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This pilot study investigates the impact of socioemotional resources, including faith, and protective factors on resilience in a rare sample of 18 female victims of multiple trauma, including trafficking, sexual exploitation and torture, ages 20 to 42 (M= 33, SD=6.22), who were forced to migrate to Italy from Africa (Central and Western) and Eastern Europe. Participants were recruited and interviewed face-to-face at a community shelter for political refugees, asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection. Data on trauma, treatment type (educational, clinical, job training), length and outcome were obtained from the shelter staff. The author adopts a combined strength-based and resource-based theoretical approach to explore refugee women's ability to successfully and flexibly cope with multiple traumas. Results reveal resources and protective factors that are fundamental in working with refugee women. Implications for refugee mental health practice are discussed.
Refugee Women: Trauma, Faith and Resilience
The number of refugees coming to Europe has reached staggering proportions (Hebebrand et al., 2016). While some of them choose to migrate voluntarily, millions are forced to leave their countries of origin due to war, famine, poverty, political unrest, fear of persecution, economic instability and natural disasters (Shishehgar et al., 2017).
The dramatic political, economic and legislative changes that have accompanied the rapid globalization of the economies had a disproportionately heavy impact on women's economic opportunities and family responsibilities (Corrin, 2005). Approximately half of the global refugee population are women (Shishehgar et al., 2017) and the share of asylum seekers who are women generally appears to be rising (Spijkerboer, 2017). Globally, women are disproportionately affected by poverty and other economic limitations due to discriminatory practices in attaining education and employment (Kligman & Limoncelli, 2005). Economic and gender-based inequalities may push women to migrate (Williamson, 2017) and ethnicity and age create racialized sexual stereotypes, further exacerbating their vulnerability and favoring the trafficking of refugee women (Butler, 2015).
The experiences of refugee women, who occupy a 'neglected position' at the point of intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class (Anthias, 2002) suggests that there is an extra penalty for women refugees due to multiple discriminations: language, race, economic disadvantage, gender and the stigma attached to a refugee's status (Tomlinson, 2010). This compounding of vulnerabilities through discrimination and marginalization in multiple areas places refugee...