breaking these rules could
jeopardise one’s chances of being granted permission to stay. So, whilst
experiencing a loss of identifications, the participants live with the
anxiety of not ‘breaking the rules’ and about what the future will bring.
This is a space of limbo. The participants cannot return, but have no
knowledge of how long they will be able to remain:
UK6 Even though I wanted to work (.) I wasn’t allowed to work it is
prohibited [yes] er you have to follow the rules (.) it is not like coming
for money coming for work (.) as a refugee you are not er you know as
a refugee you are (.) it is like someone has put you in the corner [mm] a
very very very bad corner (2) it is very hard to have your situation your
life your future being decided for you by another person [yes] not by
yourself and give you like a railway going this way(.) don’t go right
don’t go left (1) this feels very bad very bad very confusing er that er
sometimes I couldn’t sleep until 4am [mm] (3) er so confusing
SW9 you have to take everyday as it comes (.) you can’t plan anything
or think about the future (.) plan things(.) those living in hiding here
you know hidden asylum seekers they can’t even go out
Experiencing a loss of agency, a loss of continuity in one’s life story
and being met with suspicion by the migration authorities, contributing
to a loss of dignity, appear to be factors contributing to this theme of
loss running through the data material, as well as the sense of constraint
the participants express they are living with.
6.3.3 Disbelief in not being believed
In the interviews with authorities, justifying their need to migrate was
something the participants found to be necessary for their claim to be
successful. Common to virtually all descriptions of the claim interview
was a sense of not being believed. A sense of being seen as a liar was
expressed in most of the participants’ experiences of claiming asylum:
UK3 We had an interview with an immigration officer (.)they arranged
accommodation for the night and then they arranged another interview
at the immigration office so we went there for the interview and during
that interview er well the interviewer was someone from the from er he
was black (.) he was black actually and he was really the awful one of
the er I mean really very very very awful (.) that was a really bad
experience that I had him as an interviewer he was horrible he even
proposing instead the introduction of the right to take up employment as an asylum
seeker.
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called me a liar you know (.) things like that (.) it was a bad experience
you know
UK3, a Black man himself, from Africa, explained being seen as a liar
was a disparaging characteristic to be ascribed, especially form a fellow
black man.
UK4 is Kurdish and fled Turkey with her husband after their village
was burnt down:
UK4 They didn’t believe us we have waited and waited we went to
court but they don’t believe us they told us “oh you are from Turkey
there is no problem in Turkey (.) Turkey is like a European country”
In the interview with me, the participants desperately attempted to
remember details such as what their prison cell looked like, in their
countries of origin, or descriptions of the different methods of torture
they were exposed to, sometimes apologising for not being able to
remember names or places. Documents could be produced for me to
see, as they talked convincingly of their situation before migration. One
man rolled up his sleeve to reveal a scar resulting from being tortured.
This says something about the strong identification of mistrust ascribed
to these participants during official interviews. Such experiences appear
difficult to shake off, even long after being granted refugee status. One
man reflects back over this situation and the situation of other asylum
seekers today and explains:
SW4 And you know all this discussion about they lie it is not important
you know I lied too because you just are so afraid of not being trusted
and when I came to Turkey (.) and this was the good days I just tried to
remember where was the light switch for turning the light on and off in
the cell (.) because my friends told me they are going to ask you about
the time in prison and how it was in prison and how it looked in prison
and I just tried to remember (.) shit where was it and I just couldn’t
remember and then they reject you because (.) because you don’t know
all these details (.) I can tell you now anything because I have refugee
status I’m not afraid why should I lie but when you are trying to get
them to believe you the system makes you lie because it is impossible
after all the trauma to remember such details
SW4 emphasises that it is in fact impossible not to lie, as the system
demands details one suppresses due to extreme trauma experienced as a
result of torture, imprisonment or a long life in a refugee camp. The
following participant who had been living in a refugee camp for the
previous 18 years, since the age of six, was eventually sent to England.
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He described feeling mistrusted by United Nation Officials in the
interview situation at the camp:
UK1 They er they er it was diff:::er they are not nice (.) er (1) because
they are just trying to challenge what you are saying all the time (2)
they ask you a question and then after say 10 (.) 20 minutes they ask
again and the interview er the interview lasts sometimes about three
hours (1) and sometimes they don’t give you a break (1) I think the
people from the Home Office were quite fair but those people from
Geneva they were speaking very harshly and very loudly so I felt like
they were trying to find a way to not help us
SW6 ”We cannot trust him” (.) that is what they are saying really (.)
People have killed people in their lives and then they come here to
claim asylum but I’m not like that (.) but they see you as all the same
As I pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, the ways in which
people claim asylum or become refugees differs from case to case.
Some flee directly to a country and ask at the port of arrival for asylum
in order to enter, while others are assisted by the United Nations in their
country of origin or at a border country whilst being placed in a refugee
camp. Some asylum seekers enter the country illegally and after some
time, claim asylum in order to stay, a so-called ‘in-country’ application.
Regardless of entry, asking for the help, and saying the words ‘I need to
claim asylum’ was expressed as a humiliating process for the
participants in this study. Whilst experiencing a great loss in terms of
identifications and agency, the participants encounter great mistrust and
are positioned as dishonest, contributing to further erosion in terms of
who one feels one is.
6.4 Loss of my country, citizenship and national identity: a
further layer of abandonment and loss
Claiming asylum is the ultimate step taken by a citizen when his or her
relationship with the state has broken down, no longer being able to
expect protection from its government. Claiming asylum then, involves
a rejection of his/her national government as a competent body to
provide its citizens with the rights and protection a citizen can expect.
Therefore, claiming asylum requires being legally prepared, once
granted refugee status, to give up citizenship of the country of origin.
This requires of the individual an active rejection of one’s earlier
citizenship, which begins to take place by deciding to flee. However,
the full implications of one’s decision are not apparent and do not gain
meaning for the participants until the procedure of making the asylum
claim is under way.
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The stories about seeking asylum reveal that, while some are aware
of this standpoint of rejecting one’s citizenship due to disappointment
with the government, it is important to point out that this was not
expressed as rejecting one’s country; on the contrary, the country of
origin appears to mean a lot, making the flight a difficult step to take.
The country of origin seems to represent ones roots and thus furnishes
one with an identification framework, which includes many levels;
obviously family, friends and a professional or political affiliation, but
also cultural artefacts such as food, music and colours and aspects of
the natural environment such as vegetation and climate, all of which
make up a familiar environment. The rejection expressed is a nonacceptance of a political regime that one could not identify with, or
indeed a need to flee a regime that is unable or unwilling to protect one.
Many participants, whilst describing the situation of encountering
migration authorities, expressed a deep sense of injustice. Not only does
making the claim mean losing many of the earlier identifications, they
were experiencing a loss when it came to their countries of origin also:
SW2 I lost my country (.) gaining this status (.) it is nothing compared
to leaving my country (.)
SW6 I don’t like that I had to leave my country [no] I didn’t want to
leave (.) I would have liked to stay I can’t return I can’t travel to my
country it is out of your hands and you lose this freedom
UK3 Actually I loved my country but I couldn’t stay
The country of origin is often talked of fondly in descriptions; it is a
fear and, indeed, resentment of the government that is expressed as the
problem, or wider social or political circumstances, out of one’s control.
While all participants fear being returned to their countries of origin,
this does not prevent them from feeling the loss and the restriction of
mobility entailed in making the claim. The participants realise that it is
not safe to return, but understanding the full extent of the migration, can
involve the fact of never being able to return. This is expressed as loss,
but also as a lack of freedom in mobility, which is experienced at the
same time as feeling restricted in one’s asylum situation.
The following quote is long, but captures so well what many of the
participants expressed in trying to make sense of the restrictions on
mobility, as well as a lack of literal identity and nationality, which also
becomes abruptly apparent at the outset of claiming asylum. The quote
illustrates the loss and the lack of mobility. It becomes obvious in most
of the participants’ stories that the asylum system and then the long
process before gaining full citizenship rights after being granted refugee
status, puts parameters on one’s capacity to feel a ‘full citizen’. Rather,
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they express feeling in-between, no longer a citizen of their country of
origin but without full rights in the new context. This man who was
moved to England through the intervention of United Nations officials,
told me:
UK1 I don’t feel like a British Citizen
I asked, what do you imagine that feels like?
I think they have more freedom [ok] yeah (.) than for example the
refugees (1) yeah (1) [in what way] maybe for example (.) if I wanted to
go back to XXXX (part of Africa) I’m not allowed there (2) maybe after
many years to come it might be allowed again (.) but someone British
(.) with British citizenship er (1) is allowed to go there if they want (.)
someone with an international passport of some kind (.) are allowed (.)
but I’m not allowed that freedom no I can’t move around how I want to
(2) and that was the same for me in the refugee camps (.) in that sense
here is better I can travel within the UK and to other European countries
but other places er I have to have travel documents but to go back to my
motherland I don’t have that freedom [no] so being a citizen really
means for me being freer for example if I travel er the refugee travelling
if something would happen while I’m in another country because I only
have travel documents no passport then the citizen with a passport is
protected but I would not be protected [so you don’t have a passport] no
it’s like a passport but the passport is brown this one is blue I can travel
all over the world with this but I’m not allowed to travel to XXX XXX
(two other countries mentioned) (2) I cannot go to my country (2) so
I’m not free with this passport er like inside (in the passport) where it
says nationality it normally says the country and nationality but instead
of nationality it says indefinite right to remain in United Kingdom er it
says name date of birth and then indefinite right to remain then there is
a covering letter so if we travel we have to have both letters with us the
covering letter says that the person named below is a refugee and under
protection of XXXX just like as if a refugee is a criminal(.) in this
country it is hard to feel part of society when the rules are like this
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the system of claiming asylum
and, indeed, of being granted refugee status is experienced by the
participants as coming with certain restrictions. We have witnessed that
this can be in terms of the rules and regulations which come with the
system for asylum seekers. It however also appears to place parameters
on the participants’ sense of ‘integration’ as refugees. The man quoted
above eloquently points out that, whilst the system is insensitive to
individual differences, it impedes feelings of belonging to society,
which is arguably one of the most important aspects of ‘integration’,
that of the subjective experience of feeling as if you belong to society.
This aspect of making sense of the refugee label, moving away from the
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restrictions of being an asylum seeker towards the rights which come
with being a refugee, will be examined in the next chapter.
6.4.1 A consideration of ‘limbo’
UK7 Will I get my passport back (.) I had such a nice passport you
know because I had travelled a lot (2) and they just took it away from
me (.) they won’t give it back to me the solicitor told me if I get refugee
status then they will give me a EU passport [ok] (2) but otherwise they
said you might get your passport back with something stuck in it (.) I
don’t know what [no] (3) it feels so bad (.) so bad you know because
when I first got to the screening interview they said can I have your
passport please (.) I said oh you want my passport but I was straight and
honest with everything they said ok you won’t get that back (.) er but
I’m dying to know what is going to happen to me because I don’t know
what is going to happen
Much of what characterises being an asylum seeker is living in limbo.
This is literal in the sense of not being able to return to one’s country of
origin, without being granted the right to stay in the country of refuge
and not knowing what the outcome of the claim will be. Not being able
to work, and living in temporary accommodation. The participants in
this study demonstrated a real capacity to adapt to the situation of being
in limbo shaping up everyday routines within this space, fighting for
continuity in their sense of self. During the field work I came across
countless projects and activities initiated by asylum seekers which
contributed to their sense of doing something for themselves to improve
their own situation and indirectly that of other asylum seekers.
Nevertheless, the experience of lacking autonomy placed on them by
the official asylum system was strongly felt. One project they engaged
in among other activities was gardening, which was seen as an
opportunity to fill the days with something ‘therapeutic’ and ‘creative’.
At the same time, it meant producing fruit and vegetables, which helped
them to maintain a healthy diet when their economic means were so
limited. Some of those self-identifying as political refugees attempted
to join activist organisations, or started new ones, introducing the
asylum cause to their daily work as human rights activists. Others saw
the gaps in the asylum system, such as a lack of opportunity to learn
Swedish or English, setting up classes on a voluntary basis. Most of the
participants in this study turned to voluntary work during their asylum
seeking period, which many continued to pursue after receiving refugee
status. Here is how one participant used his knowledge and work
experience from his country of origin to create a meaningful
undertaking within the limbo he experienced as an asylum seeker:
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UK2 Well I learnt a lot about voluntary work if I couldn’t get a paid job
then I worked voluntary to stay sane (.) that helped me survive helping
and volunteering (1) I did my volunteering in a special way because I
used my agricultural background (.) I had heard that the city council
allows you to rent a plot and do some growing of your own food so that
gave me the idea (.) so I started the organic gardening (.) a project
welcoming people (.) because this is very therapeutic I shared my skills
with others and do it myself and I really enjoy it
Another asylum seeker explains what meaning voluntary work took on
for him:
UK3 I think volunteering has helped me a lot and er I have through this
been able to help myself as well as assist other people assisting others
meant I was learning (1) also meant I got a lot of training (.) with the
Red Cross and other organisations I went on a course to be an adviser
(.) so all this er broadened my knowledge of the UK system
These excerpts exemplify the importance of feeling that you can help
yourself as well as feel competent to reach out to others in creating a
meaningful space as an asylum seeker. These participants not only take
up earlier positions, such as agricultural worker in this space, they share
this with fellow asylum seekers, which help them to take up a position
of usefulness, initiative-taker and agency again. In addition it educates
them about the new system they find themselves a part of.
6.5 Trying to understand the initial findings
The results presented in chapters Five and Six have included rich
description and interpretation of the participant’s talk about: earlier life,
the turning point, fleeing and the initial encounters with the official
asylum claim system. In Chapter Five, I introduced the finding of
abandonment and two levels of abandonment were described. This
chapter illustrates abandonment as multi-layered, over time and space,
which intertwines with this loss of sense of agency. Three further levels
of abandonment are described here.
3) A more formal experience of abandonment is experienced after
fleeing. It becomes salient on arrival when encountering migration
officials, and the awareness that claiming asylum and asking for
protection in another country ultimately means giving up and
‘abandoning’ one’s previous citizenship. Here, abandonment is defined
in relation to an earlier citizenship.
4) Perhaps the most powerful sense of abandonment is realised
through the gradual erosion of all previous desirable and familiar
identifications on being categorised as an asylum seeker, contributing to
a gradual erosion of sense of self. At the same time the participants
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demonstrate the capacity to resist the eroding influences by holding on
to previous identifications in their self-presentation with others. By
constructing new spaces in which to take up meaningful positions and
help themselves and others, through various asylum seeker projects.
Resistance to being located within the discourse of ‘asylum seeker as a
burden’ also manifests itself.
5) A social level of abandonment is experienced through ‘the silent
accusation’ which is encountered within the asylum system. It
encompasses a sense of social marginalisation by others, which
contributes to the erosion of the sense of agency. Although the system
does not overtly ‘accuse’ the asylum seeker of lying or lacking genuine
ground upon which to claim asylum, ‘silently’ an accusation is made
by the legal procedure imposed on the asylum seeker, in having to
‘prove’ one’s case. At the same time loaded current discourse of the
asylum seeker as lacking genuine reason to enter a new country
contributes to the sense of a silent accusation.
6.5.1 Multi-layered abandonment
As we witnessed in Chapter Five, this multi-layered experience of
involuntary abandonment begins in the country of origin after the
turning point, when the abandonment or loss of life as one knew it is
experienced and continues well into the refugeeship. These layers of
abandonment intertwine with a lot of challenging changes in sense of
self. Each layer of abandonment seems to contribute to a gradual
erosion of sense of self, throughout the asylum process. The
participants adopt a number of re-organisational strategies. This is
illustrated in the material by how the participants re-visit previous
identifications in their self presentations and also in the arguments and
explanatory utterances which dominate their talk of refugeeship.
In order to understand the severity and complexity of a changing
sense of self, one must see the changes include what Harré refers to as
positions and positioning:
the way persons locate themselves and others within an essentially
moral space by using several categories and storylines” (2003:45)
In ordinary life most people occupy a number of positions associated
with many different expectations of actions they might perform. As has
been established so far, leaving one’s country also means leaving many
of one’s previous identifications behind. But most importantly, subject
positions as an asylum seeker or refugee are associated with extremely
limited repertoires of possible actions. These limitations are due to the
limited ‘resources’ available, for example in the form of positions
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available to be taken up. An asylum seeker is placed in a position with
certain assumptions attached to it. This position invites others to see an
asylum seeker in a particular way. According to Taylor (2010) this
places parameters on identity work, due to the ‘established’ nature of
narratives surrounding certain positions (‘asylum seeker as bogus’).
Identifications and dis-identifications are agentic and relate to an
external social category or representation. Positioning may be internal
or external and it is broad in terms of discursive capacity. The
participant’s positioning as refugees becomes even more complicated
externally often lumped together with migrants who have moved for
economic reasons. The participants have to handle their own feelings of
letting go of their former lives, as well as coping with other people’s
notions of the refugee as someone who has fled for a better life.
According to Van Langenhove and Harré (1999) this is when “second
order positioning” can take place. This implies that the positions
occupied are questioned by others and therefore need negotiating.
In the analysed narratives participants take up, or adopt earlier
positions which serve the purpose of declaring their educational
backgrounds, political and professional experiences and, most
importantly, their competence which contributed to their countries of
origin before. In making these personal sides of their history known
they resist the position imposed on them of being seen as incompetent
and non-contributing due to the constraints of the asylum situation and
the defamation in the asylum discourse. The process however to
becoming a recognised refugee is long, often starting long before the
flight takes place, and the chipping away of sense of self is challenging
for the participants to avoid.
These findings relate to my first research question, which is: What
identification talk is present in the participants’ stories of migration
and seeking asylum?
The following is a presentation of these key findings in the form of an
analysis which draws on the theoretical perspectives employed in this
thesis (see Chapter Three for more on these theories).
6.6 Erosion of Self
Self, according to the theoretical perspective employed in this thesis
(Goffman, 1959, 1961, Harré and Moghaddam, 2003, James
1890/1950, Jenkins, 1996) is, put simply, constructed by using a
framework which helps us define ourselves to ourselves and to others.
This framework relates to everyday routines, routines of society at large
and various specific cultural contexts to which we belong, and it is
influenced by the actions and responses of others in our daily lives. Self
in narration is distributed across different contexts and interactions
according to Bruner (1990).
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A typical characteristic of being a refugee is that one has felt forced
to abandon one’s country and forced to accept participating in a
standardised asylum system, which lacks any uniqueness, for example
in terms of nationality, or familiar categories with which to identify and
re-construct a sense of self. Later the forced migrant can be granted
asylum in a specific country and is then invited into new formal and
informal affiliations. As we shall see in Chapter Seven, the refugee
identity can be as difficult to live with as the identity of the asylum
seeker. What is illustrated in this chapter is that this seems largely to do
with the fact that the story lines available for creating new positions are
often very much established as an ‘accepted’ narrative in the new
society (Taylor, 2010), for example, the story line: Asylum seekers are
unwanted and a burden. This makes it difficult for alternative story
lines which may enable ‘new’ identity work, to become established.
A sense of self is constructed through the narratives voiced by the
participants in my study, the narratives become visible in this thesis in
sequences of ‘identity talk’, for example, through self-definitions of
‘who I am’ in relation to ‘who I was’ and by identifying the groups to
which I belonged, and might belong to in the future. Thus, identity talk
can be understood as a tool in identification work, whereby identity talk
is expedient in fulfilling the task of constructing my identifications and
revealing myself to others as well as the need to manage this erosion of
self. I prefer using identification, rather than identity, as the former
concept refers to a more dynamic and multi-facetted phenomenon. A
sense of self, as well as identification work involves positions being
taken up, adopted, located to others and resisted, all agentic
contributions to creating a meaningful and acceptable image of myself
for others. These positions furthermore imply taking up a particular
stand in a wider discourse, which communicates something about ‘who
I am’, and my personal and collective identifications. Positioning is a
dialogical, ontological process and identification produces an agentic
attachment to actual social categories and representations available to
the person.
However, there are constraints in identity work; for example, a
limited number of positions available to avail oneself of, this is made
apparent in the stories of claiming asylum. Although self can be
understood as constituting various fluid and dynamic positions,
experiencing a sense of self
means experiencing ‘continuity’,
‘distinctness’ and ‘volition’, according to James (1890/1950). In the
self-presentations, which are embedded in the participants’ narrative
structures, this sense of continuity, distinctness and volition is clearly
present in talking about earlier belonging and about taking up useful
positions in the asylum space, such as volunteering. Desirable
categories to belong to in life before the turning point represented for
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the participants a point of reference in relation to which one could
appraise the sense of who one is, across time, allowing oneself to feel a
sense of uniqueness and autonomy. What is interesting is that
experiencing uniqueness, autonomy and a sense of continuity referred
to by James are precisely the characteristics the asylum system deprives
the asylum seeker of. Experiencing the turning point, and fleeing, is the
start of a trying period of transition, one part of which implies a
significant circumscription of one’s feeling of volition. However, it
seems that the drastic loss of sense of agency (made apparent by the
lack of positions available in the new context and the constraints of the
asylum system) is not fully realised nor experienced until one becomes
entangled in the asylum claimant procedure. At this point the
categorisation process begins. Previous identifications are taken away
literally. Many claimants are placed into asylum accommodation,
whereby even daily, mundane choices are removed. Due to the
restrictive nature of the procedure, there is little or no room for an
asylum seeker to feel a sense of distinctness or individuality.
The participants’ ‘talk’ expressed multiple positions when
presenting themselves in the interview. Especially highlighted were
positions they had occupied before the turning point in their lives. As
the refugeeship narratives exemplify, being an asylum seeker offers
very limited positions and it is reasonable to assume that the talk about
earlier I-positions was a way of completing current self-presentations
and managing the sense of erosion of self, through narrative
construction. Moreover it is an example of second order positioning
(Harré, 1999) of resisting the stereotypical asylum seeker position.
Chapters Five and Six both show the positions that the participants
occupied and therefore self-identified with as well as the positions with
which they dis-identified, often ones ascribed by ‘Others’. Their talk
shows the meaning-making processes in accounts of refugeeship. A
further layer in this ‘identity project’ is the sense of self. The three
layers: positioning work, meaning-making and sense of self are all in
relation to the various aspects of refugeeship, which Chapters Five and
Six are about, that is to say; life before the turning point, fleeing and
claiming asylum. The term ‘sense of self’ is used, rather than self,
because it allows us to portray the experience of self, and view self as
dynamic and continuous rather than risk presenting ‘self’ as something
static.
This chapter has exemplified the positions occupied by the
participants in the aspect of refugeeship: claiming asylum and the
repertoire of positions they perceive are available in this aspect of
refugeeship. For an asylum seeker, the repertoire available is
experienced as very limited and marginalised. As a result one’s sense of
self becomes somewhat uncertain. The participants in my study
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experienced that they were questioned by the system in terms of who
they are were and why they had left their countries. At the same time
they were beginning to ask themselves the same questions. The
decision to leave was experienced as necessary, but still this did not
make the feeling of having abandoned one’s political project or family
members, easier. This challenge becomes even more prominent when
encountering the asylum system, which ultimately questions one’s
motives and reasons for seeking protection.
When participants talked about who they were and their lives before
the turning point, they expressed that they felt a sense of knowing who
they were and what they were trying to achieve, until their
circumstances changed. There was a sense of continuity coming
through in their life narratives. Life after the turning point and the
fleeing process were however characterised by the struggle for survival.
It was not until encountering the asylum system that the participants
fully experienced a change in terms of their sense of who they were
now, and the conflicting feelings pertaining to the decision to flee.
6.6.1 Uncertain identifications- an example of erosion of sense of
self
The positioning work in the stories serves the purpose of enriching and
upgrading the participants’ self-images and self-respect by drawing on
earlier self-identifications and adding new ones. Also what is taking
place here is an attempt to make personal sense of one’s changing
situation and life world as an asylum seeker and later as a person who
has been granted refugee status.
The uncertainty of identifications encountered in refugeeship is to do
with the asylum seeking system and the labelling process it involves.
Due to the multi-layered theme of abandonment, discussed earlier in
this chapter, the participants become located in a space of uncertain
identification and experience an erosion of sense of self. Throughout
various points in the refugeeship, one’s sense of self, as a result of
leaving behind collective and personal identifications, comes through as
not having a familiar and comfortable framework in which to construct
new collective and personal identifications. The brutal categorisation
processes involved in claiming asylum and being met with great
suspicion contributes to this sense of abandonment of self.
6.7 The social positioning as ‘criminal’
An aspect of what appears to characterise the asylum-seeking
experience is the impression of being viewed as someone suspicious,
being treated as if one had committed a criminal offence, that is to say,
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the way in which asylum seekers are positioned by the system. Popular
discourse positions the asylum seeker as a ‘social problem to be
solved’, in terms of a social and economic burden to society. Much of
the language used in talking about asylum seekers and the way in which
the issue of asylum migration is debated in the media as well as by
migration authorities, locates the asylum seeker into a restricted space.
This space is limited in as much as it does not give much room for an
asylum seeker to be seen as anything other than a marginalised person
in need, and at worst, as someone who has migrated under false
pretences. Self-presentations, as described in Chapter Five, consist
mostly of descriptions of persons who were self-sufficient and
resourceful before migration, and who would help others in need, and
those working to create a ‘better’ society. Being now seen as someone
in need of help and a drain on societal resources, is a new identification
which the participants in this study resist by presenting other categories
with which they can position their ‘self’ comfortably.
Chapter Seven continues to explore the positioning and identification
work of the participants, now as refugees.
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7. Being a Refugee
This chapter presents life as an ‘official ‘refugee’. I attempt here, to
illustrate what life as a refugee involves for the participants and
highlight the category use ‘refugee’ as articulated by the participants in
this study. Here, the second research question, regarding the
categorisation ‘refugee status’, becomes relevant, as it plays out in the
participants’ talk of being granted refugee status. As for the third
research question: What identifications and positions do the
participants take up when they talk of their experience – this is
examined in all four of the results chapters, relating to the various
aspects of refugeeship.
7.1 The granting of refugee ‘status’
A ‘successful’ asylum claim leads to refugee status or Humanitarian
Protection, which can include temporary or permanent permission to
remain 22. It means the state accepts to protect the individual who has
applied for protection. Most of the participants in this study had at the
time of data collection, received refugee status, or humanitarian
protection, or gained the status during the period of this study, and
therewith the right to remain living in Sweden or England, either
permanently or temporarily. The ‘transition’ from asylum seeker to
refugee involves being able to live independently, being able to apply
for work or study and gain entitlement to the ‘rights’ of the new
society, in terms of welfare and protection. Full societal rights come
with citizenship. However, for most refugees, citizenship cannot be
applied for until after five years of permanent residency.
During the conversations I had with the participants in this study, as
illustrated in Chapters Five and Six, a great deal of focus was on
defending one’s situation in relation to life before the turning point and
at the time of the turning point itself. This was linked to defending
one’s motives for fleeing and claiming asylum. This argumentation
remained present as well when the participants talked about being
22
In Sweden and England Humanitarian Protection is granted initially for three to five
years, but can lead to permanent permission to remain if the reasons as to why it was
granted in the first instance still remain after three to five years. HP is for those who do
not qualify for asylum according to the Refugee Convention definition, but have
compelling reasons for protection. (Clayton, 2006)
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granted refugee status and dominated their talk of being an ‘official
refugee’. However, this argumentation was expressed differently as
refugees, as opposed to being asylum seekers. When the participants
talked about being granted refugee status, what comes through in the
narratives is the ‘recognition’ of him or her, as a migrant with a ‘real’
need for protection. Central to these narratives is the way the
participants express issues of legitimacy and credibility in being granted
refugee status. The argumentation which remains in the conversations
as refugees, are expressions of ‘justice was met’, the ‘fight being won’
and ‘confirmation’ of one’s experience as something ‘valid’.
When refugee status is granted, the Refugee Convention defines the
legal consequences of recognition (Clayton, 2006, Diesen et al, 1998),
and in this sense, refugee status is an official concept. Interestingly,
‘status’, as a theme, played out in the data material in three ways. First,
the recognition gave a sense of ‘status’ and this status played out here
as both something which came with legitimacy and with the
acknowledgment to the participant from a wider state. The loss of status
experienced as asylum seekers, was partially re-gained, as a competent
person who in one’s capacity to ‘fight’ one’s case, won, and is now
believed to be genuine. Secondly, status was experienced in relation to
feeling one was a ‘genuine’ refugee and no longer to be thought of as a
voluntary migrant, or even worse, a ‘bogus’ asylum seeker. This meant
one had overcome the asylum seeking phase, and was no longer under
suspicion from migration authorities. This also seemed to be
experienced, once again, as a feeling; at least initially of being the
competent person one had once been known as, in one’s country of
origin, expressed in self- presentations from life before the turning
point. In terms of positioning work, a more relational aspect of being
granted refugee status played out in a third way, in terms of gaining
higher social positioning than ‘asylum seeker’, and therewith, higher
social standing than those who remained asylum seekers.
7.1.1 Triumphant ‘talk’
When the participants recalled the time they were granted refugee
status 23, metaphors such as ‘winning the fight’ were used frequently to
describe how they perceived being granted refugee status. Just as
recognition from the state is central to their talk of being granted
refugee status, the participants also talk about their own capacity to
fight their cause for refugee status and win.
23
In this study, this varied, some of the participants had received refugee status that
year, and others had been ‘official’ refugees for over ten years.
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The following quote is from a man who was granted Humanitarian
Protection during the study, that is to say he was an asylum seeker
when I first met him, but later on, during the course of the study, he was
granted the ‘right to remain’. He was working outside his country as a
diplomat when circumstances changed in his country of origin. At the
same time, he was forbidden to remain living in the country in which he
was working as a diplomat; neither could he return to his country of
origin. He made his way, therefore, to a neighbouring country and lived
there for some time before fleeing to England. He expressed his
frustration in trying to convince the migration authorities as to why it
was important for him to be granted protection, and the sense of pride
he experienced in succeeding to argue his case and ‘prove’ the
authorities ‘wrong’.
UK6 Firstly I feel er er I achieved something (.) secondly (.) I (.) I
gained my confidence back through this [ok yes] (4) thirdly er (2) I said
what I said (1) what I wanted to say (.) I wrote it down in the letter and
now I’m very happy when I read the newspaper (1) when I listen to the
news on TV [mm] I think (.) that is what I was saying in 2004(.) I am
very happy to let them know that (1) they didn’t listen to me they were
“er what (.) oh you tell lies” (1) but now after 5 years of the war they
are saying the same thing as I told them in the beginning [yes]
This participant expresses a series of experiences which made up his
sense of pride and helped him to take up the position as ‘genuine
refugee’ and ‘being right’ in his claim for asylum. He felt a sense of
achievement, retrieved confidence and had succeeded in conveying his
opinions and needs. He takes on the voice of the migration authorities
and the media when declaring that he had not been listened to initially,
but then goes on to show a sense of victory and support, felt when
‘Others’ were saying the “same thing” as he was. This man
demonstrates the importance of being ‘believed’ as something which
almost takes prevalence over the fact that he was then granted the right
to remain. Being granted Humanitarian Protection meant not only that
he was recognised as an individual with cause for protection, but also
that his story, his case as an asylum seeker, was valid and true. As we
witnessed in Chapter Six, in the participants’ descriptions of feeling
they were seen as a liar, the asylum application process made many of
the participants feel they were someone to be suspicious of. This
participant drew upon his own capacity to achieve what he set out to do
and convince ‘them’ that he was right. To be seen as a trustworthy
person, and right in his claims, is significant to the meaning he gives to
his right to remain. It would seem that to be recognised as in need of
this protection, by the state, empowers him.
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7.1.2 Transitioning from ‘limbo-ness’ to ‘personhood’
UK6 It is another series of the process really (3) after four years (.)
almost four years I can’t say it’s four years exactly (2) it is nice to get
the fighting and the stress of four years well you have won (.) won the
fight (.) that is like the first feeling (2) secondly now I know (3) my life
at that time I didn’t know my life (.) I didn’t know where I was going (.)
where I should take refuge
I asked participant UK6 to tell me more about how he experienced
being granted Humanitarian Protection, and he explained the above. It
seems that part of the experience of being granted refugee status is not
only to do with being recognised as someone credible in ones’ claims
for asylum or ‘winning the fight’. The material also includes
expressions of feeling a ‘real’ person again, emphasising the effect of
the limbo situation as asylum seeker, as a space which made it hard to
feel ‘whole’ or ‘fully functioning’.
His quote again draws on the idea of a fight being won and he
emphasises the processual nature of refugeeship. First he illustrates the
satisfaction, and perhaps, relief in being granted the right to remain. He
then raises the issue of feeling in limbo associated with the uncertainty
of having to flee and also what the claiming of asylum brings with it, he
then describes a sense of ‘losing’ his life direction.
This next quote illustrates in some what more depth the transition
from a limbo situation to striving to be seen as a ‘person’, “confident to
live as a person”. Again, much like the above participant, UK5
illustrates this transition as an important feature of gaining refugee
status:
UK5 It’s really difficult (.) there a lot of people living as asylum
seekers they can’t work (.) they have no work permit (.) they are
without rights (1) rights to social support (.) they have been ignored for
many years by the home office (.) so of course it is a big difference now
(1) and you know if people can manage to pass this gap you know (.) of
being an asylum seeker to becoming a refugee then of course they can
struggle to then integrate into society and feel confident to live as a
person (.) but when I didn’t have the status and I was still an asylum
seeker I couldn’t see how long it was going to be and if I was ever
going to have a life here
This participant said receiving refugee status involved an opportunity to
“integrate into society” and “live as a person”. This recognition from
the state as someone in legitimate need of refugee status comes with an
expression of a sense of acknowledgment to ‘live’ as a person again.
She uses the word ‘ignored’ when describing the period of waiting
involved in the asylum claim, and talks of “managing” to “pass the gap”
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expressing a fight. Then whilst suggesting that refugee status does not
automatically involve feeling a sense of integration or belonging, it
does nevertheless come with a sense of acknowledgment and the right
to live under less constrained conditions than those of the asylum
seeker. It comes with the ‘right’ to integrate; even if she is saying that
this can be a “struggle”. This quote gives some insight into the fact that
once having been granted refugee status the transition from asylum
seeker to refugee is not uncomplicated. Having been granted refugee
status, the work begins, in taking steps towards creating a new life.
The following excerpt picks up when SW2 had been talking about
receiving refugee status and is explaining the next step, and the
conflictual feelings around taking steps towards a ‘new life’:
SW2 well I need to organise myself now (.) I want to study here I want
to find a job and establish a new life (1) but it’s hard (.) But I’m not
alone (.) millions of people like me (.) if I wanted to go back to XXX I
couldn’t well I could but I would be killed so I have to stay here and
establish a new life (1) it’s not easy but that is what I have to do
The realisation of taking concrete steps towards creating a new life
situation, having been granted refugee status is a theme which will be
explored in more detail, as this chapter progresses.
7.1.3 Legitimacy and acknowledgement as an aspect of refugee
status
As mentioned above, legitimacy and acknowledgment is an aspect of
meaning-making in the narratives of refugeeship. It occupied the
participants’ talk as asylum seekers to some extent. Expressions of
being met with disbelief and lack of trust were present in many
narratives, as well as the feeling of almost illegitimacy, when it came to
finding oneself without citizenship and in some cases, stateless during
the asylum claim. The claim context was an argumentative context of
‘proving’ one’s legitimacy and asking for acknowledgment of one’s
unbearable situation in the country of origin. As refugees, confirmation
and recognition from an official system has been granted, and this is
important for the participants in being able to take the first steps away
from the uncertainty and instability that life as an asylum seeker entails.
It is, however, more than this; it is also an important aspect of
refugeeship, in having one’s story accepted and being seen as ‘genuine’
in one’s motive for fleeing. This gave the participants a sense of
legitimacy in themselves and in their ambivalent feelings towards the
abandonment of their previous life projects, and people who meant a lot
to them. Furthermore, it gave them the sense of confirmation that they
had done the right thing.
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Firstly, being granted refugee status confirms that you really did
need to flee and means having the enormity of all this, in terms of loss,
recognised. During the claimant period, although credibility as a
concept is not part of the Refugee Convention’s definition of refugee,
losing your asylum case is often due to issues of credibility, that is to
say the decision-maker does not find your story credible. Therefore,
winning the case, having spent what can be years proving it, gives the
participants a huge sense of accomplishment and acknowledgment. This
is experienced as a re-positioning from being located as someone who
was discredited in terms of loss of previous core identifications and the
limited space which lacked autonomy, to being located as a ‘genuine’
refugee, with a credible story and cause for protection, and ultimately
being believed. As opposed to the threat, which one lives with during
the asylum claim, of being positioned as ‘bogus’ or a ‘failed’ asylum
seeker, where the ultimate outcome is deportation.
In this respect, one characteristic of the transition from asylum
seeker to refugee is being positioned as legitimate through the
acknowledgement of the official system, but it also gives legitimacy to
the life-changing ‘decision’ of fleeing. The talk which illustrated this
sense of legitimacy and acknowledgement, experienced in being
granted refugee status, can be understood as a moral dimension in
refugeeship. This meaning-making, of what it involved to receive
refugee status in terms of gaining back some of the lost credibility, is
an example of the moral challenge involved in making the decision to
flee. Through the recognition by official migration authorities, some
moral value is returned to the claimant, as someone who not only
needed to flee, but had the right to flee.
7.2 The challenges of refugee status- the ‘label’ as otherconferred
Legitimacy and acknowledgement from the official asylum system,
seems to give some of the credibility back to the participants, that he or
she felt was lost during the asylum application period. The claims have
been acknowledged as ‘reasonable’ and ‘trustworthy’. The transition of
status, from asylum seeker to refugee also came with a sense of security
and stability, which was impossible to experience as asylum seeker.
However, the label ‘refugee status’ carried a negative meaning for my
participants too. The refugee label was attributed a lack of ‘status’, with
regard to social perceptions. There were attempts to make sense of what
this label implied for identification construction:
UK5 but being a refugee and how the outside society is seeing you is
important how they (.) how they er (3) well they see you as a refugee
[do you mean the official system] the official system but also you know
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people in society (.) people in society are being affected by media and
everything you know [yes] so yes (2) but you know I don’t really see
that as their fault (.) er if they er er knew the real reason of why
refugees are coming why they are coming
Participant UK5 expresses the view that the connotations surrounding
the refugee status are constructed as negative in the ‘outside society’.
Outside, as will become clear throughout the thesis, is an expression my
participants use frequently, referring to a society they do not seem to
see themselves as belonging to, at all times. UK5 construes this
negativity as something which is the fault of media representations.
7.2.1 A sense of permanency
As opposed to the asylum seeker label, refugee status is more
permanent. The label is described as undesirable, but necessary, for the
sake of protection. Having fought for the label ‘refugee status’ and
achieved it, the stage then follows in which one begins to negotiate
regarding the label and even rid oneself of it, in some cases. This was
made apparent by the way in which the participants feared being seen
as a refugee. Some appeared to struggle with this identification as
something difficult to integrate into their previous core identifications.
The participants expressed that this ‘status’ means one can work, study,
apply for new housing conditions, and most of all, gain official papers
and travel documents back. This in turn restores a sense of mobility,
and an identification which does not reveal one as an asylum seeker,
but, rather, as a ‘regular’ person again. The participants’ talk about
being a refugee, involves constantly interpreting what it means to be
seen as a refugee. Much of this interpretation is in relation to how one
feels and how one is perceived by others. The following participant
talked about his perceptions of how others view refugees. UK1 gave an
example of how it is difficult to ‘lose’ the refugee label when trying to
establish a new life situation, in this case, as a student. He told me:
UK1 I see myself as a refugee [would you present yourself as a refugee
then] depends on the situation and the person (.) to be a refugee doesn’t
feel good [why not] because most people call you a refugee and see you
as a victim (.) it doesn’t feel good I’m seen as a victim and that most
people don’t know anything about refugees but they read things and
think they know (1)
This participant then gave me an example of his life situation as a
refugee:
I remember one time when I went to enrol at my course at the city
college (.) after that I had to go to prove that I was a refugee and not an
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asylum seeker (.) something like that (1) and that made me nervous and
I went to the people in charge er (.) er the administrators and the
principle that er(.) said er I don’t want the other students or teachers or
something like that knowing, [you told them that] yes (.) so when I
went to the classroom (.) other students asked me where I was from and
I just answered that I’m from XXX [yes] because if I had said XXX
and er well if you say a country they know is having a civil war or
something like that then everyone will know that you are a refugee
[yes] and then people will just see me all the time as the refugee (1)
[mm yes, (.) is there anything that could happen that would stop you
feeling like a refugee] no, no (.) I can say that er well put it this way (.) I
don’t feel proud to be a refugee not to other people anyway but to
myself (.) because that happened to me er (1) er I feel that I should be
proud of it [you feel like that] yes (.) yes I survived this so that I can
feel proud of (.) but not proud to others
Having proved one’s case as an asylum seeker and the right to refugee
status, UK1 finds himself in a position of having to ‘prove’ that he has
refugee status, in order to be entitled to educational services. The
procedure of having to go to the head of the college to ‘prove’ that he
did have refugee status, reminds him that he is not seen like others. As a
refugee, it is made apparent that one is treated differently. UK1 did not
wish to be disclosed as a refugee and ensured this through asking the
head of the college to respect his anonymity. UK1 also decided not to
share with others his country of origin, because he felt this might
disclose his refugee position. This illustrates the way in which the
refugee ‘label’ is other-conferred. That is to say, in order to gain access
to societal services, the way the system is set up requires of the
participants, special efforts, when ascribed as ‘refugee’. The above
participant expressed feeling proud of surviving something terrible.
However, because of the negative associations ascribed to the ‘refugee
label’, he experienced the label as a stigma, and found himself
disguising his identity as a refugee, in interaction with others.
Having to prove one’s identity seems to be a continuous theme in
refugeeship, both in the practical sense of having to first prove your
case as an asylum seeker, and then, after this, having received refugee
status, having to prove this status in order to gain entry and access to
various societal services. On a more existential level, the proving is
continuous, in the sense of a constant desire to be seen as a ‘person’
rather than as a refugee. Notice, the above participant expressed that if
one’s identity as a refugee is disclosed, one would always be seen as
‘the’ refugee. He gives expression to a lack of belief that other students
would be able to see past the label if they were to find out.
The following participant illustrated how the ‘label’ refugee is
something other-conferred, rather than a definition taken on as
identification:
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UK5 I feel that I am seen as a refugee (.), but that is because society
sees me as that (.) as a refugee (.) I don’t want people to have to migrate
somewhere and have to be seen as a refugee (1) I’m a human being (.) I
can’t see myself as this (.) I mean yes at one point I was an asylum
seeker and then later I became a refugee but I have been labelled this (.)
that I’m a refugee
A struggle is taking place. The way this participant talks about
identification seems to convey that one is trying to create the
identification, which is ‘just’ a human being. At the same time,
expressing that the positions made available by others, in seeing one as
a refugee, is in conflict with one’s identification work.
7.2.2 Refugee status- a relational term
Much of what the above is illustrating consists of the relational aspects
of being a refugee. That is to say, being a refugee contrasts with not
being a refugee. Comparisons are constantly being made in the
participants’ talk. Part of this talk exemplifies the nuances found in the
term asylum seeker and refugee, whereby the participants express
various interpretations of the way asylum seekers and refugees may be
perceived. The comparisons in their talk of being refugees and their
expressions of being positioned as refugees, plays out partly in terms of
the way the participants make sense of how refugees and asylum
seekers are represented in their new societies:
UK3 You know I feel I need to do something er about the way er (1) to
show you know that asylum seekers or refugees are not those people
who come here just because er (1) just because er (1) er (1) they have
fled their country just because er (2) because of er (2) they don’t have a
job (.) because of economical reasons [yes] (2) or er asylum seekers or
refugees are those (2) well you know they don’t smell (1) I want to give
another picture er to show that refugees are just normal people you (.) it
can happen to anyone (.) I don’t wish this but every country can have
this problem
Participant UK3 cited a situation which exemplified the representations
of asylum seekers and refugees, when interacting with others:
One thing I want to say (.) I went to XXXXX (city in England) because
that is where I had my interview so people there are used to seeing
asylum seekers on arrival (.) dressed like er you know (2) neglecting
themselves so one day I went there (.) I took my best suit er (3) very
good tie (.) looking very good and I took my brief case (1) and when I
arrived they (.) they (.) I said I have got an interview (.) they said what
is your name are you here as a solicitor er (.) I said no why do you ask
er (2) I said no it is me who has the interview they said “oh it is you”
(1) I understood why they had asked the question (.) they were “oh
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where is your client” (.) they told me they were sorry (1) so this is how
you can be seen in their eyes (.) to them I couldn’t be an asylum seeker
because of the way I was looking (.) so it is everywhere (.) not just in
the media but in the whole system as well
Encounters such as those outlined in the above quote, are common
illustrations in the data, whereby the participants’ understanding of
how they are seen by ‘Others’ was informed by such experiences.
The representations are seen here as not restricted to ‘only’ to the
media, but as common to the ‘whole system’, thus making up the
context in which refugees and asylum seekers live.
7.2.3 In relation to other refugees
The definitions of what is meant by a refugee are not only in relation to
non-refugees, they are also in relation to fellow refugees. While some
find a sense of belonging amongst other refugees, others express
anticipation and seem apprehensive and reluctant to associate with other
refugees and resist the connotations associated with the refugee
position. Associating with other refugees is almost expressed as a ‘risk’
in terms of increasing the chances of being seen as ‘even more’ of a
refugee, which may lead to greater marginalisation.
Part of this distancing from the label could be expressed by the
participants as something achieved by disassociating with other
refugees or, indeed, resisting the position of being seen as a ‘typical’
refugee. Some participants acknowledged the negative lay notions of
the refugee and even agreed with it, positioning themselves outside this
discourse, as not ‘one of them’.
UK6 I don’t like to associate with other refugees [ok, why is that]
because (1) (whispering) most of them are coming here with lies and
stories (2) coming here saying lies
Participant UK1 said that he tries to avoid contexts which are typically
associated with refugees:
UK1 I avoid all this voluntary work or activities or this kind of thing to
kind of avoid these communities because otherwise you will be seen
even more so like a refugee mm (.) mm (1) [why] because I think I will
be seen even more like a refugee and maybe be discriminated against or
something like this (3) [mm ok] when XXX invites me to be a part of
something like that then er you know a certain activity (.) I say er yeah
I’m going to come (.) I’m going to come (.) but then I don’t do that [no]
(2) so avoiding it (.)[Can you try to explain to me more why you are
avoiding it] maybe (.) er through being a part of these things(.) then
people will notice more that I’m a refugee and then I will become
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vulnerable (.) there is more chance of being seen as a refugee (1) if I
associate with these things
However, not all my participants convey the feeling that they should
‘cover up’ the refugee identity. The following participant articulates
how ‘normal’ migration is in today’s era and therefore it should not be
something strange to be ashamed of:
UK3 I am a refugee and I’m proud to say that I’m a refugee (.) I think
that people need to accept that in this world there are people that are
fleeing their country for reasons er and I’m one of those people (1) I’m
not proud you know to be er the one that er who left my country for
political reasons and for that I’m ashamed I wish er I wish er that this
never happened (.) I wish that we would not have any refugees er I want
to live in the world where people are able to move freely or that they
can stay in their countries
Despite this participant expressing his view that one should not have to
be ashamed of being a refugee, an attempt is made to understand the
problems refugees face, as a result of this kind of migration. UK3
explains that one should be able to enjoy freedom of movement, but
because of the legal procedure of having to claim asylum as a thirdcountry national, means first being categorised as an asylum seeker and
later as a refugee. This means there is ‘such a thing’ as refugees. Again,
we see the relational aspect of the term in this quote. Despite the
ideology conveyed in the excerpt, this participant feels ashamed of
leaving his country of origin for political reasons. I suspect that this
shame is something which is experienced in relation to the country of
origin, and perhaps in the eyes of other refugees, feeling one may be
judged for fleeing due to politics; exemplifying, a moral dimension of
refugeeship.
7.3 Complexities of the ‘status’ in the refugee concept
The concept of ‘refugee status’ appears to put constraints on the
participants’ agency, at the same time as it legitimates status within the
realm of refugees, as someone who has had their asylum claim
recognised. What is interesting to consider here, is whether the
participants uncritically internalise the strong discourse concerning
refugee and asylum migration or rather if the stories show their capacity
to position themselves away from the stigma they clearly experience
that the refugee label can involve. It seems reasonable to believe that
both processes of internalisation and positioning are taking place.
Indicating the external positioning is as much a part of their selfconcept, as is their internal positioning.
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The analysis so far, gives insight into the way in which the term
refugee ‘status’ plays out in the interview material and how the
participants in this study make sense of the official term refugee status
as a label. Besides one’s experience of the official label, the
interpretation illustrates what the term involves for those people who
have, as individuals, been granted refugee status. I will continue here to
unravel what kind of ‘status’ the refugees in this study experienced they
gained, or lost, through being recognised officially, as refugees.
The examples so far show the way in which the refugees fight to
receive this status at the same time as they try to free themselves from
the everyday representations he/she perceived as coming with the label.
Refugee status raises issues for the participants in terms of what the
label represents and what it might entail in terms of one’s own
identification processes and ways of positioning oneself in relation to
the label.
There is both an official and a personal relationship to the status. The
official relationship entails safety and protection. The personal
relationship involves the meaning-making processes associated with
one’s experience of life in the country of origin, fleeing and seeking
asylum. Furthermore, it implies understanding the status one had, in
relation to becoming an asylum seeker and then being categorised
officially as a refugee.
The complexities surrounding the term ‘status’ appear to be a
double-edged sword for the participants. ‘Refugee status’, whilst giving
higher social positioning in relation to asylum seeker, as well as a sense
of security, also reveals itself to be a static unchangeable term, locking
the participants into this concept with its accompanying connotations
and attributions. This appears to be perceived as a constraint in terms of
being able to form other identifications as individuals beyond
refugeeship. Having spent what can be years of negotiating for the
status, the participants then begin a process of negotiating their position
as something other than a refugee, for themselves and in their
encounters with others.
7.3.1 Gaining control over the status-label: creating new status
Part of the meaning-making is in terms of gaining control over the label
and managing identification as refugees. Human rights activists see the
refugee status as an extension of their human rights activity that was
forbidden in their countries of origin. Gaining refugee status is
incorporated into their identification as activists and used to continue
their life work:
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SW9 Swedish migration authorities 24 were in Turkey and I was there
and spoke to them and after six months they sent me to Sweden (.) so I
came to Sweden and began fighting from here (.) against Islamic
regimes (.) so I just continue to fight (.) all the time (.) all the time
Those refugees, in this study, who are not activists, try, through work
and study, to ‘normalise’ their refugee status according to the
mainstream society. Gaining control over the label seems to involve
understanding the label. It is not uncommon for the participants to
express confusion over the terminology they have come into contact
with throughout their process of becoming refugees. An example of this
was given in Chapter Six regarding the ways to relate to the ‘reception
centre’. The following participant explained to me that it was only after
20 years of moving to England that he started to make sense of which
‘category’ he belonged to, in relation to the various concepts. He
explains:
UK2 actually until quite recently I was finding these terms confusing
you know[yes] asylum seeker and refugee(.) an asylum seeker is when
you apply for protection(.) then I think you are an asylum seeker when
you are granted permission then you become a refugee [yes] yeah **I
think it was only until about a year ago when I probably understood
it**really [***] I didn’t understand it and when they er er well yes they
gave me a new definition actually (2) the permission I was given was
called humanitarian rights [oh yes, humanitarian] yes yes (.) migration
now(.) er the political and then there is the migrant workers so
sometimes it is confusing you know er (3) er I know I needed protection
(.) life circumstances created this (2)
When interviewing refugees in this study about their experience of
migration, and their situation as refugees, it is interesting to observe the
difference in the positions they take up when talking about themselves
as refugees. Experiences of refugeeship are partly influenced by the
situation from which one fled but also by the explanation given to the
flight, as presented in Chapter Five. Some of the participants construct
meaning through the use of positions such as ‘political activist’ whereas
others dis-identify with activism. However, they still draw on political
events in giving an explanation to the migration. There seems to be a
range of identifications in relation to the ‘political refugee concept’.
These positions can be taken up in their self-presentations, and the
refugee concept takes on various meanings for the participants in their
talk, and how they make sense of the concept’s content. This plays out
in particular in different contexts, between refugees, for example by
sharing their experiences as activist or by blaming politics for their
migration. In this sense, the participants’ talk revealed two broad
24
In Swedish: Migrationsverket
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identifications, in relation to the positions taken up as refugees: those
who self-identified with the political aspects of refugeeship as
something they were active in, and those who resisted the political
dimensions present in the concept ‘political refugee’, and as something
they had not been active in. Regardless of whether the participant
expressed the migration as a result of their own political commitment or
if they drew upon a wider political framework in the country of origin
to explain the migration, they all experienced the migration as
something they did not desire.
The political dimension in their conversations with me seemed to
provide a tool of explanation, as to why they had fled, and also as to
why they had positioned themselves as the ‘type’ of refugee they were.
The following quotes illustrate the way in which the political dimension
is drawn upon by the participants and the way in which they position
themselves quite differently in relation to the politics. The following
man resists the position as ‘political’ and describes it as a negative
identification. Resisting the political dimension of the refugeeship is for
him, a way to prove his point that the migration was not a choice;
rather, he was a victim of wider circumstances:
UK1…like (.) being a refugee (.) people see you as if you have caused
it yourself (.) like you are one of those political leader types that have
caused it themselves (.) I did not wake up one morning and decide and
say you know(.) er my mum didn’t wake up one morning and say lets
go to XXXX (.) no (1) it wasn’t our choice
However, this next participant positions himself quite differently in
relation to the political aspects. He draws on the concept of ‘political
refugee’ to illustrate the ‘type’ of refugee, he regards himself to be.
However, similar to the above man, he uses the political dimension to
account for his lack of choice in having to flee:
SW3 Those that intend to er have expectations of moving and have
fought to come here, they have expectations (. ) those that (.) you know
come for a better life(1) but I didn’t have any expectations because I
didn’t want to er (1)we came through UN…I am a quota refugee (.)
directly from UN (.) then you are a quota refugee (.) I am a political
refugee (1) I didn’t choose this
The two refugee positions which have emerged empirically are
characterised by those who strongly self-identify as political activists,
and those who strongly dis-identify and disassociate themselves from
the notion of political activism. What I want to achieve by introducing
these categorisations, since it is a large part of the material, (1) the way
in which the participants either take on the position ‘political refugee’,
or resist it; it feels important to explore this positional movement; (2)
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further, these positions say something about the participants’ meaningmaking processes of ‘being’ a refugee. The first ‘identification
category’, those who self-identify as political activists, see their need
for migration as something grounded in political commitment or
belonging to a political organisation or party. The latter group see
migration as something that is the result of wider political
circumstances. However, despite, this distinction being identified in the
data, and whether the participants identify themselves as politically
committed or not, the notion of the migration as something ‘political’ is
commonly drawn upon. Raising political circumstances or political
engagement appears to give the participants the opportunity to position
themselves in relation to the political dimension of refugeeship. That is
to say, the ‘political’ is raised by most of the participants in some shape
or form. This is either to present their own political engagement, or to
describe the political circumstances from which they fled, to position
themselves as a political activist or to position themselves against
political activism. By positioning themselves as politically engaged or,
indeed, as not politically engaged, is grounded, partly, in a sense of the
migration as something which was neither their fault, nor their choice,
but rather, the outcome of a set of political circumstances forced upon
them. Another aspect of what is taking place here, rhetorically, is the
way in which they draw on the lay notions of the non-political refugee
as ‘fake’, and use the political dimension of the migration differently to
position themselves as ‘real’. ‘I’m real, because I was politically
engaged’ or by saying ‘I’m real, because I did not do anything wrong,
this wasn’t my fault, I was not politically committed, and therefore
disobeying a regime’.
Already we are seeing the nuances and some of the complexities the
participants give to the concept of ‘refugee’. This appears to include a
multitude of experiences and processes that the participants relate to in
order to position themselves within the social category ‘refugee’, and
hence to make sense of what the concept of refugee can represent for
them in terms of opportunity or constraint, among other things with
regard to the social perception of who a refugee is. In doing so, they
relate to the ‘external’ representations of what it means to be a ‘refugee’
and they draw on the political aspects to make sense of their situation,
and how they view themselves in relation to different categories of
‘refugee’. These different categories of ‘refugee’ are constructed in
various genres, such as the media, whereby terms are created, and
appear to inform the participant’s way of talking about such issues.
The construction of the ‘refugee’ is not only about how others
construct who the refugee is. There is also construction taking place
within refugee communities, which invites others to see them in a
particular way, as political or otherwise. As we have seen, the
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participants in their accounts of who they were, and are today, position
themselves, amongst other things, as: professional, political, and also in
terms of the ‘kind’ of refugee they are, for example, a ‘real’ refugee, a
‘political’ refugee, or indeed a non-political refugee. Moral value is
introduced here, in terms of being a deserving refugee or by positioning
themselves as political activists.
7.3.2 Space for a new life
Having refugee status is a step further into the process of creating a new
life situation, in safety, but it is also a step further away from what
many felt they had abandoned. Trying to find new opportunities so that
their earlier experience, educational competence or political work can
become part of their lives again is a large part of their situations as
refugees. Moreover, one may also look for a chance to fulfil dreams
which had not felt possible in one's country of origin.
When the participants talked about receiving refugee status, they
gave descriptions of what the new living conditions involved. These
descriptions include learning to ‘transfer’ from the great lack of
autonomy which was so apparent as asylum seeker, to re-gaining some
autonomy as refugees. This autonomy was expressed by the
participants, as coming with independence and responsibility. The new
living conditions involved new housing, permission to work or study,
the protection of a state, access to the welfare system and mobility
(including travel documents) and rights and benefits one was denied
during the asylum application period. No longer having to navigate
around the asylum application process, participants find themselves part
of a new societal system in which to navigate. This means learning their
rights and obligations and independently looking for work or
accommodation. Red Cross drop-in-centres 25, which primarily assist
asylum seekers, may also be visited by those who had recently become
refugees, who felt they needed help in understanding how the new
society worked. Having felt the initial relief of being granted refugee
status, a new time of anxiety can be experienced, enhanced by a feeling
of responsibility in becoming a ‘contributing’ member of society again.
I got the impression that many of my participants longed to be granted
refugee status and believed that if they only had that status, they would
be able to independently create a good life for themselves and their
families. However a lot of frustration is expressed by the participants,
as refugees, in trying to find a way which would lead to independence:
25
Part of the field work carried out for this study took place at two different Red Cross
refugee drop-in-centres, one in Sweden and one in the UK. Through observations,
interviews with refugees, as well as members of staff, the challenges emerging in
transitioning from asylum seeker to refugee were made apparent
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UK6 Feeling of freedom exists here (.) but not as a refugee (.) as a
refugee you have to fight quite hard here to get chance but at the same
time I owe this country it gave me safety (.) shelter (.) money I would
like to do something back for this country to help people to return the
kindness (.) I try my best to help (.) become part of society and I feel
that I have something to offer I can help others and be part of this
society
This excerpt illustrates what many in the study expressed, a feeling
that they had left oppression for oppression, in terms of the lack of
rights experienced as refugees. Many expressed, that the asylum
system resembled the kind of oppression experienced in their
countries of origin, after the turning point. This feeling of constraint
in the new situation was also expressed as something which followed
them into the refugee situation. It was common for the participants to
express to me a conflict between feeling that they were grateful for
the ‘permission’ to remain on the one hand, and on the other,
resentment over lack of opportunity available to them as refugees.
The following woman expressed her disappointment over trying to
create a life in the new context. She felt constantly confronted with
representations of ‘the refugee’ as someone with less competence:
SW7 I gained refugee status and I thought I will begin studying at a
school for training a particular skill (.) I was at this school for a year
and everyone said I was really clever I said I would like to work I
would like to work with day-care for children (.) I love children (.) I felt
I was young and full of energy and I would like to work with children
(1) start working you know (.) but all I was told was no(.) you can’t (.)
you should learn the language more (.) so I said ok (1) and I tried and I
tried and I tried in the end they gave me a chance (1) I got a 6 month
placement (.) a placement for 6 months and I worked and during this
time the contact I had with my colleagues wasn’t more than hello and
goodbye they said nothing to me and it felt really really awful I thought
why are they doing this why are they so cold towards me sometimes
they were really insulting “do you know anything about computers” “do
you know how to do this” you know really really usual things and they
wondered if I knew how to do it (.) you know you don’t think it will be
like this you just want to make a life
Having fought for the right to remain in the country of asylum, the
participants describe gaining refugee status as an opportunity to ‘give
back’ to the society, and an opportunity to start building a ‘new’ life.
However, frustration is expressed in activating this. Part of the
explanation given by the participants, as to why this was the case, was
due to a lack of ‘rights’ as refugees. For example participant UK6
acknowledges there is some freedom in England, but sees it as difficult
to utilise as a refugee. Participant SW7, in a similar way, expresses the
challenges of building a new life as something which was made
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difficult due to ‘common sense’ perceptions of the refugee as less
competent, or even worse, as less developed. What many of the
participants expressed as a difficulty was finding access to spaces
which could offer the opportunity to build a new and independent life,
which would make use of their knowledge and skill sets.
7.4 Refugee Domain
Chapters Five and Six showed that one way the participants managed
this orientation process into the new system was by drawing on
previous identifications, such as political activist or human rights
lawyer. As refugees they said they were hoping to find work, which
meant they could take up their professions or political activism once
again. However, having transferred from asylum seeker to refugee,
many struggled to find work which corresponded to their educational
qualifications. For many of the participants, this meant they found
themselves a part of contexts which were typically dominated by
refugees and asylum seekers who were working with refugee projects.
These contexts could be political refugee organisations, voluntary
organisations and NGO’s. These were contexts in which my
participants found a space where they could establish a degree of
belonging, and a space in which they could feel they were contributing
with their previous experience. What was striking about these contexts
was the level of involvement the participants had in them, and not as a
refugee, but as someone using one’s political, professional or
educational background in some way to help other refugees, asylum
seekers, sometimes even to assist in running the organisation itself. I
coin this context the refugee domain. While it is a space comprising
refugees, it nevertheless encompasses an opportunity structure, enabling
the participant to take up the position of ‘expert’ or ‘adviser’ again. To
follow, are some quotes which illustrate the kinds of positions taken up
in the refugee domain. These include positions that incorporate the
previous identifications, before the turning point, in their new situation
as refugees, contributing to the process of building new selfpresentations:
UK5 I couldn’t stop the political the human rights er activity because it
is the only thing er the only reason I think I can be happy you know it is
er it has really become part of my life now you know because since I
started to be an activist in human rights and er politically because I
believe in my ideology I can’t separate it (.) er from who I am and what
is the political bit or the refugee bit or the womens’ rights bit it is a
combination of those sides that I believe in
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By combining ideology with one’s identity as human rights activist and,
indeed, refugee, a new meaningful position was created in the refugee
domain.
The following man worked as a lawyer in his country of origin,
before the turning point. He found his ‘niche’ as a ‘political refugee’
and ‘legal expert’, which involved taking on the position as adviser to
newcomers, he told me:
SW2 Many friends come to me now for advice when they get rejected
and not just er that (.) not just friends (.) many refugees that I have
helped (.) sometimes I don’t know who they are (.) they call and say
“oh er please please help me I know you are a lawyer and a political
refugee” they say “I have a friend and he has an appointment and he
wants to meet you so you can teach him what to say to his lawyer” (.)
he was very worried and he asked me to go with him (.) so I did
The above excerpt illustrates the importance of combining the
experience of being a refugee, with the professional and educational
background in finding new, meaningful positions in the refugee
domain. This gained added value in being able to help others, and it
almost seemed to give them higher status in the eyes of those they
helped. The above quote shows that it was not only the legal expertise,
which was valued, but indeed the fact that SW2 was also a ‘political’
refugee.
It is a context worth exploring to gain a deeper understanding of
refugeeship, and indeed it was a context of which I became a part
during the field work. My participants took up the position as ‘expert’
or ‘adviser’, and in doing so they often drew on their specialist
experience as, for example, ‘human rights lawyer’ as well as on their
previous experience, shared by others, as an asylum seeker. This
domain then, describes something ‘in-between’, if you like, not quite
the ‘human rights lawyer’ or ‘diplomat’ they once could call
themselves, but still not ‘just’ a refugee. What seems apparent here,
through looking closer at what is embedded in the descriptions, is the
taking up of new positions other than ‘just’ refugee. This represents an
attempt at broadening one’s repertoire of identifications through finding
new positions in the refugee domain. Broadening this repertoire is one
way of re-gaining a sense of self-worth, which was jeopardised through
the feeling of dis-empowerment and lack of autonomy felt throughout
the asylum procedure. As refugees, the participants have some control
over their destinies. However when their attempts at finding
employment fail, in-between positions are created in the refugee
domain.
Political activists find membership to an organisation which
represents their own particular political standpoint. The refugee
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situation then acquires meaning that makes it resemble an extension of
life before the turning point, which was largely about, working
politically for reform of some kind. Voluntary NGO organisations can
come to be part of the refugee domain for those who perhaps did not
take up a clear political position. By becoming a volunteer, with an
NGO, would mean one becomes involved in advising others and
working alongside other ‘non-refugees’. This provided an opportunity
for those who were not politically active, before the turning point, to
become interested in questions of human rights, thus making sense out
of their own experience of becoming refugees. As mentioned earlier in
this chapter, some people actively seek to avoid being identified as a
refugee. Instead, these participants try to find opportunity to become
what they call, a ‘normal’ person.
7.4.1 Gaining independence and being less of a refugee
A significant part of the construction of the refugee domain lies in
creating a space in which participants can find belonging, and resources
for building identifications other than that of ‘just’ refugee. The refugee
domain refers to a context constructed by refugees in which refugees
may have a ‘natural’ place among others with whom they share similar
experiences, political or professional. That is to say, ultimately many of
the participants desire the opportunity to practice again as a lawyer or a
doctor. When however this is not possible, helping out in voluntary
roles, as ‘expert’ is favoured over doing nothing.
The existence of this domain became apparent to me, in the way the
participants describe various contexts, which offer a sense of inclusion.
When talking about themselves as part of the refugee domain, the
position of ‘voluntary worker’ or ‘expert’ is taken up. As I see it, this is
to do with the limited number of positions available to them through
which to identify as someone other than merely a refugee. Being
categorised as refugee or asylum seeker involves being positioned as
something one is not fully comfortable with. This position is a limiting
one, especially as asylum seeker where rights and duties are highly
limited whilst waiting for a decision on status. However, space is even
limited for those who have been given refugee status, often due to the
lack of opportunity available for refugees. This is an undesirable
position and therefore it is hardly surprising that the participants in the
study are continuously looking for opportunities to broaden their
position repertoire.
The next participant illustrates this limited repertoire. He talks about
‘being a refugee’, and goes on to describe how important his position as
a voluntary worker at the Red Cross, is to him today. This participant
likens being a refugee to being a sick person and uses metaphors such
137
as ‘heart attack’ to emphasise how he feels about his situation as a
refugee. He explains:
SW5 I don’t like this word [refugee] mm because it is like being a sick
person er (1) I just want to help people and then I feel less of a refugee
(.) [when you are helping people] yes (.) but when I make the
comparison to my life before usch (2) I feel it is difficult to explain to
you this hard feeling er it is like er (2) a heart attack (.) I feel hurt I feel
hurt (.) it is like a pain it is difficult to explain or describe (.)making the
comparison is er well from professor to hell (.) er I was decision maker
(.) but now when I go to the Red Cross even though I respect they gave
me this opportunity er there is only so much I can do to help them er it’s
a big difference
This quote is partly an illustration of the limited repertoire that I am
attempting to demonstrate here. It exemplifies the current lack of status
experienced and the loss of status, as he compares his earlier position as
a professor, and his present position today in the refugee domain. Not
having the opportunity to position himself fully as professor or
decision-maker any more, involves finding new openings within the
repertoire available. In this particular case re-positioning entails taking
up the position as ‘helper’ at the Red Cross. This does not compare to
previous identifications, but it appears to make him feel at least partly
useful. Coming through in this quote is the desperate feeling of wanting
to stop being a refugee. Here the refugee domain seems to contribute to
his feeling ‘less’ of a refugee.
It also serves as a substitute, if you like, to not finding opportunities
through paid work. The following excerpt is from a man who has been
living in England for over 20 years, he gives his explanation for the
voluntary work, taken up in the refugee domain:
UK2 I’m still a volunteer er (1) talking to you now (.) you know (.) I’m
not paid to do a job trying to find a paid job has been pretty tough er I
can’t explain why (.) I can only think (.) guess why (1) it can be
discrimination (.) but I can’t say (.) it could be some people see your
surname on the application er that your application won’t be considered
in the end you think well I have no choice (.) I’m stuck now in
voluntary work (2) even though the voluntary work has helped me a lot
you know
The data exemplified through the above two quotes, illustrates the
participants’ attempts to gain back some self-worth and their need to
feel less of a refugee in the new country, and rather as someone who
came with something which could be utilised in the new society. The
participants express that taking up these positions make them feel ‘less
of a refugee’, a person who is typically understood as a deficit
according to popular discourse. Positions in the refugee domain serve
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the purpose of helping the participants to feel more like an ‘ordinary’
person. However, this voluntary role is also described as second-best,
and something the participants became locked into due to lack of other
opportunity.
7.4.2 Striving for something ‘ordinary’
UK3 I know that there are asylum seekers and refugees with problems
and those who are vulnerable (.) but I mean they still want to be treated
as normal people (.) people with rights
A characteristic of refugeeship is the constant strive to a life which
works, and does not include injustice, war, insecurity and other
challenges which turn everyday living into a constant struggle. Having
accomplished a flight from persecution, the participants strive for
refugee status, and when that is achieved, they strive for acceptance into
‘ordinary’ life. Much of what seems to characterise refugeeship is the
‘ongoing-ness’ of the experience. The refugee domain, whilst offering
new positions beyond being ‘just’ a refugee, also illustrates the
conditions and constraints that the refugee situation seems to hold.
Having proved their case as persons in ‘genuine’ need of protection,
many find themselves fighting to prove that as refugees they have
something to offer their new country, and the refugee domain is a
context where some acceptance and recognition of experience and skill
may be found. Much of the constraints accompanying the labels
‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’, come from the categorisations defined in
migration systems, such as migrant worker or asylum seeker. Being
categorised first as an asylum seeker, and then, if ‘lucky’, being
labelled ‘refugee’, places the participants, I would argue, into a corner,
with little on offer when it comes to taking up other positions and
integrating their identifications, both previous and new, into the new
country. Certainly many refugees are seen by others and see themselves
as integrated, and as having succeeded in integrating their
identifications. However, these cases were rare in my study. Most of
my participants struggled to ‘feel part of ‘mainstream’ society, largely
due to the limited repertoire available to them to create new
opportunities in their present circumstances. This is not to say,
however, that a sense of integration through the fact they may work and
pay taxes is not found. This may give a feeling of integration on a kind
of objective level, but it does not mean, however, they experience
integration in terms of ‘feeling a part of’ society. The participants in
this study talk of ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ life; I would suggest, namely,
everyday contexts which seem to represent ‘ordinary’ life. However,
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they did say that the ‘ordinary’ life was not constructed for ‘them’ and
here a sense of exclusion is conveyed in their narratives.
As we move forward in this analysis, we shall see that many find
ways to move away from the refugee domain, yet they do not find
themselves fully part of ‘ordinary’ life; rather, somewhere in-between
the refugee domain and ‘ordinary’ life. This suggests that refugeeship
is an ongoing process which does not necessarily ‘stop’, once granted
refugee status. We see the participants appear to strive to create a new
‘successful’ space, with which to identify. Becoming a lawyer again is
the ultimate goal, for one who had previously worked as a lawyer. To
achieve this objective means being accepted into ‘ordinary’ life.
‘Ordinary’ life consists of study contexts, such as going to college and
being on a course which enrolled students are usually non-refugees.
Being a part of ‘ordinary’ life may involve working in a non-refugee
context in a capacity which resonates with the participants’ educational
and professional identifications.
When the participants talked about ‘success’ in the new context, it
was not unusual for them to talk as though ultimate success is to be a
part of ‘ordinary’ life. The ‘inner circle’ acceptance was talked about as
acceptance from ‘normal’ people and that this was ‘normal’ life. They
expressed that achieving acceptance from those who were not
themselves refugees, was hard to achieve for a ‘refugee’:
UK6 I’m just looking for the normal life now [what would that look
like] (1) well the reality is how can I have any relationship (.) my life
even my character has changed it has affected me very hard (.) I miss
people (.) I’m used to being responsible for myself (.) I want to have
relationships with quality (.) educated people so we can have a basic
connection (.) but how can I have that as a refugee (.) But I look to the
future maybe I will get a job (.) a (.) car (.) I will get a driving licence
(.) this is normal life
This ‘ordinary’ life relates to what participants perceive as the ‘norm’ in
their new countries and it is talked about as something distant and
outside of their space as refugees. Belonging to the refugee domain
offers a space where support and understanding of their experiences can
be found amongst people with similar experiences. However, at the
same time, I got the impression that the participants felt locked into the
refugee domain as the possibility to be part of ‘ordinary’ life was not
always on offer. Incorporating the needs of asylum seekers into their
role as advisers or experts creates a new position within the refugee
domain, not as one of ‘them’ but as someone who helps ‘them’. This
‘helping’ role allows the participants to take up a position beyond the
constraints of the refugee position placed on them. It gives them back
some autonomy, which enables them to position themselves, rather than
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being positioned by others. Is this due to a lack of opportunity in the
‘ordinary’ life?
This man explained to me that when he had lived in Sweden for
some time, he began to become aware of himself as a “minority”; this is
partly what he had fled from, as a Kurdish political activist, he
explained:
SW3 I started to feel like a minority (.) I felt pressured and I thought
bloody hell (.) I asked myself when (.) where (.) can I begin to be
enough (.) feel good and not have to feel on the outside (.) not have
people against me
Participant SW3 expresses frustration at the realisation of finding
himself ‘outside’.
To follow is an example of meaning-making that some of my
participants illustrated when talking about positions they took up in the
refugee domain, and when explaining the challenges involved in trying
to find a space in ‘ordinary’ life:
UK2 Sometimes er a vacancy comes up er you apply for it and you are
told er you are not accepted so that means individuals try to do
something and survive like this so there is that side of it(.) but they (.)
these activities really fulfil a really good function and there is an
integration process but well on the other hand this has been a necessity
for groups like ours to take this route to be able to get out there (.) and
meet and that is how I spend my days actually
The refugee domain fulfilled a function, as this man expressed it is a
“route” many take. Many participants assert that this is a necessary
“route”, to find a sense of participation, because it is difficult to find
belonging in contexts which are outside of the refugee domain. Many
participants, however, did have personal experience of ‘ordinary’ life.
In their stories there was a dimension of ‘passing’ to use Goffman’s
phrase, of trying to create a new life in various other contexts.
7.5 The challenges of the ‘ordinary’ life
The ‘ordinary’ life, although talked of, partly, in desirable terms, also
represented a complicated and conflictual space for many. My
participants express that belonging to the ‘ordinary’ life is sometimes
challenging, both in terms of gaining ‘entrance’ as well as in ‘passing’
which is sometimes involved.
The challenge lies in the fact that their migration narrative entails
more than the usual geographical and psychological upheaval
associated with other types of migration. Many of the participants’
stories encapsulate the experiences of persecution, prison and torture. In
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some cases, migrating to a ‘safer’ environment is something that is
obviously embroiled in conflict. Some participants express that
becoming part of ‘ordinary’ life made it even more apparent to them
that their experience of torture, imprisonment and persecution was in
fact everything but ordinary. The fact that the new situation provided a
space in which to begin to ‘feel’ safe involved a realisation that
becoming free from the burden of prison and torture is a new process in
refugeeship. Receiving refugee status, and access to an everyday
structure, came with a sense of stability, but not necessarily a sense of
security. That is to say, the knowledge that one is now protected by
their new country, no longer living under the threat of persecution or
risk of deportation, comes with a great sense of relief. However, this
sense of relief implied new challenges, and was thus the start of a new
phase of refugeeship.
Having reached this point the participants now enjoyed a new ‘safe’
space in which to reflect over their life situation. Their fight to survive,
and win the asylum claim had been victorious.
The following quote exemplifies this aspect of refugeeship and the
process many participants found themselves in at this stage; now as an
individual trying to create something new in the refugeeship and
become part of ‘ordinary’ life. This quote is long and illustrative.
However, it is representative of many of the participants in this study. It
highlights the processual aspects of refugeeship, beginning with life in
the country of origin, coming to the turning point, moving on to
receiving refugee status and then, finally, facing the challenges of
finding acceptance in ‘ordinary’ life:
SW8 One thing was that you live every minute in fear (.) every minute
you are looking over your shoulder (.) you never know what’s going to
happen or when you are going to be called to an interrogation (.) you
just want to feel secure and safe
SW8 went on to explain:
I’ve always had a strong will (1) that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel sad (.)
but I’ve always been strong (.) and talking about this time er (1) these
years were really tough years of being unsafe (.) insecurity and war (.)
but I never felt like giving up (.) but it came first when I came to
Sweden (1) when I had a chance to think about it all (.) but before that it
was all about survival as well as the fact that you are surrounded by
people in the same situation (.) those that maybe even had it worse than
you (.) one of the things that keeps you going is that others might have
it worse so I have to manage this (.) when it got tough I thought (.) no
(.) some have it worse than me (.) that is (.) what was tough became
normal (2) when I came to Sweden that normality was gone and it’s
then you start to think er (1) well when you first come here then there is
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a lot as well (.) insecurity (.) proving your papers are real and all that (.)
so your nerves are still er well it is still a lot to deal with but suddenly
(.) once I had got refugee status (1) yes suddenly I got a bit of time to
think about (.) I started to think about my situation and I felt so bad and
I could go to the forest and just scream and I felt such anxiety (.) but I
still thought I’m not going to give up I started applying for work but I
was so sad all the time the first 2 -3 years were really (.) really difficult
you have no job, no papers, you can’t speak the language no money and
everything is so different (.) at the same time you have this heavy (.)
heavy baggage with you (.) you have to find a balance between this
heavy baggage and creating a new life (.) it is a new crises another
phase of insecurity (.) you don’t have to be afraid anymore but you are
(.) I was afraid every time someone rang the door bell in the beginning
(.) the other thing was letters(.) when I opened a letter and feeling like
you don’t understand er (1) but then it starts to pass (.) to go over to
feeling a bit better about everything at the same time a feeling of
emptiness comes and I felt how shall I fill this feeling of emptiness (1)
this new feeling of insecurity was almost worse than in my country
because I had learnt to handle that but the new (.) you are not use to it
(.) you don’t have the tools to deal with it (2) you have to find new
skills in order to pass over to the new situation
Much like many of the participants (UK6 gave a similar example at the
beginning of this chapter), this participant describes the process of
migration and asylum procedure in becoming a refugee in transitional
terms. She uses the expression ‘passing over to’ and ‘pass’, ‘to go
over’, when describing the various aspects of refugeeship. She also
characterises refugeeship as a process of insecurity. She talks about
these various aspects of insecurity as ‘phases’ and it appears that the
refugeeship encompasses so many phases, and entering a ‘safe’ space in
which to ‘feel’, is a new transition in the refugeeship. The challenge
involves learning “new skills” in which to tackle the existential aspects
of the migration. As she points out, the difficult circumstances in the
country of origin, despite everything, represented “normality”. The new
context is extremely new, and one particular feature of it is learning
new skills to deal with the emotional aspects of this experience. These
were not part of her life situation before migration. Daily life was much
more about physical survival. Leaving behind the struggle for survival,
which had become an integral part of life, is not uncomplicated. This
next quote describes these transitional aspects, which became more
apparent as a refugee entering ‘ordinary’ life:
SW4 Then I came to Sweden (1) you know it is like a screen (1) when
you are under pressure you just don’t feel (.) you just cope (.) you
cope(.) you cope(.) When this screen er it opens then you feel
insecurity (.) this probably goes for me (.) When I came to Sweden
different screens opened (1) you know (.) long after that I was released
from prison (.) you know
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Participant SW4 described this aspect of the refugeeship as the point at
which ‘different screens went up’. These screens had served to protect
him before, when he was under so much pressure. During the asylum
application, the skills required to keep fighting followed some of the
participants from their countries of origin and were a resource in
helping them to manage the new uncertainties they met when they
encountered the asylum procedure. However, the shift to becoming a
refugee is highly significant. A new ‘normality’ is encountered and the
challenges which come with it generate feelings on the outside of this
‘normality’ because of the nature of their own experiences. This is
especially evident in the cases of experience of torture and
imprisonment, which are not typical experiences in ‘ordinary’ life.
7.5.1 ‘Passing’ in ‘ordinary’ life
Self-presentations become prevalent in ‘ordinary’ life, a space to which
the participants expressed a desire to belong. At the same time, this
space was described by the participants as lacking in understanding of
their previous life experiences, as well as enhancing their experiences
as being ‘out of the ordinary’. These descriptions not only illustrate
the stigmatisation some participants associate with being seen as a
refugee, but also how they feel about the label ‘refugee’ and what they
believe the label portrays to others. This became an issue for their selfpresentations in these settings. Many of the participants shared with me
the difficulties they faced in conveying past experience, and that they
felt they did not ‘fit into’ ‘ordinary’ life:
SW4 Like what do you say in a job interview (.) how do you fill in the
gaps where you might have been in prison as a teenager
Their previous experiences felt difficult to incorporate into ‘ordinary’
life as these experiences were so different from common experiences in
the ‘ordinary’ context. The refugee label places restrictions on the
participants in terms of how they perceive that others see them and the
parameters the label places on them in terms of gaining employment,
building relationships and being seen as ‘normal’. The main concern for
the participants seems to be how others view them. Some of the
participants in this study were not only concerned with presenting
themselves as a refugee, but relationships with work colleagues for
example could lead to questions about the past:
SW4 Being down the pub and being asked about childhood is er well
what do you say oh I was put in prison for my opinion when I was 15 er
no-one would understand so you are constantly finding ways to answer
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Many of the participants when attempting to create new relationships,
talk about the challenges of attempting to be seen as ‘normal’, and the
possibility of creating a ‘normal’ life for themselves. A problem
mentioned by several participants was how to introduce oneself. This
relational aspect of the stories is about social perception. The
participant sees him/herself as being positioned in a particular way as a
refugee. This relates not only to being negatively positioned, it also
relates to a feeling that others who do not share the experience of the
refugee situation, would not be able to understand or identify with
them.
UK1 Actually I don’t like to start new relationships because when I say
my name they ask where are you from and as soon as you say (1) and
sometimes I just make something up because I don’t want to say
XXX[and why is that] (.) because maybe people just er well XXX has
been so open to the world and people form ideas about it and saying
you from XXX or XXX must be refugees
UK6 It is hard work (.) er I’m mean especially if you don’t know these
people or it is a group of people and you have to introduce yourself (.) I
know they are seeing refugees as one thing
In terms of forming long-term relationships, the following participant
expresses the constraints of being a refugee and political activist in
terms of being able to find a partner outside the refugee domain:
SW4 But it is also a lot to do with your background (.) it is (.) it is er
hard to live with someone (.) someone who can understand (.) you
know (.) and you know in normal life what people want is good cars or
a good house how can we find someone who doesn’t er care er just does
politics (.) politics for nothing you know er so er you are just within
your group that is why this happens a lot (.) er it becomes sort of like a
sect (.) you are just within your community (.) you will only be able to
find someone within this network because normal people you know (.)
well how are they going to want to live with me
Here we witness not only the stigma attached to the social perception of
refugees and the participants’ challenges of how to introduce
themselves and build new relationships. We also witness the constraints
this participant expresses in the refugee domain, which appears to place
parameters on building relationships with people he perceives as
belonging to the ‘normal life’. The excerpts characterise a feeling of
disconnection from ‘normal life’. They express a desire to meet more
people in ‘ordinary’ life, but they do not see the possibility of forming
relationships outside of the refugee domain with someone other than a
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refugee. At the same time, many express the value of meeting other
refugees who understand their situation, and can relate to it.
7.5.2 Lack of solidarity in ‘ordinary’ life
Participant SW4 went on to explain that one of the feelings he
experienced in ‘ordinary’ life was a lack of solidarity, which he had
found and appreciated in prison. Now, as a refugee, he could feel safe,
but he lacked understanding from people outside the refugee domain.
This, he explained was something painful and something he doubted
could be found in ‘ordinary’ life.
He began by telling me about his encounters with a Swedish
psychologist and the therapy group which was available to support
refugees with experience of imprisonment and torture:
SW4 You know because it is their job (.) I hate this when they look at
their watch (.) she looked at her watch and I just I just couldn’t talk
anymore (.) you know she just couldn’t understand I’m not an object I
need some even if not understanding (.) sympathy
He went on to explain a sense of lack of solidarity:
In prison you are many in a cell together (.) and you are tortured
everyday sometimes together (.) sometimes alone (.) we didn’t know
when they would come [no hmm] and you don’t know when your body
will give in (1) we would see our friends die (whispers) (3) but you
know we helped each other and together it became about surviving
another day and another day (1) but then I was free I am not a part of
these people anymore (.) we understood each other and I’m not a part of
this now and this experience follows you (.) you get scared of authority
and scared of the police (.) so you are free but not free from the past
experience and the difficult memories. In prison you are part of a
relationship you have a community feeling in prison but of course it
feels safer here (.) you have control over your life (2) but the thing is
how to build a new life
Another participant who had no experience of prison did however live
in the restricted space of a refugee camp for 18 years. He explained a
lack of solidarity in ‘ordinary’ life, of the kind which he had
experienced in the refugee camp:
UK1 There was solidarity (.) I miss my friends on the camp (.) actually
I can say that although the life was difficult on the camp (.) it was a
society where you know you played together like brothers [yes] but here
you can’t see that (.) I miss that side of the camp (.) the camp er the
camp er in the camp if there was a problem then people were like “we
er we can help er we can help” but it is not like that here people are
thinking of themselves here rather than other people
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7.6 Unpacking refugee ‘status’- a summary so far
The findings of this chapter relate to themes of recognition, justification
and the fight for new opportunities. I have attempted to ‘unpack’ what
meaning refugee ‘status’ holds for my participants. Refugee status is of
course an official classification, but it also holds other meanings for my
participants. ‘Status’ as an experienced position, beyond the official
denotation, revealed itself to be a double-edged sword. That is to say, a
shift in ‘status’ from ‘asylum seeker’ to ‘refugee’ is experienced, in
terms of legitimacy and moral value. However, the label ‘refugee
status’, was still experienced as a discourse-filled label, a label placing
constraints on the participants in terms of ‘risk’: (1) risk of
discrimination; (2) risk of being perceived in a narrow way by ‘Others’,
often associated with negative categories, according to the participants,
and; (3) the risk of becoming locked into the discourse filled label, and
in terms of creating new opportunity. Having begun to understand the
complexities of the label, such as this risk dimension, the participants
then sought ways to handle these complexities. First, it seemed to place
parameters on the participants’ interaction with ‘Others’. Some of the
participants were careful not to be associated with ‘typical’ refugee
domains, whilst others found a sense of belonging in certain refugee
groups. Regardless of how the ‘risk’ dimension was handled,
manoeuvring, to avoid certain social perceptions, or to reinforce other
perceptions, was clearly a condition of their life situations as refugees.
Here, I turn to the work of Goffman (1961) and more specifically to the
concept ‘total institution’. Goffman coined the concept (1961) ‘total
institution’ referring to closed communities, such as psychiatric
departments. A total institution can be defined as a place of residency,
which involves abnormal living conditions, under strict control,
regarding most aspects of how one would ‘normally’ go about one’s
everyday life. Examples of total institutions are prisons, boarding
schools, monasteries and military camps. Goffman talks about the
constraints of self formation placed in contexts of ‘total institution’,
pointing out that when it comes to whatever the ‘total institution’ can
impose on sense of self, it contrasts significantly with the rights and
freedoms benefited in society at large. In this study, it became apparent
that as refugees, the participants experience a lack of ‘full’ citizenship,
in the sense that they are perceived as ‘refugees’. They refer to their
conditions as being different from ‘non-refugees’. As we saw in one of
the examples in this chapter, UK1 had to prove his identification as a
refugee. No longer an asylum seeker, he needed to prove that he had
received refugee status in order to gain access to educational services.
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This chapter has been concerned with being categorised as a refugee.
It has illustrated the complexities and challenging aspects of refugee
status. These complexities and challenges played out in the data
material in various ways. The refugee status was positive in a number
of ways, such as legitimacy, recognition and the right to build a new
life. However, negative attributes were also assigned refugee status.
The refugee status, on the one hand was a discourse loaded label, and
gave room to feeling the enormity of all previous experiences of
fighting for survival, prison, war, torture. One way of dealing with the
situation of receiving refugee status was by trying to find opportunities
which would ultimately lead to the feeling of being a part of the new
society. Many find themselves restricted to certain spaces, which I coin,
the refugee domain. Those who had experience of life ‘outside’ of the
refugee domain, the so called ‘ordinary’ life, spoke about the challenges
involved and the processes in finding belonging.
The narratives also include reflections about the social perceptions
surrounding the refugee label and how they perceive that this
influenced their opportunities to create a new and meaningful life.
When talking about their situation as refugees, the participants
expressed a desire to be seen as ‘normal’ or feel ‘normal’ again. They
stated that they thought one way to achieve this was by associating with
‘normal’ people. At the same time, several of the participants illustrated
the complexities of the label, when they explained that it was something
they were proud of in their private thoughts, but ashamed of socially.
7.6.1 Entanglement of ‘social’ and ‘personal’ identification
The theoretical point of departure, outlined in Chapter Three, suggested
the difficulties of distinguishing between personal and social
identifications. The results of Chapter Seven when it comes to the
refugee identity work show that the participants in their talk are largely
relating to the social perceptions of refugees found in public debate and
migration policy, and in their talk they responded to this debate and
policy. This took the form of two things, (1) as an interpretation
process, present in their narratives, whereby the participants’ meaningmaking shows an attempt to understand the ‘label’ solving the
‘challenges’ the label generates in terms of identity work and (2) as an
action of performative positioning, whereby responding either by
agreeing for example, or disagreeing, are both acts of resistance. Such
positioning work is dominant in their life situations as refugees and it is
expressed in their talk of being refugees.
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7.7 The moral dimension in refugeeship
The dominating positioning work referred to above is a significant
aspect of refugeeship. Refugeeship seems to have a thread of constantly
‘justifying’ and ‘putting right’ one’s actions, running through it, as a
response to the constraints placed through refugeeship. For some, this
undertaking began when they were political activists in their countries
of origin. For my Kurdish participants it began with an awareness of the
oppression and the explicit questioning in relation to them as
‘minorities’. For others it began with the notion of proving their need to
flee both to themselves, and to others in their countries of origins, and
later in neighbouring countries, whilst living in refugee camps. In
Chapter Six, justification became apparent when encountering the
asylum system. In this chapter, I illustrate the way that the participants
embark on talk of refugee status as a ‘label’ and of their representations
over what the ‘status’ may hold for them as refugees. In this chapter we
see the way this moral dimension unravels. First the participants draw
on the meaning that being recognised officially as a refugee had for
them in terms of ‘proving’ they were genuine refugees, to others, but
also to themselves. This talk became incorporated into new selfpresentations as a refugee in genuine need, and here the participants
gained support in their attempts to position themselves away from
categories such as ‘bogus’ or economic through the official recognition
of their refugee status, and instead took on the category of someone
who really needed this protection. In summary, we see that the
participants worked their way through a moral career, with repeated
more or less implicit questions of their right to flee their countries of
origin and to start a new life, which resulted in a continuous feeling of
having to justify oneself, and one’s actions. Moral career is an
expression borrowed from Ervin Goffman’s analysis of the processes
experienced by a person who is admitted to a psychiatric hospital and
the term career refers to a sequence of experiential phases, in this case a
series of moral challenges experienced by the participants and
expressed in their stories. Harré, in his writings about Individual lives
as social trajectories draws on the work of Goffman and defines moral
career in the following way:
A moral career, then, is a history of an individual person with respect to
the attitudes and beliefs that others have, and the attitude to and beliefs
about oneself that are formed on the basis of one’s readings of the
attitudes and beliefs of others (1993: 206)
Goffman coined the expression ‘moral career’ in analysing the daily
experiences of psychiatric in-patients in a hospital in the United States
in the 1950s. He found a process consisting of three stages:
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The career of the mental patent falls popularly and naturalistically into
three main phases: the period prior to entering the hospital, which I
shall call the pre-patient phase; the period in the hospital, the inpatient
phase; the period after discharge from the hospital, should this occur,
namely, the ex-patient phase (1961:122)
The three phases described by Goffman, can be seen in refugeeship: the
period prior to entering the asylum procedure, the period as asylum
seeker and the period after the asylum phase- on being granted refugee
status – should this take place.
This moral dimension seems to be a continuous characteristic of
refugeeship. In the examples given, we saw the way the participants
could express their awareness that refugees in media were being
portrayed in ways which seemed to give cause for the participants to
feel that they needed to ‘prove’ their ‘goodness’ or ‘hardworking’
nature. The themes of hardworking and contributing citizen are clearly
present. Thus the participants position themselves as someone who has
always tried to find ways to contribute to their new society, even when
opportunities for paid work were few. Many participants were eager to
express the work and projects they were engaged in as volunteers.
7.8 Locked in the discourse-filled label
Refugee status is a discourse-loaded label and it clearly seems to place
constraints on the participants, both in terms of their private spheres,
such as starting new relationships, and in the public sphere. The latter
encompasses their interaction with authorities and with superiors at
work places. The participants express the refugee label not only
contributes to how they are perceived by ‘Others’, but also how they are
treated by others.
In the narratives refugee status is referred to in a paradoxical way.
Participants talk about it as giving a sense of freedom to work, study,
apply for housing and being permitted to travel, while at the same time,
it is presented as putting limits on freedom. Both the sense of freedom
and the sense of limited freedom are expressed in terms of how they are
viewed by others. The participants themselves tend first of all to stress
their new freedom gained through refugee status. As I have mentioned
previously, some see themselves as refugees, but say that this is due to
the socially defined label itself, others are more active in their attempt
not to define themselves in that way but, at the same time feel that they
are often categorised by ‘Others’ in a particular way as a refugee.
An interpretation as to why some of the participants express their
reluctance to associate with other refugees may be that they want to free
themselves from the refugee label, and the loaded discourse associated
with this label. They do not want to be seen as the stereotypical refugee
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and become locked in the discourses they perceive as surrounding this
label. The participants express the notion that the label is full of
representations that they do not wish to be associated with. The
participants want to use their new situation, as refugees, to focus on
things which mean something to them, rather than simply become
locked into negative discourses and it’s repertoire of stereotypical
meanings and behaviour.
The approach taken by some of the participants was to dis-identify in
order to not risk being associated with the refugee label in everyday
interactions. They were aware that the label ‘refugee’ is something to
which they might have to relate to, however, in terms of societal
categorisations, refugee is avoided and thereby the refugee status as an
identity is not either fully taken on board. This sometimes required the
participants to find new ways to present her/himself in various contexts,
so as to avoid the categorisation ‘refugee’. However, again, the stories
told by the participants gave nuanced descriptions of their experiences
and how they approached the new life conditions which came with
refugee status. It was not unusual for the participants to both express
pride over the actual act of surviving forced migration, and being
granted permission to remain as a refugee, and at the same time, they
reject other meanings of being a refugee. Thus, the participants in this
study demonstrate their capacity to take up the position as refugee in
some situations, while they, at the same time, reject the label ‘refugee’
in many other situations.
The theoretical framework employed in this thesis not only
recognises a relationship between two levels of identification, the
personal and the collective (social), but also the fact that these two
identifications are hard to distinguish between.
Harré writes:
The self is a location, not a substance or an attribute. The sense of self is
the sense of being located at a point in space, of having a perspective in
time and of having a variety of positions in local moral orders. (1993:4)
Harré points out that the public-social self concept, becomes a ‘model’
for the private-individual self.
Chapter Five and Six suggest that the participants experienced not
only a literal flight, but a flight from themselves. This chapter, Chapter
Seven, illustrates that gaining refugee status gives a sense of legitimacy
and a more valued social position than asylum seeker, but it is still
limited in terms of position repertoire. In Harré’s terms, the refugee is
both located in a more recognised social position as a person who is
accepted in the new country, as someone who has the right to remain
because of humanitarian reasons. This means that the refugee is offered
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several different locations for identifications by ‘Others’ in the new
country. As a result of the influence of social categorisations and
identifications on a personal sense of self, the refugees themselves also
seem to locate themselves as both being and not being refugees, in
different senses of the word. This way of constructing multiple
belongings and identifications, in fact, seemed to constitute one of the
few possible ways to reach beyond the limitations of the discourse
loaded categorisation of being a refugee. Another way of saying this is
to focus on the social repertoires associated with belonging to specific
social categories. The one-dimensional refugee label that many of the
participants tried to rid themselves of, was associated with expectations
that refugees are strangers and victims, who might become dependent
on, or be a burden to, the new society. Many of the participants in my
study felt uncomfortable with these expectations ascribed to them,
giving cause to develop new I-positions which offered an alternative to
the refugee position. However some of my participants self-identified
as refugees, illustrating another meaning of being a refugee, which
stressed the community and solidarity found between refugees who are
threatened by exclusion in their new countries, as well as experienced
difficulty in finding understanding in ‘ordinary’ life for their past of
oppression and the real challenges associated with being a refugee.
Thus, the flight from oneself, experienced by many of the participants,
forced them into a long-lasting search for new identifications. However
the lost identifications and belongings were not necessarily replaced by
new ones, even if many of the participants seemed to have tried to do so
at first, but rather replaced by a mix of identifications and belongings,
of which some appeared to be contradictory but seemed possible for the
participants to include in a new, dynamic sense of self. This will be
returned to in the final chapter, Chapter Nine.
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8. Constructing continuity and discontinuity
in the stories of ‘beyond’ being a refugee
Summary of analysis
So far, my analysis of the participants’ stories has made visible certain
aspects of refugeeship. The narratives illustrate (1) events of
refugeeship in a time line; (2) identification work associated with each
event; (3) the identifications and events as dimensions of refugeeship,
constitute the moral career, as introduced in Chapter Seven.
These narrative layers contribute to the understanding of refugeeship
as a process, which involves a fight for recognition through justification
work. A crucial part of the stories describe the participants’ versions of
a life beyond just being a refugee, illustrating a project of intersecting
various positions in order to create something new and beyond the
refugee position alone. This will be explored in this chapter. Chapters
Five, Six and Seven illustrate a central storyline of justification, running
through and piecing together the various narrative themes. Justification
is dominant throughout the various events of refugeeship: the turning
point, escaping, fleeing, and abandonment, encountering the legal and
administrative system of claiming asylum and being granted refugee
status. When making the claim the I-position of self-advocacy becomes
salient in having to justify one’s position as an asylum seeker, in need
of protection. The narrative themes introduced in Chapter Seven have a
story line of recognition, described through ‘triumphant talk’, ‘winning
the fight’, the legitimatisation experienced in being granted refugee
status and transitioning from a ‘limbo’ position to transcending this
position and beginning a new life, described by the participants as
‘feeling a person again’. However, the story line of justification
becomes apparent again in the narrative themes relating to the
challenges of the refugee status. My participants found themselves
battling with the conception of ‘status’ in refugee status, contra the lack
of real ‘status’, the label brought with it. Here a need for justification
became apparent again, largely in relation to justifying one’s worth in
the new context, and to be seen beyond the stereotypical view of
‘refugee’.
In this chapter, I discuss the way in which participants projected
their talk to future constructions of their view on what life might hold
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for them. The material is interpreted as talk about ‘beyond’ being only a
refugee, a step further if you like from talking about fleeing, claiming
asylum and being granted refugee status. Rather this talk is more about
making sense of the various new and old identifications. It is about how
continuity and even discontinuity of the new and old identifications are
constructed and combined, for the purpose of creating something
beyond.
8.1 What constitutes moving ‘beyond’
So what constitutes moving beyond or forward? Briefly moving beyond
does not entail a rejection of the refugee status as an identity, and
therefore I try to make clear here that the identification and positioning
work is more about creating other complementary or additional
positions and identities, than that of only refugee. Being seen as just a
refugee is expressed as limiting one’s means of taking up positions
other than refugee. The participants talked about this as being due to the
way they are seen as refugees and the obstacles encountered when
intending to ‘move forward’. The participants’ talk projects the
‘continuity’ of refugeeship forward, and seeks its end, in terms of
moving beyond being just a refugee. Again this does not necessarily
mean that the participant’s aim is to stop being a refugee; rather, it is
about wanting to take up other meaningful positions besides being a
refugee. This chapter is concerned with shedding light on how
continuity and discontinuity played out in the narratives of refugeeship,
at a time where the participants represent their new lives and take up Ipositions, as well as resist ‘Other’ social positioning, within the new
societal space.
Three broad themes which have been identified in the participants’
narratives of beyond are: (1) Identity work for moving forwardstruggle for recognition; (2) Meaning-making: past to future; (3) the
dilemma of political activism and being a refugee contra ‘ordinary’ life.
Can the various positions be combined?
From the perspective of fleeing one’s country and coming to a new
one, being granted refugee status marks an important event in the
narratives. One can say that the process of fleeing has come to an end
and now it is time to start a new life. As we saw in Chapter Seven, it
was not unusual for participants to talk about this aspect as
overwhelming, when coming to realise the enormity of one’s past
experience, of creating a new life and trying to actualise ambitions to
study or work within a particular field.
Reflections over the future played out in two ways in the narratives
of refugeeship, as told by the participants: (1) some shared their
reflections over life today, having been refugees for some time and
what this has entailed for identification and positioning work; (2) others
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reflected more on how he or she anticipated life would be, having lived
in the new context for some time. In some cases, the participants
presented both sorts of reflections.
This ‘future’ talk was not conveyed in a straightforward or linear or
explicit manner in the narratives, as a new ‘phase’ or as an aspect in the
moral career of refugeeship. It was, rather, entangled in the narratives,
whereby talk of the past, present and future became intertwined.
Sometimes, reflections and memories from the past were constructed as
projections into the future. How the participants ‘evaluated’ their
experience of refugeeship assisted them in visualising the future.
Although talk of the past and present is a representation, constructed in
conversation with me, the ‘future’ talk is a ‘projection’, whereby
participants express beliefs about how life will continue or what can be
hoped for, on which they draw on past and current events. However,
some participants reflect back on a long time of being a refugee without
seeing signs of progression towards the life they hoped to make for
themselves. The talk was not only characterised as talk of ‘beyond’
being a refugee, through forward looking projections, the talk also gave
insights into everyday life of people trying to move forward and recreate another kind of life and the continuous struggle for recognition.
Of the ten participants from England and the nine from Sweden, not
all had received refugee status at the time of the data collection. I
learned that two were refused asylum, one from Sweden, who
subsequently went into hiding, and one from England who was soon
thereafter deported. The data upon which the findings of this chapter
are based, include, interpretation of the talk of those who had received
refugee status 26. Some participants had recently received the status;
others had been refugees for some time, in certain cases up to 25 years.
This is not a quantitative study and therefore I make no claims to
statistical correlations between length of time in the new context and
building a new life in a way which constitutes a sense of beyond
refugeeship. In fact, the material is far more complex, showing that
peoples’ stories, as well as covering past and present circumstances, can
differ significantly and thus can affect how one talks about these
experiences. This chapter aims at showing the construction of future
projections in talk and the discursive work used to construct a ‘forward’
narrative as refugees. An interesting finding here is that those who have
had refugee status for a long period of time still project their talk of a
meaningful future forward. This indicates that many still have not
26
An analysis of the two participants who were refused asylum would of course give
important insight into the uncertainty with regards to the ‘future’ that asylum seekers
live with. However, this was not the aim of this particular chapter. An analysis of
asylum seeking talk can be found in Chapter Five.
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found opportunities but continue to look for openings and manifest a
continuous theme of hope.
8.2 Identity work for moving forward
The aspect of refugeeship on which I try to shed light here, is the point
where participants have moved beyond their situation as persons who
are still very much in the midst of getting to grips with the official
recognition of ‘refugee status’. Instead, the participants are now living
in their own housing, no longer having to share space with strangers.
Some may have enrolled on a college course others have started work,
and so on. Some of the participants have been in this situation for years,
in some cases 10, 15 or up to 25 years, while others have been granted
refugee status more recently, over the past few years. Besides the
practical aspects involved in creating a new life situation and moving
‘beyond’, what is evident in the data material, and illustrated in Chapter
Seven, is the concern to free oneself of the discourse-filled label,
associated with only being a refugee. Many illustrated the search for
strategies to do this, and to re-create an image in the eyes of others and
self of who one was and who one is.
8.2.1 Ridding oneself of the refugee ‘bit’
SW5 There is no comparison (.) what I was and who I am now but now
I try to remove the refugee to get rid of the refugee bit I don’t like to see
the refugee in me (.) I think if I succeed in my work the refugee bit will
go by itself if I started to work then I would forget I’m a refugee but if I
don’t succeed then I’m still a refugee
A discontinuity of what one ‘was’ is expressed here. This participant
worked as a professor and researcher before being compelled to flee.
‘What’ one ‘was’ is in relation to a sense of losing the core
identification, as professor, and feeling that it was replaced by the disidentification, refugee. Here the refugee ‘bit’ is represented as
‘unsuccessful’; that is to say, this participant saw succeeding in work as
a strategy for ‘getting rid of’ the refugee ‘bit’. Further on, I discovered
that this was only a first step towards finding a way to move beyond
being just a refugee. The first step often seemed to consist of trying to
discard or deny being a refugee altogether. Failing in this, occasioned
disappointment and so participants tried other strategies for moving
forward. A common strategy, already illustrated in Chapter Seven, was
turning to voluntary work or political organisations to feel less of a
refugee. This strategy was resumed when participants discovered how
difficult (or impossible) it was to ‘get rid of’ the refugee stamp.
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The next participant illustrates the journey to moving beyond being
only a refugee through education:
SW8 You feel the pressure to become something now (.) in this new
situation (1)when I was finished with my Swedish course I found out
that I had to re-do some parts of my education from my home country I
did this but then the problems began I sent in my papers to different
universities and nobody wanted me(.) for me this was a (.) a (.) a (.)
well very chaotic feeling (.) feeling I had to do this education (.) feeling
you have not got time you have to do this now you are getting older
and doing it then being told something else (.) I felt like there is no
communication between different departments but I thought I won’t
give up it felt inhumane that they had done this that they didn’t give me
this chance
Participant SW8 shows another way of casting off the refugee label
by completing her education aspiring to a future job and a possible
new life. The never-ending character of new challenges in this moral
career is illustrated when SW8 finds herself drawn into a new
justification struggle, this time in order to have her earlier and new
education recognised as a whole.
As we saw in Chapter Seven, most participants expressed feeling
uncomfortable about being seen as a refugee, despite the fact that one
could personally be quite proud of the fact that one was a refugee, as
someone who had survived. Part of the participant’s concern was to do
with the feeling of permanency experienced in being labelled ‘refugee’;
and again, how to move beyond being only a refugee. The participant’s
talk about how they anticipated that life would unfold as a refugee was
elicited by the question ‘can I ever stop being only a refugee?’ I
introduced the idea of the refugee status as a discourse filled label in
Chapter Six. The discourse of refugees is also drawn on in the
participants’ talk, of future identification. This next quote shows the
way discourse of the label as ‘permanent’ can be constructed:
UK1 I remember a friend of mine told me two weeks ago that if you
come to this country as a refugee (.) even if you live for years to come
(.) you will be seen as someone that just arrived that morning (.) I keep
asking him now why did you say this to me and he says to me because
otherwise you are just lying to yourself because in this country after
10,20, 50, 100 years to come it is just a fact that you will be seen as if
you came in the morning (.) for me I think I can say I support what he
says [ you don’t feel accepted] no no I can’t say I feel accepted (.) the
people er I am always the new person all the time I don’t feel accepted
UK1 expresses the difficulty in ridding oneself of the label and
articulates the notion that one will always be seen as a refugee, and not
recognised as anything other than a stranger. The label is perceived as a
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static identity, marking another important dimension of the moral career
of the refugeeship. The following participant draws an analogy with
disability when describing this, and again the story line of recognition is
illustrated:
SW5 Being a refugee is like a social handicap someone who can’t do
everything because of the handicap (.) I have all this competence but as
a refugee I can’t use it and a handicap maybe happens by accident and
what happened to me was not a choice (.) becoming a refugee is like an
accident has happened and now I’m socially handicapped
Here, the refugee label is constructed as a hindrance to moving forward,
a handicap. Participant SW5 talks about all the competence he has to
offer, but he feels that his contribution will not be utilised because he is
a refugee. Again the power of the discursive practices surrounding
refugees is exemplified. The difficulties of moving forward seem
largely to do with the labelling process involved in becoming and being
a refugee.
8.2.2 Fluid positioning: a strategy of identity work
The examples so far illustrate the challenges of identity work when one
feels the lack of a broader repertoire for taking up new positions (other
than only refugee). However, some participants have moved beyond
this in their refugeeship, discovering that moving on was not really a
question of ‘getting rid of’ one’s refugee identity, but rather about
finding a way to combine the refugee position with new positions. This
means not giving up being a refugee altogether, nor about becoming
completely British or Swedish:
UK3 integration isn’t becoming completely British you don’t have to
do that to be integrated you just (.)need to feel part of the society so for
example I have integrated into this society because I have been accepted
er well not just accepted (.) but I am also respected and that is all I want
[yes] I want to be respected and others to be respected er I’m fully
integrated also because I know (.) well not everything but almost
everything about XXXXX (place of residence) so I would say I have
integrated
There is a sense of progression in this excerpt, when this man says that
he ‘knows almost everything’ about his new society now, and he feels
respected today. This was something he did not express when he talked
about making the asylum claim. Several I-positions are taken up,
whereas others are resisted: I- as a successful integrator, I- as a
respected member of the community, I- as a knowledgeable citizen. He
resists however I- as a ‘full’ British citizen. What is interesting is the
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identity work of those participants who express a sense of agency in
becoming a successful ‘part’ of society. In these cases it seems to be
about combining different positions, whereas those who still feel on the
‘outside’ are more concerned with ‘ridding’ themselves of being seen as
a refugee. The sense of beyondness seems to lie in reaching the point
where the identity work has become about agency in negotiating which
positions to take up and which to resist, rather than dwelling on wishful
thinking about reinstating who one was, or ‘getting rid of’ the refugee
position.
Much of the talk around integration is related to inclusion and a
sense of participation. For my participants integration is a ‘feeling’ of
participation in the new society, and not a case of assimilation. Feeling
a sense of inclusion, sometimes expressed by the participants as
‘integration’, or feeling ‘part of society’, is articulated as something
which can be found in spaces of common interest with others.
Participation is according to what interests the participants, and
therefore participation is on their own terms and conditions.
The following participant has lived in England for more than 20
years, and despite his descriptions of constantly striving to make use of
his knowledge and competence, he has never found opportunity in the
way of paid work. He has, however, been very active in local and
international development projects and this has contributed to his
feeling himself to be a part of society:
UK2 I feel part of society (.) I do (.) I do (1) there was a science
competition er collaboration and you could join in and there were lots
of people there (.) it was good (1) it was like being in a community (2)
of course you meet certain individuals who say things to you but
personally I don’t care about that er:::er some peo::ple (.) there are
many sick people you know (.) sick people are saying these things (.)
even my wife has experienced this recently (.) one lady called her er
you know er Black and so on (.) er well really this is er well not
everyone does this and I do think these activities they er do make us
part of society I don’t think it is like we are being smashed or fought
against
Participant UK2 explained that he found a sense of community in
contexts which were meaningful to him and familiar in terms of his
training and experience. This gave a sense of inclusion.
I do think these activities make us part of society
There is a struggle described in this excerpt, between on the one hand,
feeling a part of society, in this case through a science collaboration and
on the other, of being reminded occasionally that there are people who
may not want ‘them’ there. He expresses the conflict of being positioned
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as ‘an outsider’, despite his own attempts to position himself on the
‘inside’.
8.2.3 Hindrances to identity work
In the talk of what it would take to feel acceptance and belonging, as
well as feeling that one can take up positions other than that of only
refugee, participants sought to understand what stood in the way of
feeling fully included.
Participant UK1 in this next quote refers to how long he has lived in
limbo, for example, before being granted refugee status:
UK1 I think because the life to being a refugee has been so long (.) so
difficult (4) I am British on paper, but I don’t feel that, er I feel that I’m
still that person (.) the person I was 8 (.) 10 years ago(.) I’m still that
person (2)
This participant lived in a refugee camp for 18 years before UN
officials and the British Home Office finally made it possible for him to
move to England. He spent his childhood and adolescent years living in
the camp. Officials from the UN and Home Office made several visits
to the camp over the 18 years, before UK1 and his mother and sister
were finally ‘chosen’. This long and drawn out wait to be granted
refugee status, is expressed as putting parameters on being able to move
forward, because the wait to being ‘chosen’ as a quota refugee, had
been so long.
This next participant who talked about the difficulties in finding
solidarity presented in Chapter Seven, with a past experience of prison
and torture and now living in a ‘normal’ context, he feels that ‘Others’
in ‘ordinary’ life can never understand his past situation. He explained:
SW4 I talk to a friend(.) or you and it helps me more than going to the
psychotherapist because I see that when I talk to a friend who has been
through this too that er the eyes are full of tears because of something I
said about torture or something I know that you care (.) feel(.) you
know I can just go to XXXXX (friends name) and talk for 4 or 5 hours
about our past and it really helps you know because he understands me
and I understand him. The psychotherapists they don’t know how to
deal with it (.) with what they are being told it is just a chock I don’t
blame them they can’t understand and it’s not their problem
So when I asked him how he copes with not finding understanding
outside the refugee domain, he explained that he draws on wider
ideology:
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SW4 These coping strategies (.) well I guess they have their ground in
that I identified myself with a larger societal movement because you
know as a political refugee a leftist political refugee you see the world
(.) not your country as a scene for class struggle so for example right
from the beginning I found an organisation XXXXX (name of
organisation) and I had my new friends no matter which part of the
world I was from
This excerpt is an example of identification work through combining
various positions as a strategy to move ‘beyond’. This involves taking
up multiple I-positions. Such as: political refugee, leftist political
activist and as a member of an organisation. Combining these positions
provides a sense of belonging and an opportunity to move beyond the
trauma of torture and imprisonment. The I-position of I- the veteran
appeared frequently throughout the narratives of refugeeship, often
starting with stories relating to the time after the turning point and
onwards. The participants position themselves as experienced in coping
with all the difficulties thrown at them and experienced in being able to
help other new refugees and asylum seekers through the system. By
doing so they created a meaningful space in the limited life situation,
and gave justification to their position as refugees. This position is also
taken up when the participants talk about how they ‘cope with’ moving
beyond.
8.2.4 Intersecting positions of belonging with positions on the
outside
Finding a new context with which to identify becomes a way of feeling
on the ‘inside’ again. A new political organisation or joining refugee
organisations becomes important for the identification processes in a
space in which one does not feel naturally included. The need for
participation and belonging shines through in these stories and for those
who had a professional or political background, this belonging and
participation is crucial to their sense of feeling competent again. The
participants, however, find this ‘ordinary’ context (see Chapter Seven)
difficult to ‘enter’. Those who do not feel part of society today, express
that they would like to be part of British or Swedish society, but it
seems that there is a ‘glass ceiling’ 27, which acts as a barrier to gaining
‘full entry’ to ‘normal life’. This notion of a ‘glass ceiling’ came
through implicitly when the participants talked about participating in
society, for example through voluntary work, but then hitting a wall in
27
The concept glass ceiling was coined originally within the discipline of economics
referring to limitations of advancement within organisations due to some form of
discrimination. It originally referred to gender gaps, later to racism and, more recently
the term has been applied to studies of disability and age.
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being unable to find new positions which represented their educational
or working history. Some of my participants expressed the closest to
being part of something ‘ordinary’, was by participating in helping in
refugee voluntary organisations:
UK6 I would prefer to get into British society you can meet very nice
people at the Red Cross (.) I have contact with them (.) they have been
very helpful (.) but the sort of people coming in I don’t want to know
them (.) The Red Cross has given me a sort of temporary position
helping out there (1) I’m looking for the normal life now
So, it would seem that attempting to find belonging in a context that
represents some kind of ‘normality’, of which to be a part, is a usual
aspect in refugeeship, once the practicalities of transitioning from
asylum seeker to refugee is complete, and one has come to terms with
the refugee label. It does encompass some existential dimensions which
are not about looking for work, housing or social belonging. Rather,
participants relate to a new space in the refugee situation that of
supplying time to reflect on one’s experiences and who one is today.
Survival was the priority before migration, and the asylum procedure
was shadowed by a new fight for being allowed to stay and prove one’s
case.
The next quote is an example of some of the identity work which
was present in the participants’ narratives, showing the way the
participants could try to make sense of their multiple I-positions and
almost arrange them in some sort of hierarchical order:
SW8 First I’m XXXXX (previous citizenship) yes I would say first I’m
XXXX but I’m a refugee (1) I will always be a refugee but that doesn’t
mean I’m not other things(.) I mean er my children er being a mother is
very important to me that is what I’m most proud of (.) my children I’m
very proud of my children (2) then of course there is my professional
status that is very important of course er who I am (.) er I’m XXXX I’m
a mother and then er other things
8.3 Meaning-making: past to future
Intersecting previous experience with new experience, involves the
participants in having to make repeated comparisons between her or his
situation as a refugee with that of non-refugees, and comparing the
‘old’ country with the ‘new’. The meaning-making involved in these
comparisons seems to be about trying to understand why it is so
difficult to ‘move on’ from the feeling of being ‘only a refugee’. The
meaning-making work seems to be about the participants’ hopes of
‘moving on’ in the new country. This ‘moving on’ project entails the
realisation that everything that was impossible after the turning point in
the country of origin and of not being able to complete the project of
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building democracy or follow other career paths and then encountering
a lack of opportunity in new country, seems to produce a deep sense of
disappointment, which characterises refugeeship.
One example of the way the participants made sense of why they ‘still’
felt like a refugee, was through constructing notions of democracy in
the new country:
UK1 For example democracy in this country er I’m not allowed to vote
I’m not allowed to participate in any political activity mm I mean like if
I wanted to become a MP or council or something then I’m not allowed
and after I have applied for a British passport I would be allowed [do
you feel that is undemocratic then?] mm no maybe not but it is an
example of why I still feel like a refugee here in this country (3) even
after this moment and when I get a passport I will still feel a refugee [so
do you think you will feel a refugee with a British passport?] yeah yeah
other people may think I’m British then (.) but for me myself (.) what it
means to me won’t change
Participant UK6 brought up notions of ‘democracy’, in reflecting on his
life situation as a refugee and trying to move beyond the feeling of
‘only’ being a refugee:
UK6 I try to read (.) now I have got my own computer I can work (.) I
like to work on my own or I go to the library and borrow books or read
newspapers using the computer (1) these are things you can do to help
yourself (.) a lot of things in this country are very very good (.) very
nice (.) I’m not just coming here to get money (.) I have been here four
years now (.) been on my own for four years (.) at the same time if you
look at democracy (.) there is a sort of democracy (.) but er (5) but I
can’t say it is how I would like it to be (.) you are allowed to say what
you want (.) freedom of speech is something they say exists but it is not
really like that they use it like a sword with two edges
There is quite a lot being said in this quote. The activities participant
UK6 describes such as reading, going to the library and using the
computer are expressed as things he does to ‘help himself’ as he has
been in England for four years now, and has not had the opportunity to
start work. He mentions that he has been on his own now during these
four years (this participant became estranged from his family, during
the fleeing process). Whilst expressing the value of services such as the
library, he reiterates that he has not come for money, something this
participant told me repeatedly throughout the interview, as did most of
the participants. He raised the subject of democracy, and seemed
hesitant to see his new context as fully democratic. What seems to be
expressed here is the limitations experienced in the new situation. At
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the same time, this participant, as many others, was keen to give
positive examples from the new country also.
The conflict present in the participants’ talk of being a refugee in these
societies, as well as thoughts about democracy, was common. Many of
the participants told me that it was not until having lived some years in
England or Sweden that one begins to reflect on one’s impressions of
democracy:
SW7 when you think about it (.) this society (.) you can’t compare to
XXX (country of origin) but it’s not paradise here (.) it can be hell here
(.) and the people too (.) some people (1) some people have lots of
money and others have nothing and this is just accepted there is
inequality here too(1) terrible things happen here too (.) it was a slow
process to realising this about Sweden (.) before you become part of
society you can’t see it anyway you think oh so nice my child has a
good life here (.) but eventually when you get into society and there is
(.) injustice (.) inequality (.) and you really have to fight all the time (1)
the surface is painted nicely (.) but when you go a little deeper it’s
terrible
The way in which this participant talks about democracy and the new
society was as though it was something that she ‘discovered’ once she
had become ‘part of society’. This was a common feature expressed by
many of the participants when talking about the new societies.
Reflections about the future were often linked to memories of the
past and reflections directed at the future often resembled a ‘summary’
of one’s ‘moral career’ of refugeeship. The following participant
expressed her journey through refugeeship as a traumatic experience,
which she acknowledges as part of her present life, but has learnt “to
cope with”. She expresses that her experience will always be a
prominent part of her life narrative, even when she is “old and grey”
and has grandchildren:
UK8 I lived a nightmare (.) a nightmare and (.) I’m glad I can cope
today (.) I know how to deal with it (1) I can come out of my dreams
when they become nightmares [mm] but in the middle of it I really
believe it (.) that he is here and he wants to kill me so it really is a
horror and I know I will be still talking about it when I’m old and grey
***to the grandchildren but I’m glad of where I am and I am pleased
for the people who helped me because if I hadn’t have had help (.) then
I would never have been here today
Participant UK8 begins with the past, describing life after the turning
point as a ‘nightmare’, and then goes on to her present situation
speaking about how she ‘copes’ and ‘deals with it’ today. Thereafter,
she projects into the future and ends by returning to the past.
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A similar construction takes place in the next excerpt, where
participant UK2 explains that he has paid the price of refugeeship,
something he experiences as having consequences for his life. However
he constructs a sense of continuity in saying that he will continue to
make a life for himself and not give up. Again, there is a ‘summing up’
of the consequences of refugeeship taking place:
UK2 like I said (.) I have paid for this (.) but I’m not going to give up
(.) I will make my own way and I have my faith
The data may be characterised as comprising of a number of metaphors,
which describe the various phases constituting the moral career of
refugeeship. As we have seen in Chapter Seven, it was not unusual for
participants who had received refugee status, to describe this as
‘winning the fight’. The ‘Fight is over’, ‘struggle’ and ‘hard work’ are
all expressions appearing throughout the participants’ narratives. These
expressions occur when constructing continuity in refugeeship. Ipositions of I- the optimistic-survivor are prevalent in the participants’
talk about fighting on, moving on, never giving up, and as someone who
helps themselves. Just as we have witnessed in previous chapters, it is
important for the participants to position themselves as independent
active persons, not as a burden to society, capable of creating a
successful life.
UK2: so you just carry on with the voluntary work and look for a job at
the same time as you get old er in the meantime (.) and the criteria for
rejection er rejection comes one after the other (2) er (1) so there are
new crises all the time you know (.) you know you can stay but then
you meet new problems so this is what life is anyway (.) struggling (.)
being hopeful (.) aiming for something better (.) this is important (.)
very important to be strong
He says “aiming for something better”, thus projecting his talk to the
future, but also ‘predicting’ the struggle he anticipates will continue.
The notion of having to find ways ‘to cope’ or ‘be strong’ in order to
be able to move beyond and continue to move forward, appears
frequently in many of the participant’s ‘futuristic’ expressions. UK8
explained at the beginning of this chapter that ‘coping’ was a necessity
in order to function and manage her life situation today. The following
participant, SW8, also expressed this moving forward talk, as a refugee,
and as someone who wants to build a new life for herself:
SW8 it’s like having to find a new system to arrange all your thoughts
and you think all the time about what has happened all these thoughts
you try to arrange them
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You have to find a way to manage the baggage of what has happened at
the same time create a new life but the feeling (.) the process to
becoming secure hasn’t been easy (.) it has been a big fight and er (2) at
the same time you can feel discriminated against and even if there are
laws against this how are you to prove it
I asked more about this experience of discrimination, and the notion of
moving forward was raised again:
I have experienced discrimination but it is hard to prove and it is a bit
like well also how much you want to care about it you can fight against
it all your life but er for me it is important to move forward too (.) it is
about a process to going forward
Making sense of the past and organising past experiences are looked
upon as strategies for moving forward. Knock-backs or hindrances
encountered in the current situation are also outlined as obstacles in talk
of ‘moving forward’. Organising past events and their meaning was
described by participant SW8 as something she needed to do in order to
create a new life. Coming to terms with what one has experienced and
finding a way to move ‘beyond’ these experiences also appeared in
Chapter Seven. When reflecting back on the time after receiving the
refugee status participants observed that this gave ‘time to reflect’ on
the enormity of one’s experience. So strategies may be perceived, in the
participants’ talk, as tools for ‘moving forward’.
Part of this ‘beyond’ aspect in refugeeship seems to involve a great
deal of reflection on where one was and where one finds oneself today.
8.3.1 Intersecting the ‘old’ country and the ‘new’ country
In participants’ talk of how one hopes to continue with life plans in the
future, it is not uncommon to refer to projects one had to flee from, or
that one had planned to carry out:
UK2 I would like to make connections possible you know (.)
development (1) I would like to do that (.) I would like to get a twin
school for er my first school where I was born (.) that is one thing there
is also an age (.) like concern support in my part of XXXX (country of
origin) so I’m thinking about if I can get support that I can organise (.)
to reach them this could be a way forward (.) to continue not losing
hope (.) I hope we can still be here but do something there (2) I think
most people as refugees try to do this
This excerpt shows how the participant tries to create continuity and
meaning to his refugeeship. He talks about this as something “most
refugees try to do”, enunciating how common it is for refugees to act in
this way in their attempt to sustain meaning concerning the flight.
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Renewing old projects which were abandoned due to fleeing or
creating new projects which connect the ‘old’ and ‘new’ countries were
accepted as ‘a way forward’, and to ‘continue not losing hope’. This
suggests that there is a continuous latent theme of trying not to lose
hope as part of the refugee situation. This theme of hope surfaced in
Chapters Five, Six and Seven. Participants disclosed that hope was
something one continuously drew on to manage the uncertainties
associated with fleeing and claiming asylum. Now ‘hope’ becomes
central to one’s projection forward.
Connecting the ‘old’ with the ‘new’ is talked about as a way to feel
connected as a person, with roots in one country, to which one cannot
return, and to feel resourceful in the new context. Connecting the new
with the old is done by pursuing different causes in the old country,
thus connecting the future with the past.
I introduced Justification as a central story line running through the
narratives of refugeeship earlier, and this is an underlying factor even
here. Being able to help those in one’s country of origin, gives
justification to the flight since it has led to the good of others, and not
just oneself. One understands why so many in this study continued with
voluntary work or political projects as to do with the lack of
opportunity in the new context. However, there is much more to this
continuity. One complementary understanding is to regard commitment
to voluntary and political work as a response to relieving some of the
shame felt about fleeing loved ones and political projects. Again the
story line of justification is present here, giving a reason for the flight as
something which not only gave protection, but also led to the
opportunity to change the lives of those left behind. Understood in this
way, one needs to pose the question ‘is there a beyond refugeeship?’
Some talked about the difficulty of being able to continue work on
issues to bring about change for the better in their countries of origins
from the new context. Others looked to see how their refugee situation
could be utilised in the new country to help others. The following quote
is an example of the strategy illustrated above. However, participant
UK5 focuses on those in need of support in the new country. This
includes other asylum seekers or refugees from their country of origin,
as well as those from other countries, but also British people in need of
support. The following participant volunteered at a British organisation
for female victims of domestic violence:
UK5 I’m not living in XXXXX (country of origin) now so I’m getting
further away each year (.) I feel er I’m getting further apart from the
causes (.) the tension in the people and even the generational issues (.)
so it is quite difficult for us to know what we can do for XXXX but here
(.) I’ve realised that’s okay (.) I can’t stay in XXXXX as a political
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activist (.) so I try to get involved again er you know to er work as a
refugee to empower other people to er gain their rights er to get
involved again er you know get them to speak out about the rights and
problems of being a refugee er also in this country
8.3.2 Positioning within ‘citizenship’
The last stage of the official refugee procedure is gaining citizenship
status. This involves receiving a passport and full mobility rights, as
well as the right to vote. According to British and Swedish citizenship
and nationality laws, there are various categories of citizenship
acquirement, with some differences between British and Swedish
procedures. The most obvious difference is the introduction of the ‘Life
in the UK Test’ 28 which involves passing a test about the United
Kingdom. On completion a ceremony is held in order to celebrate and
mark the occasion of receiving British citizenship.
The participants in this study did not really place much emphasis on
the gaining of citizenship; it was not raised as an important aspect of
their new life situation. However citizenship, as a notion was mentioned
and questions about subjective and objective aspects of citizenship were
raised, in certain respects resembling the participants’ approach to
gaining refugee status. That is to say, on the one hand receiving
citizenship was thought of as something official, on paper, but on the
other hand the participants did not necessarily feel that they were
citizens of England or Sweden, or ever would be. Could this be to do
with the abrupt manner in which they had been deprived of their
previous citizenship? Or do the participants still feel so on the outside
of society, that the issue of acquiring citizenship again seems
insignificant? It is reasonable to take the view that their hesitancy is a
combination of these things, something to do with feeling that one’s
roots are somewhere else. It could also have another explanation, which
the material seems to support, a sense amongst the participants of not
wanting to feel restricted to one kind of citizenship again, having given
up a citizenship and having to ask another state for protection.
Further explanation for little interest shown in the narratives about
gaining citizenship, could be the feeling that citizenship does not give
more ‘freedom’ than refugee status. As citizens one has the right to
vote. Citizenship implies becoming a member of a nation state.
However, this nationality is described as rather narrow by the
participants. Belonging to something more global has become a natural
aspect of their everyday lives. Some years have passed and with the use
of the internet and other technology it has become much easier for the
28
’Life in the UK test’ is a political initiative, not founded in British law
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participants to find ways to re-connect with the ‘positive’ sides of their
country of origin.
Whilst many of the participants express the feeling of not being
‘British’ or ‘Swedish’ they do take up a number of other positions, such
as “citizen of the world”, or “global citizen”, positions which are talked
about as being more comfortable. What the participants express as
being important to them is not being placed into one single group or
being confined to belong to one place. Rather, they talk about wanting
to feel the autonomy of being part of something wider than one nation. I
cannot help wondering if this is also connected to the disappointment of
having to leave one’s country because it could not offer protection.
Finding oneself without citizenship for so long becomes significant for
the way in which one subsequently re-approaches such a status
category. Being part of something broader than just one nation enables
one to form identifications one is more comfortable with, and which
would not pin one down to one set space of citizenship. Instead the
participants located themselves as belonging to something more
inclusive. Another reason why belonging to something wider is
important, lies in the fact that full acceptance is hard to find in only one
place. Combining different spaces is how the participants have often
found their belonging since becoming refugees.
The following participant exemplifies the point I’m trying to make
here:
UK2 I don’t want to talk about being a refugee most of the time (.) I
want to forget that I’m that (1) I don’t feel I am that I want to be seen as
a person who had to leave er well (.) I don’t want to think about it er
you know (.) well maybe we are coming over it now by saying well (1)
we are international (.) we are international citizens (.) citizens of the
world and by making sense of it like that (.) that er everyone is a
migrant you know **[**] you come into that (.) that helps er well it
depends on your understanding of things (2) for me it is like well I’m
international I can fit in anywhere now you know
Much like the way participants talk about integration as something they
feel is possible by engaging in various activities which produced a
sense of belonging to society, without ‘feeling’ Swedish or British, they
approach citizenship. The notion of citizenship is taken on board as a
type of identification, through participating in society, in the
participant’s own way. Participants appear to express a sense of
involvement in something wider, but without taking up the
identification, British or Swedish. Taking up the I-positions as: I- as
international, I- citizen of the world or I- global citizen, creates the
potential to ‘fit in anywhere’. I- the global citizen, I-as international or
I- as citizen of the world is embraced rather than I-as British Citizen or
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Swedish Citizen. When it comes to refugee status and citizenship, the Ipositions represented are nuanced. Although the participants say “I am
a refugee”, in terms of a position this is not fully taken up, it resembles
the way citizenship is talked about, where we find citizen of the world
is a position taken up.
Fitting in everywhere and finding a sense of belonging is certainly an
ongoing theme for the participants in this study, and they are creative
and agentic in finding ways to negotiate their identifications, and in
finding spaces in which to feel a sense of belonging.
8.4 The challenge of political activism/political refugee
contra an ‘ordinary’ life. Can the various positions be
combined?
There is another, rather special hindrance to moving beyond being a
refugee, perhaps the most interesting one. It features a moral dimension.
The moral dimension contrasts the hope in moving forward, with the
consequences of such a move. The very act of moving forward implies
a moving away from the causes that so many of the participants have
fought for, and dedicated their earlier lives to. This section is about this
moral dimension of continuing the political activism contra giving it up
in order to create something new and beyond. We shall consider
examples where the participants attempt to combine the two.
It was quite typical of those who had a background of political
activism to find belonging in such organisations in the new country.
These participants described becoming a refugee almost as an extension
of their earlier political activism. As seen in Chapter Seven, this space
in a new political organisation or commitment to voluntary work
furnished one with a broad repertoire of positions. My first
interpretations of the continued political activism, was to find belonging
and meaning, in a context of limited opportunities. This is probably still
a reasonable observation. However, the deeper I delve into these stories
of activism, the more I wonder if the stories of continued political
activism have an existential basis which involves a moral dimension. I
met participant SW4 several times and interviewed him formally three
times. The first two interviews were dominated by stories about the
importance of the movements he belonged to and his work as a leftwing political activist. On our third formal interview, he began to
express some consequences of his political involvement, in terms of
compromising access to what he called “normal life”, and imaging a
life beyond refugeeship. He talked about segregation and other
obstacles because of the way in which his political activism had
occupied his time ever since becoming a refugee. He was studying and
working part time as well as being engaged in politics:
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SW4 just imagine a normal Swedish person who wants to go to a disco
(.) food restaurant or something you know normal life but if we say no I
haven’t got time I have got to go to a meeting (.) it’s not good (.) you
haven’t got communication with the other world then you become like a
sect you know
Participant SW4 speaks of two worlds, the ‘refugee world’ and the
‘other world’. He contends that being confined to the ‘refugee world’,
leads to little or no communication with the ‘other world’. He questions
whether or not one can ever stop being a refugee, if you do not have
contact with the ‘other world’. He says ‘just imagine’ and paints a
scenario of having to say ‘no’ to a ‘normal’ activity, like going out to
dinner because you have to go to a political meeting. He points out that
this would perhaps not be tolerated in ‘normal life’ or would be seen as
strange. He went on to give several examples of the consequences of
political commitment:
I don’t know hmm I don’t think I think I have learnt er I don’t really
like this way of doing politics (.) they have their websites (.) for them
this website is the world (.) but it’s not the world (.) the world is around
us and now er there is you know things we can do in this country you
can find people outside of the network (.) you can become so narrow
minded in this (.) this organisation only belonging to this organisation
(1) for me I am part of lots of movements today not just for my country
for example for homosexual or environmental movements you know
and the working class movement (2) but it’s difficult you have conflict
within and with each other
SW4 expresses a lot of frustration in this excerpt and he does not feel
fully at ease with wanting to become part of something wider than just
the human rights network. Rather than breaking away completely, he
seeks belonging in several alternative organisations in order not to
become too ‘narrow minded’. He questions the need for the network,
now when there are competing causes in the new context.
Participant SW8 was a political activist in her country of origin and
talks about her need to flee due to political reasons. During the
interview she explained that she was no longer active and she explained
what this had involved for her:
SW8 Well I have had the opportunity to see something else than just
the political fight through moving here and meeting new people this has
given me a model to function differently and to be honest I have to say
(1) what can I do today (2) but I do feel ashamed for this (.) I have a
good situation today and I think about those who haven’t given up and
are still fighting and I feel ashamed I feel sorry for them I can feel guilt
but I think those who continue to fight needs this to feel a sense of hope
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that it will get better but the problem is this focus on the political takes
away the possibility to see another reality and go forward with life
As the excerpts above illustrate, finding a way to move on after some
time in the new society as a refugee is not straightforward. A dilemma
presents itself in projections over the future. For example, many of the
participants talk about ‘hope’ and ‘not giving up’, which may clash
with the aim of positioning oneself in relation to one’s work or to
participate in contexts which are not dominated by other refugees.
Whilst expressing a strong desire to create a new and meaningful life,
there is some guilt and shame attached to this process.
8.5 Summary
In summary, what is interesting to consider is, why moving beyond is
important to my participants? Firstly, gaining refugee status does not
automatically open the way for a new life in the new country. Neither
refugee status nor citizenship frees the refugee from her/his history of
having fled the country of origin, seeking a safe haven somewhere else.
Here, other people’s views and understandings seem to constitute the
most important hindrances. Secondly, the personal project of fleeing
one’s country of origin, to some extent, seemed to be incompatible with
starting a new life (for example beyond political activism). Here, the
impediment is based first of all on the refugee’s own views and
understandings. Starting a new life, in the sense of leaving one’s old life
behind, again raises the crucial question concerning one’s right. The
better then new life turns out to be, the more one questions one’s own
right to leave the old country and its people behind. In this sense the
refugee is trapped in a personal dilemma without a solution. If one
succeeds to start a new, and perhaps ‘better’ life, its moral basis is
questioned and if one resists building a new life one remains, to some
extent, forever in the refugee domain.
Thus, the participants’ who self-identified as political activists and
their talk about a life beyond being a refugee shows that there is no end
to the refugeeship. Even if one gains refugee status and becomes a
citizen in the new country, as well as manages to find inclusion in most
social settings in the new country, one will always question this success
to oneself.
On a more theoretical level, one could say that the obstacle to
reaching beyond being a refugee is to be understood in relation to the
reconstruction work in relation to sense of self, which the participants
continually engaged in. Barriers based on other peoples’ understandings
and stereotyping to a large extent can be understood in terms of
managing stigma attached to the refugee position. The barriers the
refugee maintains themselves concern the moral career and it’s never
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ending challenges against the refugees’ need to maintain a coherent
sense of self, where today’s’ self does not betray earlier selves or the
basic values which one used to evaluate oneself. Again, one should
remember that individual people express this in their own unique way.
Whilst some primarily express being positioned as a ‘stranger’ who is
not part of the new society or struggles with personal justification,
others, to some extent feel ascribed the position of ‘respected’ member
of society. What is common to all the stories is the way the participants
strive to move forward, some by transcending all the available and nonavailable resources in order to take up other meaningful positions and
create something new, others by trying to get ‘rid’ of the refugee ‘bit’
through seeking the opportunity to be categorised as ‘successful’ again
through political or professional affiliation.
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9. Refugeeship and the moral course of
events
As the final chapter of this study its focus will be on my findings of
refugeeship. My findings contribute with an illustration of the entire
asylum process. I highlight the official process of claiming asylum
from making a claim to being granted refugee status, and in some cases
even citizenship. In exploring this process as related to me by those
who have made an asylum claim, another process has surfaced. This
process is what I name refugeeship. When refugeeship is described by
my participants, the point of departure in their stories is not taken from
the point of making an asylum claim; rather they begin by narrating life
before a negative turning point in their countries of origin occurred. The
story of refugeeship does not end with accounts of being granted
refugee status or citizenship either; refugeeship is described as
continuous, though changing over time and space.
In summary, what is made apparent through the empirical study are
all the aspects of personal and social meaning-making regarding the
various events in refugeeship. A key finding is that each event includes
a moral dimension, for example the moral aspect involved in deciding
to flee, the questioning on entrance to the new country, the need to
prove one’s worth as a contributing refugee and the challenges involved
in moving beyond the political work in order to accomplish another
kind of life. These moral aspects encountered at each event, points
towards refugeeship as encompassing a larger moral theme. This is
reflected in the participants’ identification, dis-identification and
justification work, found present through the process of narrative
interpretation.
9.1 Generalisability and the limits of this study
Before going further with a discussion of my findings, I would like to
address what can be generalised in relation to the kind of analysis
employed here. Plummer (2001) argues that there is no superiority to be
gained through being able to make generalisations, and to follow is a
discussion about this concept in relation to my study. My aim – to
explore how refugeeship as a process is articulated and experienced,
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starting from life before leaving one’s country of origin, fleeing that
country and seeking protection in another, including the official asylum
procedure, and what it involves to be categorised as a ‘refugee’indicates that my research interest is first of all, theoretical. In order to
carry out such a theoretical analysis, I needed to collect a variety of
refugee and asylum seeker experiences and life conditions. Thus, my
selection of participants for the study was primarily directed at this aim
of selecting and analysing, the probable variations in the process of
refugeeship, exploring whether it is possible to identify any basic
common characteristics of this process. It is the result of this theoretical
analysis that is presented in this chapter. In terms of generalisation, this
theoretical analysis can be used for initially trying to understand other
cases of refugeeship. However, generalisability here should not be
understood in statistical terms. What is generalised is, rather, the
theoretical understanding of the basic dynamics of the meaning-making
which, I argue constitutes the basis for refugeeship in individual cases.
In a specific case, this generalisation can only be understood as a
working hypothesis, guiding our understanding of the new case. In
order to support the generalisation, we have to compare how similar
and different the new case is in relation to all the cases analysed in my
study. Conducting a comparative analysis of this kind, will show that
basic conditions in some cases are very similar and, thus, my theory
might be valid to a large extent. In other cases, differences are more
important and force us to develop a theory so that it covers new insights
provided by the new case. In short, the variations of the individual cases
in my study can be described for example in terms of: differences in
age, educational background, ethnicity and new country, i.e. England or
Sweden. Two countries have been included in the study, which has
helped me analytically to understand what is specific to the asylum
system. All my participants could communicate well in English or
Swedish. The majority in this study were educated and all were very
dedicated to political or professional projects, either before migration or
after or both. Some of them, from a young age had been in prison due
to political activity in their countries of origin or had been living in
refugee camps in bordering countries; and this was very much a part of
their refugee narratives. All still experienced the process of becoming a
refugee in similar ways. Those who had been in prison from
adolescence could not embark on education until they became refugees
in Sweden or England. Almost all of my participants did embark on
education in the new context, if they did not already have an education.
There are also variations that my study does not cover. I recruited,
for example, most of my participants through my contacts at the Red
Cross in Sweden or England, some of the similarity found amongst my
participants in terms of language ability and education, may be
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explained by the fact that making contact with help organisations to
learn more about their situation as asylum seekers or refugees was
something they had in common. Another source of recruitment was
through refugee run political organisations set up to carry on the
political work one had been forced to leave. Some organisations worked
to raise awareness for causes in their countries of origin. Again this
could explain the similarity found between my participants as driven,
initiative-taking, and independent individuals. The similar aspects in
their narratives can be explained by the fact they are drawing on the
same culturally available ‘resources’ in their identity work shared by
others in these voluntary organisations (Taylor, 2010).
Finally, I would like to point out that some theoretical
generalisations are also of significance for other contexts or fields of
study. It is arguable, for instance, that my findings shed light upon
what it involves to live under the special living conditions of limbo and
the conditions which come with leaving behind everything which is
familiar, and to take on the unknown. The findings are also
generalisable for what it entails to live with a ‘spoilt’ identity or to be
ascribed a stigmatised group. This may involve processes similar to
those of my participants, with regard to identification work, and in
terms of justification and the struggle for recognition.
9.2 Refugeeship
The events constituting the transition from fleeing one’s country of
origin to becoming a refugee and in some cases citizens, reflects a
chronological line of development. This is also illustrated by my
participant’s refugee stories. As indicated in the beginning of the
chapter, the participants also talked about another process which I refer
to as the refugeeship. My analysis of the refugee stories shows that the
process of refugeeship can be understood in relation to a fundamental
existential dimension, that I call the moral career. The challenges of the
moral career were directed towards the participants’ sense of self. In
order to understand the importance of the moral career, one must first
discover the loss of earlier identifications characterising the refugee’s
migration from his/her country of origin, to a new country. As
mentioned above, leaving one’s country of origin in fact means leaving
behind important parts of oneself. In my analysis of the participants’
refugee stories, I found that their narrative meaning-making was
characterised by a kind of positioning and identification work, where
one tried to re-construct a new sense of self. Secondly, strength of the
moral challenges was based upon implicit and explicit questionings,
which the participants experienced in connection to the specific events
experienced during the transition to their new countries. Here, each
event seemed to produce its own specific moral questions. When the
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participants talked about the time of the decision to flee from their old
countries, doubt and guilt were expressed more or less directly. These
feelings were most probably based on explicit questionings that they
had been faced with by relatives and friends in the country of origin.
Later during the official process of claiming asylum, the authorities
asked lots of explicit questions concerning possible hidden motives for
the flight and need for protection. The participants felt accused of
having tried to deceive the representatives of immigration offices. Even
after having been granted refugee status, the participants felt that people
questioned their motives and right to become ordinary citizens of the
new country.
Thus, the moral career is constituted by a gradual changing threat to
the participant’s sense of self, based first of all on a series of moral
challenges encountered through the process of leaving the country of
origin, claiming asylum, being granted refugee status and trying to start
a new life in the new country. Apart from the typical challenges, the
moral career was also characterised by the participants’ struggles to
manage the challenges through a continuing fight for justification. The
implicit and explicit moral questioning that the participants were
exposed to, concerned their right to do what they had done in
abandoning their country and loved ones, claiming protection from a
new state and finally claiming the right to start a new life together with
the inhabitants of the new country. In the figure below, I have tried to
illustrate the moral career, with the central need to reconstruct a sense
of self, in relation to both the challenges and justification work
conducted by the participants. The sequence of events constituting the
concrete transition from the old country and the granting of refugee
status in the new is illustrated as a basic dimension at the bottom of the
figure.
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Figure 1
Justification
A victim of
my country
A persecuted
person
Recognition and strong
moral status
A person in
need of
protection
A genuine
person
A
contributing
person
Remaining a refugee or becoming an ordinary person
with a strong moral status
Reconstructing sense
of self
Doubt/guilt
Sense of
abandonment
Sense of
being accused
Partially
regained
recognition
Partially
regained
recognition
Implicit/explicit questioning
Before
turning point
Decision to
flee
Flight
Claiming
asylum
Being
granted
refugee status
Life as a
refugee
Life beyond
being a
refugee
A key finding in the analysis of the refugee stories was that linear
development characterising the historical description of the specific
events of the transition, in the participants struggle to re-construct their
sense of self, was replaced by retro-and-prospective integration of
earlier and possible future identifications. These integrations have been
discussed in relation to the participants’ stories about who they were
before leaving their countries of origin (Chapter Five) and their struggle
to find a new ordinary life in the new country (Chapters Six, Seven and
Eight). Thus, the narrative meaning-making included an important
dimension of time-making, where the participants’ sense of self was
continuously re-constructed in relation to both the almost constant
implicit and explicit questioning that the participants were exposed to
throughout the entire process, and their dreams and plans for the future.
Let us examine some of the most important findings which contribute
to this understanding of refugeeship introduced above.
9.2.1 Lost and re-gained recognition
The key to our understanding of the participant’s need to reconstruct
their sense of self was of course to some extent due to that they simply
could not find ’ordinary’ positions and everyday functions in the new
country. However, what contributed to the erosion of sense of self first
of all seemed to be the loss of recognition that the participants
experienced when leaving behind their families, friends and other
people who had recognised them as good and valuable persons. This
was illustrated in Chapter Five through the construction of a great deal
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of explanation found in the participants’ narratives. The fact that
fleeing, meant abandoning one’s earlier social network reinforced the
threat that the flight constituted to the participant’s sense of self.
Recognition in itself includes a moral dimension. We build our sense of
self, to some extent on how we mirror ourselves in the eyes and actions
of other people. This does not just include an image of who we are. The
image is always evaluated in relation to the value and standards held by
the other person. Thus, the sense of self includes both characteristics of
who we are and evaluations of these characteristics.
The experiences of claiming asylum highlighted the loss of
recognition in a dramatic way. At this stage of refugeeship, everything
seemed to be questioned, identity was literally removed and the
participants even felt accused of having committed crimes. In this
sense, the granting of refugee status contributed with some new official
recognition in the new country. The participants felt that the long period
of innumerable questionings came to an end and finally they re-gained
some of the recognition they had lost. However, this did not mean that
they also re-gained the recognition of ‘ordinary’ people in the new
society. On the contrary, many people who they encountered still
regarded them with suspicion and distrust. Being a refugee seemed to
mean being recognised as a person in need of protection but not as an
‘ordinary’ citizen.
Justification was not only a way to manage the specific feelings of
‘abandoning’ one’s country or ‘proving’ one’s genuine need for
protection. Justification should in fact be seen as a basic characteristic
of the whole moral career, where participants continuously expressed
positioning work as a strategy in which to re-gain a sense of removed
recognition. Recognition for many of my participants was something
taken for granted in their earlier roles as political activists or
professionals, perhaps with the exception, as I have mentioned earlier in
this thesis, of those who were of Kurdish origin 29. Entering the asylum
system involved a removed recognition and a particular social
positioning, as well as an ascribed identification as someone who had
abandoned their country and sought protection. Justification, as a means
to re-gain recognition, as aforementioned still permeates everyday
encounters. In order to illustrate removed recognition, on entry to the
asylum system I return to Goffman.
Goffman has an interesting analysis of asylum, not however in the
sense of someone fleeing his/her country. Rather, in his book ‘Asylums:
Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates’
Goffman explored institutions as a place of safe haven and rest, but
29
The Kurdish participants in this study expressed a desire to find recognition for their
Kurdish identity in their new countries, as the country of origin denied them this.
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found that those admitted to psychiatric units, rather than experiencing
this as a ‘haven of rest’ instead experienced many of the reactions
similar to those experienced by prisoners sentenced to prison. Claiming
asylum, as we have already established means asking for protection and
therewith a safe haven. However, on entering the asylum procedure,
one finds oneself in a ‘closed community’, with limited rights and
stripped of all previous identifications.
Individuals entering total institutions (a concept I introduced in
Chapter Seven) find themselves deprived of the decision-making power
over simple, everyday routines such as: eating what and when you want
to; sleeping when you want to; working and making everyday and longterm decisions concerning your life situation. The official asylum
procedure which is experienced on entry to becoming an asylum seeker
has striking resemblances to a ‘Total Institution’. To begin with, many
of my participants had experienced on arrival in England or Sweden,
‘special asylum housing conditions’ (put in the words of the
participants), as part of being detained at the beginning of the process.
This took away everyday autonomy with regard to eating, sleeping,
working life, to name a few examples. Although it is common to be
placed into these ‘reception centres or ‘detention centres’ on arrival,
even those who have not experienced these places of residence, the
brutality of the official asylum procedure involves a sort of
institutionalisation in a more metaphoric sense. Just like the entrance to
prison, the participants find themselves being deprived of their
passports or other personal documents, having to give finger prints,
being photographed, giving their life history, receiving instruction on
the rules which apply to them as an asylum seeker. These include being
obliged to report to the police station on a regular basis, or a lack of
freedom of mobility. After having personal documents removed and
having been photographed, and given fingerprints etc., claimants are
issued with an asylum registration card (ARC). These aspects of the
lack of autonomy are referred to by Goffman as ‘Civil Death’ and he
claims that the consequences of these special living situations are the
‘contamination of the sense of self’. These concepts of Goffman’s are
of particular interest to my findings. Integration is well debated within
migration policy and politics, and is considered a key goal of the EU,
seeing integration as a marker of success when it comes to migration
policy. Goffman’s work illustrates the disruption which can be
experienced or the ‘dispossession of self’ when encountering systems
which place considerable constraints on one’s capacity to take up
familiar positions in relation to one’s identification. He writes:
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Here we begin to learn about the limited extent to which a conception of
oneself can be sustained when the usual setting of supports for it are
suddenly removed” (1961:148).
Goffman is referring to things that help us define ourselves when he
talks of ‘supports’. They are props, if you like, which help us to present
our desirable selves in interaction with others. This also led to the
removed recognition experienced by my participants on becoming
asylum seekers. A ‘civil death’ is experienced whereby my participants
find themselves not even recognised as a citizen of any country, but
rather, categorised only as an asylum seeker. Those categorised as an
asylum seeker find themselves not even recognised as someone with
rights. Hence, many of my participants expressed their existence with
the use of metaphors such as “animals” with no more rights than to
“breathe the air”, “eat” and “sleep”.
I introduced in Chapter One, the idea that what is new to today’s era
of asylum migration, is novel ways to label and categorise different
groups of migrating. The results discussed above, shed light on the
impact such categorisation processes have had on my participants
identification work and that the labelling system places constraints on
taking up new positions, which encroaches the path to ‘integration’ and
sense of belonging and participation.
9.2.2 Implicit and explicit questioning
The questioning my participants experienced regarding their intentions,
both from ‘Others’ and the questioning they directed towards
themselves, is essentially at the core of the various moral dimensions
involved in refugeeship. The implicit questioning refers to the
questioning of one’s intentions, and legitimate reason for abandoning
one’s country of origin. The questions are largely directed from the
refugee or asylum seeker towards him or herself. The participants
expressed the implicit questioning through the way in which they
continuously questioned their fleeing, on the one hand acknowledging
that they felt they had to flee and on the other, posing the question: was
fleeing really the ‘right’ thing to do? This implicit questioning was
largely reinforced, when the participants talked about finding
themselves facing a somewhat more explicit questioning when
encountering various social arenas. These included the official asylum
system, media and the everyday notions regarding asylum seekers and
refugees in the new country. A basic ground upon which the moral
dimensions of refugeeship rest, is the ‘doubt’ which one continuously
faces in questioning one’s own actions, as well as the doubt ‘Others’
can express towards ones’ actions. This was responded to by my
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participants through justification work. Justification is a theme which
permeates refugeeship.
All my participants talked about being questioned even after being
granted refugee status in the new country. The new country was
described by participants as ascribing them a stigmatising
identification. Through identification work, participants contest these
stigmatising notions of the asylum seeker and refugee. Although I have
not carried out a media analysis, these contexts are confirmed through
previous research on the social construction of asylum seekers and
refugee migration discourses, as well as by readings of media analysis
and migration policy, all things which make up the ‘context’ asylum
seekers and refugees are living in (Blommaert, 2001; Lynn and Lea,
2003; Bloch and Schuster, 2005; Every and Augoustinos, 2007; Leudar,
Nekvapil, Baker, 2008). An example of identification work,
exemplified in the empirical chapters, is the way my participants
expressed their hard-working nature and competence. This may be
understood as rhetorical positioning, speaking to the context asylum
seekers are using the welfare state’, for example. These contexts have
been identified through interpretation of the participants’ descriptions
of the ways they contest the negative notions about asylum seekers and
refugees expressed in the context in which they live. By these means,
the participants expressed that they felt discriminated against, their
education was not considered worthy and they were seen, for example
as coming to the ‘new’ country for financial gain. These expressions
indicate the context in which my participants find themselves a part,
and part of the rhetorical positioning is an act of speaking to this
context, resisting and contesting it. Responding to each moral
dimension is partly approached through justification work.
9.2.3 The series of justification
Through justification work, the participants attempted to manage the
challenge of how to maintain a sense of ‘recognisable’ self, at the same
time as incorporating his or her experience of the procedure of
becoming a refugee, something the participants felt partly proud of, as
well as ashamed of in relation to wider discourses of asylum migration
and their countries of origin. This identification work was accomplished
with great agency by my participants, through combining new and old
positions in an ongoing identity project. This involved making sense of
past experiences in order to create balance in the future, as well as
anchoring their narratives to certain identifications, such as ‘I-as the
successful lawyer’, ‘I- as representative of the people/political activist’,
I- as the orderly citizen. Drawing on these identifications assisted my
participants in maintaining a personal sense of self, at a time when an
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erosion of sense of self was experienced, largely related to the way in
which others viewed and treated them as asylum seekers or refugees.
Besides serving to maintain a sense of self, the identification work
functioned as justification for the flight and the need for protection.
Even long after being granted refugee status, my participants found
themselves justifying still, in everyday encounters their reasons for
making an asylum claim.
By taking up certain positions as an act of resistance to stigmatising
notions concerning refugees, in the new context, such as the asylum
seeker as a burden or the ever-increasing flow of refugees as a
contributing factor to social problems, my participants embarked on
positioning work in relation to the implicit and explicit questioning.
Although, not always overtly stated in the interviews with me, my
participants did assume these particular contexts, and positioned
themselves in relation to these, trying to form their own story lines in
response. Identification work was engaged in as a process of resistance
to the negative connotations linked to the conceptions of ‘refugee’ or
‘asylum seeker’, as well as a strategy to maintain a sense of self. Thus,
the main story line in the participants’ narratives could be understood as
a kind of counter-story line of justification. In fact, the story lines of
justification dominated what the participants said about the refugeeship,
making experiences of abandonment, guilt and lack of recognition
indirectly visible.
In this sense, the refugeeship is ongoing and does not seem to have
an end; rather the meaning ascribed by my participants, to the
experience of refugeeship changes, as do the moral challenges
encountered along the way, giving rise to the expressions of
justification throughout the narratives. Therefore, together with the
implicit and explicit questioning, justification is also at the core of my
findings concerning refugeeship. In fact, I argue that central to the
experience of refugeeship, is an ongoing and underlying theme of
justification, which follows those with the experience of becoming a
refugee, regardless of how well one may feel a sense of success, as a
refugee or not.
A significant part of the moral career of refugeeship entails this
sense of needing to continuously justify oneself, one’s actions and
space in the new context, as a response to the implicit and explicit
questioning central to refugeeship, and as a means to re-gain
recognition lost through leaving behind one’s identification framework
and coming to a context which ascribes them a stigmatised identity.
Apart from being questioned by the migration authorities and residents
of the new countries, my participants also clearly felt judged to some
extent by ‘Others’, for example, those left behind in the ‘old’ context.
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So what constitutes the ongoingness of justification as a
characteristic of refugeeship? Briefly, one could say, that justification
played out continuously in the narratives in the following ways:
Justification of the political project in the country of origin as an initial
cause of the migration; justification of the flight; justification to
migration authorities; justification as a ‘genuine’ refugee and
justification for ‘moving beyond’ political activism and creating
another kind of life, as an ‘ordinary’ person and not only as a refugee,
as well as justification for the right to a space in the new country. One
of the theoretical points of departure in this thesis is the assumption that
social and personal identifications are entangled, I now return to this
theme in relation to the matter of justification, showing stigma is not
treated only as an individual psychological construction, but also
collectively constructed (Howarth, 2006).
In the interview situation, the ‘justification talk’ was directed or
orientated towards different ‘audiences’, what Billig (1987) refers to
with his concept of rhetorical talk and anticipated criticism. Part of the
response can be understood as being a response which was orientated
towards an official audience, such as asylum institutions, political
organisations and the new society as a whole, as well as persons
encountered along the way or media and political debate. In this sense,
the response, although directed towards ‘anticipated’ criticism, was also
constructed against the background of past experience, which involved
a great deal of real accusation, as asylum seekers and even as refugees
today. Those who are then granted refugee status, whilst experiencing
‘anticipated criticism’ also find themselves facing a new moral
challenge, that of:
Do I have the right to start a new life or is it my duty to continue the
political activism, help others in my country and in the new country?
The challenge, again, is that of justification; how do I justify to myself,
and ‘Others’ the right to a ‘better’ life? My participants continuously
presented the migration, not as a choice, but as a decision they had felt
compelled to make. The participants in this study also emphasised the
migration as a necessity and not as a luxury; that is to say, not for the
sake of a better life standard, but rather as a life-saving measure. In this
sense, my participants expressed a sense of conflict over the issue of
‘moving beyond’ and, as presented in Chapter Eight, one way of
solving some of the conflict felt, was by continuously being involved in
projects which benefited other asylum seekers and refugees in need. A
moral challenge was encountered in wanting to succeed in the new
context, while still appearing conscious of the needs of others.
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This conflictual dialogue was not orientated primarily towards an
official audience, but was more of personal, reflective meaning-making.
This was concerned with being at ease with the decision one felt
compelled to make regarding fleeing and now starting a ‘new life’. The
point I attempt to make here is the complex interaction between a more
inner existential talk and the outer rhetorical talk, and that the
individual and the social have an ongoing interaction.
The results of Chapters Five, Six, Seven and Eight has been the
identification of: self-presentations, as an attempt to upgrade the ‘spoilt’
identity, explanation, sense of abandonment, erosion of sense of self,
sense of mistrust, the attempt to create new opportunities. These
findings are understood as involving moral challenges in refugeeship,
which to a large extent contributed to the subsequent need for
justification. These findings have included exchanging a sense of
recognition and strong moral position, experienced in the country of
origin, for a series of moral challenges such as: guilt and doubt, sense
of shame and abandonment, accusation, proving ones ‘worth’ in the
new context and finding ways to combine political activism (which
partly entails being limited to refugee domains) and creating a new life
beyond being a refugee and feeling one has a ‘right’ to this.
As we have learnt, it was extremely common for the participants to
have a past of political engagement, which involved belonging to
political organisations. Often, fleeing was expressed initially as a sense
of abandoning these organisations and their political projects when
moving to England or Sweden. It therefore seems reasonable to
understand part of the challenges of ‘moving on’, as something intrinsic
in the commitment to the political activism of these organisations.
Some of the organisations the participants were involved in also made
the flight to safety possible, so a feeling of wanting continuously to
support the needs of others in the new and old contexts, can perhaps be
understood as ‘paying something back’. Graham and Khosravi’s
research supports this notion and they explain:
Political exiles suffer most from a feeling of guilt. They left - some of
them say ‘abandoned’- their friends, families and their homeland in its
hour of need. They express a strong desire to return and ‘pay back’ their
‘debt’ (1997:118)
Even those who were not politically active, can feel a sense of
responsibility towards their countries of origin, now as refugees living
in a new society and becoming even more aware of some of the
challenges their countries of origin face. This sense of ‘abandonment’
of the political cause or loved ones, also raised issues of disloyalty,
giving rise to the great deal of justification outlined so far.
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Chapter Eight showed that various strategies were employed by the
participants in moving forward, such as making meaningful
connections between her or his ‘old’ country and the ‘new’. If this was
difficult to achieve, some found ways to support others living in the
new context. These strategies also have a moral aspect running through
them, whereby the participants appear to justify the ‘abandonment’ of
certain projects in their countries of origin, but also abandonment of the
old life, for a ‘safer’ life. I cannot help feeling through all the
conversations I have had with the participants and many other refugees
and asylum seekers that this is a significant part of their meaningmaking processes. That is to say, making sense of the conflict of feeling
compelled to flee, at the same time having to rather abruptly abandon
people, places and political and human rights causes, to save ‘their
own’ lives, is an ongoing aspect of their lives today and therewith, an
underlying existential characteristic of refugeeship.
9.3 Moral Career
As illustrated in figure 1, the fundamental dimension of the refugeeship
is understood as a moral career, or more specifically as a loss of one’s
rights as a refugee in a new country. The moral career here refers to
issues of what is considered right or wrong for my participants. In
relation to current values, this is influenced partly by the participants’
beliefs about how they are viewed by others, and partly how he or she
views him- or herself. The refugeeship is not just defined by the various
events such as fleeing or being granted refugee status, but rather by the
values attached to these events and the moral challenges faced at each
event. Part of the value given to the events and choices are how one
feels about these events and choices. But what has also become clear in
this study is the value given by my participants to the choices and
events of refugeeship, has also been influenced by the silent accusation
encountered with certain institutions and social systems.
9.3.1 Moral career and need for justification
After the turning point (referred to in Goffman’s terms as pre-patient
phase), the participants describe the beginning of the moral career, one
which was strongly characterised through entrance to the asylum
system (the phase Goffman calls inpatient phase). The moral career was
characterised by the fact that the asylum system, initially, gave no
opportunity to gain recognition as an asylum seeker. Therefore
attempting to gain back earlier recognition was conveyed through the
repeated expressions of warranting justification for the flight. This was
made clear through the participants’ descriptions of the demands the
asylum system placed on them in terms of questioning one’s identity
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and credibility and placing parameters on taking up other, more
desirable I-positions as refugees and citizens in a new ‘home’ country;
ultimately, placing constraints on being able to create a new, more
positive moral career.
As indicated throughout the findings laid out in the four empirical
chapters, many of the themes identified in the participants’ narratives
referred to changes regarding their position repertoire, as a result of the
changed relations to ‘Others’, as well as the change in repertoires
available in terms of taking up new I-positions outside of the ‘refugee
domains’. This is perhaps unsurprising given the participant’s
experience of fleeing their country of origin, which involved a concrete
break from people and places including core identifications, such as
medical doctor or political activist. However, at a basic experiential
level, the narratives also seem to refer to something much more
complex and fundamental. I name this experiential finding, ‘The fight
for justification’. This is carried out by taking up justifying positions
and resisting others when talking about leaving one’s country of origin
and asking for protection in another, and indeed over the positions
taken up as refugees, such as volunteer or political activist. These
positions are explained as necessary in order to continue to ‘do good’
for one’s country of origin, and contribute to the new context. Part of
trying to regain more positive I-positions, is in response to a sense of
removed recognition and as a way to prevent the erosion of sense of self
which began on entry to the asylum procedure.
9.3.2 Refugeeship and the sense of self
As indicated by Goffman and Harré, a moral career concerns an
individual’s identity, especially the tension between ‘Self’ and ‘Others’,
more specifically, between the refugee and the dialogues which make
up the context in which the refugee finds him- or herself living. Such
contexts are informed and influenced by media and political debate,
which in turn inform common sense notions of refugees and the
construction of certain macro-level story lines, such as the asylum
seeker as bogus or looking for financial gain. The dialogue between
refugee and ‘Other’ contributes to the removed recognition. It creates a
sense of shame over being seen as a refugee or asylum seeker, as a
result of the positioning of refugees and asylum seekers as people who
are potentially ‘cheating the system’. Howarth (2002) in her article “So,
you’re from Brixton?” shows how the struggle for recognition pervades
the lives of young people growing up in Brixton 30 and their everyday
30
Brixton is a multicultural suburb of London and has been victim to racial abuse- for
example, in 1999 the area was bombed by a single-handed extremist (Howarth, 2002)
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experiences. The results show how young people construct their
identity through and against the representations of ‘Others’, the
strategies used and the effects on self image and self-esteem. A further
finding is the way the young participants of this study join forces to
develop social and psychological resources to protect themselves
against such prejudices (Ibid.). My participants responded to the
interaction they encountered through justification in their positioning
work, such as by referring to the position of independence before the
turning point, or as someone who had not come looking for ‘luxury’.
Most of my participants, and other refugees I have spoken with, live
with a sense of having to justify their abilities and worth in the new
society, however, many are creative in conceiving new positions which
combine their sense of being a refugee, (in terms of what being a
refugee means to them), and their positions in ‘ordinary’ life,
contributing to a re-gained sense of self and recognition. An important
expression of the justification work found in the participants’ refugee
stories is that they present themselves in relation to the questioning they
are exposed to, as a response to questions concerning doubt, guilt, their
decision to flee; they presented themselves as victims of oppression in
their countries of origin. In the same way they present themselves as a
persecuted person when they felt questioned for having abandoned their
countries of origin. When encountering the asylum system they present
themselves as genuine as opposed to ‘bogus’ and in becoming refugees,
they present themselves as a resource, contributing and hardworking, as
a response to an accusation that asylum seekers and refugees are a
burden on the new society.(see figure 1).
9.4 England and Sweden- two different contexts
Although this study was never intended to be a comparative study in
any traditional sense, the fact that data were collected in two different
contexts does deserve some attention. I will present here the most
striking similarities and differences and try to understand the impact of
the context on the narratives of refugeeship.
As outlined in Chapter One, asylum migration law in Sweden and
England is influenced by migration policies of the European Union.
Another influential body is the United Nations Geneva Convention for
refugees, which gives the definition of who can be considered a
refugee. This definition is used by local Swedish and United Kingdom
migration authorities when interpreting asylum claims. A striking
finding, regardless of whether or not my participants had claimed
asylum in Sweden or England, was that they experienced the asylum
procedure in similar ways. The events and the derogatory treatment
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experienced during the claimant period were articulated in the same
way by all the participants, and played out in the same way in
identification work. In the results chapter’s quotes are differentiated,
using SW1 and UK1 etc. and illustrate the similarity in the way
participants talk about their situations. However, the contexts to which
my participants came were different. England and Sweden are two
different countries, with their own historical, political and societal
structures. They have their own migration narratives and their own
migration discourses. These are informed by political debate and policy,
which between the two countries differ. Although the participants
experienced the actual asylum procedure in similar ways, their talk of
being refugees in the two different countries- England and Sweden does
differ in some respects. I have not studied empirically the two different
countries in terms of history, politics and societal structures. It goes
without saying, however that contexts influence individual experiences.
Previous research included in Chapter Two, as well as policy
documents; reveal differences in the two countries 31 .This supports my
interpretations of the way in which participants have sometimes talked
differently as refugees in Sweden or in England.
A significant difference was the emphasis given to democratic
ideology and notions of equality by the participants living in Sweden.
Sweden as being ‘not as equal or democratic as it claims’ came through
in the participants’ talk of being a refugee there. Swedish rhetoric
places a great deal of emphasis on democratic practice and this is
perhaps why the participants living in Sweden positioned themselves in
relation to this rhetoric. Norman (2004) referencing to Rabo (1997)
writes:
Equality is a central precept in Swedish legislation and political rhetoric
as well as in Swedish cultural notions about being a person and about
‘society’ and Swedes may be tempted to think of Sweden as the most
equal of all nation states. (2004:224)
Norman goes on to write:
Fairness and solidarity are closely linked to the conception of equality.
The social good should be fairly distributed through the solidarity
workings of the state and its citizens. (Ibid)
31
Some examples of differences in local refugee policy is the introduction of the life in
the UK test. No such test exists in Sweden. England does not give free language courses
on a national level to all refugees, although local colleges may offer some classes. In
Sweden language courses are given on a national level (SFI), these are financed by the
government and attendance gives a monthly allowance to students. I found there to be
more governmentally funded services for refugees in Sweden. In England refugees were
more widely dependent on charitable and voluntary organisations.
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The disappointment of not experiencing a concrete manifestation of the
political goals, such as ‘democracy’, was found in the talk of many of
the participants living in Sweden, but was not common in the data
collected in England, with the exception of one of the participants
living there, who was a diplomat working outside his country of origin,
when the war in Iraq (2003) broke out. The participants in England
found themselves in a context where the discourse of asylum seekers as
economic migrants is strong. The concept ‘bogus’ has arisen in relation
to asylum seekers, implying that asylum seekers are ‘false’, ‘phony’
and ‘trick’ the system. The participants in England directed their talk to
this discourse, constantly positioning themselves as hard-working,
genuine and contributing to society. Although talk of ‘democracy’ and
‘equality’ or ‘the genuine refugee’ was present in the narratives of both
those living in England and Sweden, the emphasis was distributed
slightly differently, depending on the context in which the participants
were talking. As I pointed out in chapter One, although England has a
history of migration, dating back far longer than that of Sweden,
Sweden does have a longer experience of asylum migration, and the
debates on this kind of migration include the discourse of Sweden as
having an ‘open, generous system’. I make no claims about the
‘truthfulness’ of this, but what I do postulate is that this Swedish selfimage colours the contexts in which refugees in Sweden find
themselves a part. Norman (2004) found in her research on Equality
and Exclusion: ‘Racism’ in a Swedish town, that the construction of
‘spreading the burden’ in the establishment of a refugee reception
centre in a small town in Sweden, displayed the notion of refugees as a
local resource. At the same time, refugees were also betrayed by
government policy as ‘a problem’ to be solved. Migration debate in
England, although containing similar rhetoric as in the Swedish
governmental policy is different. A UK proposal has been made to tag
asylum seekers during the claimant period in order to be able to trace
and more easily deport them on the occasion of a failed asylum claim.
Other measures which emphasize asylum seekers as persons under great
suspicion have been implemented. Clearly, more research is needed to
understand the impact such political or media contexts can have on
seekers of asylum or refugees. We need to know more about how social
knowledge is created and what impact this may have in creating the
contexts in which refugees and asylum seekers find themselves living.
Howarth’s research presented above supports this.
190
9.4.1 The contested context of asylum and the sense of self
To understand more about the dialogue between refugee and their
context, I refer to the work of Harré and Moghaddam (2003). They
write about personal identity as being our own experience of the ‘self’,
and collective identity as the context in which personal identity can
develop. This understanding of the self-concept sheds light on some
processes made visible in the data collected for this thesis in which the
participants find themselves ‘involuntarily’ members of a particular
group, that group being asylum seekers or refugees. The participants
compare themselves to ‘Others’ within the asylum group, often disidentifying with the characteristics of ‘other’ asylum seekers and
engage in positioning work which resists the connotations common to
the asylum seeker or refugee concept. They also make comparisons
between the group ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘the rest of society’, by giving
examples of how asylum seekers’ rights are impinged, in ways that the
‘rest of’ society does not have to endure.
The participants in my study gave rich descriptions of his or her
‘character’ before migration, both in terms of how this was experienced
personally and collectively. By their accounts alone, most of the
participants appear to have experienced positive personal and collective
identities, with the exception of those belonging to marginalised ethnic
groups such as Kurdish people. Being categorised as an asylum seeker,
not only puts constraints on being able to form new personal and
collective identities, through work for example, it also comes with a
marginalised collective ‘image’. Before the turning point, in their
countries of origin, many of the participants could call on several
collective identities, such as profession, nationality, culture, and various
extra-curricula activities. As an asylum seeker, most of these
identifications are expropriated which means there is little to draw on
when it comes to expressing a self-concept (Taylor et al, 2003). It is in
this sense that the participants find themselves in a state of uncertainty,
not easily being able to resume previous professional or political
positions. However, at the same time they are unable to self-identify
with the characteristics commonly ascribed to asylum seekers and
refugees. It is at this point that creative positioning work is called upon;
to maintain a personal sense of self and a new positive moral career.
Experiencing the loss of an established collective identity can mean a
compromised personal identity, Taylor et al postulate:
Collective identity is rationally and psychologically primacy and
therefore is the most important component of self-concept. For groups
that have a well-defined collective identity, attention naturally turns to
personal identity and esteem. But when collective identity is
191
compromised in any way the entire self-concept is jeopardized (Taylor
et al in Harré and Moghaddam, 2003:202).
A compromised self-concept is arguably created in this space of
asylum, whereby one is not accepted for who one was, who one is
today or who one might be tomorrow. The popular discourse of a
refugee or asylum seeker does not tend to include a successful
professional person and therefore the participants found themselves
working hard to convince others of their educational, political and
professional qualifications. At the same time, they found themselves
being positioned in ways which did not equate with how they saw
themselves. This corrupted the sense of self in the eyes of ‘Others’ and
may lead potentially to an uncertain personal identification. Personal
identification, according to Taylor et al, is describing ‘who I am’. This
is questioned as an asylum seeker and more importantly the asylum
seeker finds her or himself in a position of not being able to live up to
their personal identity, due to the constraints placed on taking up other
desirable positions in the new context. An essential element of the
participants’ personal identifications is about being hard-working and
competent and contributing to society. The new context does not
provide the conditions necessary for sustaining this personal identity,
which can, according to Taylor et al. (Ibid) involve negative
consequences for ‘self’. This finding is supported by Leudar et al.
(2008), who in their research on hostility themes, found present in a
media analysis carried out in the United Kingdom the effect of these
hostility themes on asylum seekers’ and refugees’ sense of self (see
Chapter Two for a summary of Leudar et al.’s findings).
These attributes and positions which gave my participants a sense of
worth in their countries of origin were left behind. For example, the
things they used as comparisons in making their evaluation are no
longer available in the new context, such as ‘my own’ group or subgroup. Collectively speaking, the characteristics the participants shared
with certain groups, before migration, contributed to their collective
identification; however, the desirable group has been replaced with the
group ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’. This is a space of limbo in terms of
identification and is a challenge, as collective esteem arises from group
membership.
So how is this challenge dealt with by my participants?
9.5 Transcending ‘old’ and ‘new’ – mixed identifications
Through creative positioning work, my participants attempted to deal
with loss of agency, caused by the flight, and by how they are viewed
by others, through creating something else. This was not just about reconstructing the ‘old’ life situation, nor was it about just adapting to the
192
new context. Rather, it was about integrating the various spaces and
experiences one had met with in life, and creating other meaningful
positions. The positive and negative aspects of the narratives,
introduced in Chapter Five, were present in the narratives appearing in
Chapter Eight. They were included in talk of the person who had
survived, and as someone who perseveres. The negative aspects of the
narratives were played out through continuous expressions of the
challenges to becoming the ‘lawyer’ or the ‘professor’ again, with
repeated talk of ‘settling’ for something ‘in-between’.
The desire to create something beyond is expressed, but the
participants raise a number of hindrances and give accounts of the
‘challenge of moving forward’. The looking ‘beyond’ and maintaining
a sense of hope and optimism seems to be an important side of the
positive aspects in their narratives. Westin (1990) makes a similar
observation in his study, Encounters: the Uganda Asians in Sweden.
This study showed that the road to re-creating the earlier, appreciated
life was encountered by hindrances along the way. My participants
employed a master strategy here, and instead tried to create something
beyond the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. For example, one of my participants
who was a human rights lawyer in his country of origin, now unable to
practice law in Sweden, took up the position as ‘legal adviser’ to other
new asylum seekers, by helping them prepare their case, or by
accompanying the new asylum seeker to migration authorities or a
lawyer in the field of asylum law. This participant explained that by
doing so he made use of his professional, legal background, in a context
he had personal experience of. Another participant living in England,
having experienced extreme trauma during the Rwandan Genocide,
wrote a book, Miracle in Kigali- The Rwandan Genocide, a survivor’s
journey. This participant felt that this helped her make sense of her
‘old’ experiences and trauma and move on in her new situation.
Nyberg, E. (1993) found in her study, Migration Families with
children: Family relations in a changed life situation that, the processes
described in moving forward, were that of ‘recreating’. Migrants’
attempts to ‘emotionally rebuild’ meaning in their new existence,
competence, self-esteem and companionship are illustrated in her study.
These processes are illustrated in my study too. Although in the case of
those who defined the refugeeship as having strong political
connotations this was more complicated, as strong moral challenges
were attached to it, including issues of guilt and shame.
The process of continuity and discontinuity is illustrated in Chapter
Eight, and encompasses various aspects. First the participants described
‘ridding oneself’ of being a refugee. This was expressed as challenging
but also disappointing. As a result, some participants became more
deeply involved in activism or other voluntary work. These activities
193
reflected back on by some, as restricting one’s opportunities to take up
other positions. In fact, some participants were fully aware of this as
limiting them to the ‘refugee domain’. The counter-strategy which was
described as successful was complementing the refugee identification
with other new identifications. This implied broadening one’s
identification repertoire, leading to a sense of belonging to something
wider, such as ‘citizen of the world’ or ‘global citizen’. Here, we
witnessed the awareness and agency of the participants in creating these
new identifications, showing how far they had come in their
identification work in creating something new and beyond. Identifying
with the notion of global citizen, gave them the opportunity to feel less
like a person in exile, and instead as someone who moved between
various spaces. However, as some of my participants pointed out, this
was also a ‘solution’ to the challenges of being a refugee. That is to
say, living in exile meant for some being a person of a certain origin,
from a distance and without actually travelling to the country of origin.
At the same time, ‘British’ or ‘Swedish’ was impossible to identify
with. Therefore, being ‘global’ was the solution. One participant
explained that seeing himself as ‘global’, meant feeling more ‘normal’
and more ‘international’, with fewer of the constraints that the negative
connotations associated with the ‘refugee’ label. Nyberg, C. (2006)
showed in her study Pluricultural identifications in a Swedish-UgandanIndian context people’s capacity to form multiple identifications or in
Nyberg’s terms, Pluricultural identifications and move between various
social categories in agentic social identity work, even if this was not
always an uncomplicated process.
9.5.1 The agentic capacity of my participants
I have claimed throughout this thesis that people are agentic in their
identification and positioning work, and not just dependent on wider
power structures for gaining recognition. The participants have
repeatedly shown that they are in possession of agency throughout their
descriptions of their experiences and, more importantly, through
responses to their life situations. They also demonstrate agency and
capacity by engaging in ‘creative’ meaning-making, when it comes to
understanding the totality of their experiences. For example many have
begun to turn the negative aspects, experienced at the point of fleeing,
to something positive. I gave an example of this ‘creative meaningmaking’, found in the way the participants take up the position of
‘global citizen’ or ‘citizen of the world’. Taking up such a position,
shows creativity in developing new categories or repertoires. This
makes it possible for participants to exceed being positioned in a
194
particular moral space, and instead to become part of something far
greater and wider, than that of ‘Just’ ‘Swedish’ or ‘British’.
Graham and Khosravi (1997) in their article about Repatriation and
Diaspora culture among Iranians in Sweden showed that not feeling the
restriction of a particular country’s border was important to one’s
opportunity and possibility as Iranian emigrants or political refugees.
They write:
It is the possibility of moving from country to country within the
diaspora as it is developing, and not that of becoming rooted (or
incarcerated) in a particular place, which is important. (1997:131)
An important aspect of creative meaning-making amongst those with
the experience of being deprived of their ‘homeland’ seems to lie in
opening up the options and opportunities beyond the restriction of
creating a ‘new’ homeland. Instead, it is feeling a sense of flexibility to
move freely between borders and to identify with the notion of citizen
of the world rather than as a citizen of one’s country of origin or the
new country. This is understood as an act of agency. It shows up in
identification and positioning work, and it is a strategy for creating a
new, more positive moral career. The research presented in Chapter
Two illustrates the social positioning of asylum seekers and refugees
through various hostility themes. Leuder et al (2008), for example,
shows the way refugees and asylum seekers can direct their talk
towards such constructions. As found in the research presented in
previous research Chapter Two, this thesis also found continuity in the
participants’ talk of who they were stressing positive attributes of hardworking and contributing. But a discontinuity, was also evident in talk
of a positive life situation which included family, working life, political
engagement and so forth. These themes of continuity and discontinuity
include: 1) descriptions of highly valued I-positions and a life situation
before the ‘turning point’ 2) a turning point, which involved a drastic
change of status, 3) this is followed by ‘triumphant talk’, having ‘won
the fight’ 4) comments on implications of refugee status 5) finally a
return to talk in a somewhat negative tone, about a lack of opportunity
to fulfil ones’ dreams and to become ‘successful’ again or indeed at
least to lead a ‘normal’ life. Over time, however, creative meaningmaking allowed the participants to transcend the restrictive categories
that they experienced earlier, and to engage in the flexible broader
process of positioning, permitting one to take up many different
positions, while at the same time maintaining a sense of self.
195
9.6 Final word
This study explores what meaning the participants ascribe to
refugeeship and how refugees and asylum seekers articulate the notions
of fleeing, claiming asylum and ‘refugee status’. My research interest is
to ‘get at’ an understanding of this procedure, what it entails to flee
one’s country, encounter the official legal asylum system and to live as
a refugee in the new context. Refugeeship is a term I coined to capture
the existential processes of fleeing, claiming asylum and being granted
refugee status. A more encompassing definition of refugeeship can now
be presented. I understand it as a series of moral challenges, starting in
the country of origin and continuing long after refugee status is granted.
I argue that refugeeship is a space in which creative meaning-making is
a continuum of incorporating the multiple positions which come with
this experience, supporting the notion of the ‘identity project’ as an
incomplete work in progress (Taylor, 2010).
It is important to make clear that seekers of asylum and refugees are
individuals, and how this process is experienced, largely depends on the
kind of life one has led prior to migration (Graham and Khosravi,
1997). Some of my participants self-identified as Kurdish and spoke
about before the turning point even as a life of oppression. However,
this does not mean they did not find a space of participation which
endowed them with a sense of recognition in their countries of origin.
Therefore even those who saw their lives in the shadow of oppression
experienced an erosion of sense of self and loss of recognition when
claiming asylum and becoming a refugee. My study shows that the
asylum system in place is a stigmatising practice. Being a refugee, and
worse an asylum seeker, comes with a set of questions, of which my
participants expressed awareness: why are you here? What did you do?
Are you in genuine need of protection? Will you integrate? Will you
contribute to our society? These blunt questions lack recognition for the
experiences which often accompany those fleeing their countries of
origin. These questions are insensitive to issues of persecution and
torture and to the consequences of becoming displaced, such as
estrangement from one’s own children or parents.
Howarth, (2006) argues for a social psychology of stigma which
connects the psychological to the political, by showing stigma is far
more than an individual psychological construction, but rather
collectively constructed. She writes:
Stigma is as much about the resistance of identities as the reduction of
identities; it is a dialectical process of contestation and creativity that is
anchored in and limited by structures of history, economics and power
(2006:450)
196
Howarth argues for the exploration of possibilities and conditions for
stigmatised communities to be seen as agents and not (only) as objects
or victims of stigma (ibid)
What has been illustrated in this study, is the creative positioning
and identification work my participants engage in, in resisting
stigmatised identities, as well as in making sense of fleeing, claiming
asylum and being granted ‘refugee status’. The results show how the
participants in this study approach the demands placed on them by the
asylum system and the stigmatising label ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’,
through working actively with various voluntary projects improving
their ‘old’ and ‘new’ societies. However, it should be remembered that
‘Others’ definitions and categorisations remained as continuous
obstacles to new meaning-making on many occasions. The participants’
new categorisations and identifications were not always recognised by
‘Others’, maintaining implicit and explicit questionings of the refuges
rights to start a new ‘ordinary’ life in the new country. In consideration
of these findings, an idle wish is that migration policy in the future
would impact on a sense of inclusion, rather than contributing to the
sense of exclusion so often experienced because of the restrictive nature
of these policies today.
In terms of knowledge, this thesis contributes to an understanding of
the whole forced migration process. Whilst there is a great deal of
research on refugee migration, it is usual that a particular aspect or
experience is researched. Here I attempt to illustrate the process in its
entirety. This has led to an understanding of the demands the current
asylum policy and law places on individuals who have been forced to
flee their countries. Despite the creative, agentic approach of the
asylum seeker and refugee of which we have seen many examples, a
problematic finding is that the asylum procedure is destructive, and
erodes sense of self. It places constraints on ‘integration’, sense of
belonging and recognition. With these findings I hope to contribute
with an understanding as to how this can impact on people trying to
create a new life. It is important to recognise that the conditions for
refugees to build a new life in an accepting environment cannot be
achieved by the individual alone; the process is one of collaboration.
197
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Appendix 1:
Dialogues of migration to Sweden & England
ETHICS NOTICE FOR PARTICIPANTS IN PhD INTERVIEWS
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this study.
The study is about the experience of migration as perceived by refugees
themselves and aims to understand the lived experience of refugees that
see their migration as forced due to their political or other persecution.
It is researched in two countries within the European Union, Sweden
and England. This study is funded by the University of Stockholm. The
Study is led by myself, Nicola Magnusson, a PhD student from the
Stockholm University. My supervisor is Professor Anders Gustavsson.
If you agree to participate in this study I will ask you to discuss your
experience of becoming a refugee and what it has involved for you to
migrate under the circumstances of feeling compelled to migrate to
England or Sweden.
Confidentiality
This study is being conducted within the ethical guidelines of the
Swedish Social Science ethics board (www.vr.se), all information that
is taken from you including your personal details and recorded
information will remain confidential. I will not use your real name or
name the organisation(s) you may work with.
Right to withdraw from the study
You have the right to stop and leave the study at any time. It is also
possible for you to change your mind after your participation and ask
for your comments to be removed from the study.
What happens after the interview?
All the material will be analysed and prepared into a PhD thesis, which
will be published as a book. The book will be published in 2011. You
can receive a copy of the book as well as a copy of your transcript.
Nicola Magnusson: Nicola.m agnusson@ped.su.se 0046 70 494
3596 or 0046 8 162000-ask to speak to Nicola Magnusson.
Thank you!
Nicola Magnusson
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