Augmenting Resliency
Decolonising Women’s Agency: Applied Ethnography for the Permanent Evaluation of Services Dedicated to Women’s Empowerment View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Miria Gambardella
The research integrates feminist and gender anthropology with decolonial theory in order to develop a critical approach applied to care work within services dedicated to women’s agency and empowerment. The fieldwork was based on participant observation and ethnographic methods of inquiry such as semi-structured interviews and focus groups and was carried out in a center for women’s socialization, orientation and support in Northern Italy between 2022 and 2023. Among the aims of the study is the formulation of permanent qualitative evaluation tools for professionals in the socio-educational sector, allowing to question roles of power, decision-making margins and spaces for participation for all the subjectivities involved in projects of individual as well as collective change. Feminisms and the intersectional perspective underline the ordinary pervasiveness of inequalities and the patriarchal roots of oppression structures that permeate the daily practice of professionals who develop care activities. A multidisciplinary and inclusive vision was applied to the concept of “well-being” in order to make visible potential forms of discrimination in accessing services. The notions of need and autonomy were problematized allowing to give new meaning to projects and promote awareness of existing asymmetries. The anthropological perspective, combined with a critical and decolonial gaze, aims at questioning the construct of “empowerment”, deconstructing care relationships. At a small-scale level, an engaged and applied research can be a valid tool to build alternatives and prevent discriminations precisely thanks to an intersectional and decolonial gaze as a useful reading key to face the reproduction of multiple levels of oppression.
Strong Salutogenesis: Hizmet Refugees' Resliency in Canada View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elise Lo Bue
This paper derives from ongoing research assessing the adjustment process for Turkish refugees in Canada affiliated with the Turkish-based Hizmet movement (a faith-inspired civil society movement). To date, I have conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 individuals who have sought political asylum in Canada because of fear of persecution and jailing in Turkiye due to their Hizmet affiliation. Many Hizmet members now in Canada have worked globally in movement-affiliated schools, hospitals, and charity/dialogue organizations; attained high levels of education/professional status; and speak proficient English. A primary research question guiding the overall project considers whether such experiences and educational/professional strengths, in addition to movement philosophies and practices that encourage Hizmet members to interact meaningfully with local communities in which they live, serve as assets in integrating into life in Canada. Utilizing the concept of salutogensis—origins of health and assets for health—I surmise that qualities of resiliency and adaptability found among Hizmet refugees in Canada derive largely from a strong sense of coherence (SOC) fostered by work within Hizmet that allows members to view life as Canadian refugees as more comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful, the three primary components of SOC. This study examines the degree to which strong educational/professional skill sets, combined with a mindset and life approach cultivated by the movement’s philosophy of service and its emphasis on inclusiveness, dialogue-building, and civil society engagement, serve Hizmet refugees well and afford them a smoother process in creating new lives for themselves and their families in Canada.
At Risk or a Risk - Latina Migrants in Europe: From Vulnerability to Social Agency
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Beatriz Macías Gómez Estern
The last decades have envisioned a shift in the framework that guide different psychological concepts, including those related to wellbeing, mental health, and pathology. Critical Psychology (Pavón-Cuellar, 2019; Teo & Wendt, 2020) has questioned the pertinence and usefulness of traditional psychological categories for approaching contemporary human psyche, interactions and suffering. Underlying this new paradigm of psychology is the idea that human experience lies not exclusively in the depth of individual processes but in the socio-cultural and historical conditions that expand or curtail the conditions of possibility for people (Vygotski, 1981). Migration, and specifically the experience of migrant and racialized women, is one of the fields in which a critical stance on mental issues becomes necessary (Anzaldúa, 1987; Marecek, 2015). When attending to "othered" subjects in social, educational or health services, practitioners informed by the categories of classical psychology might outline a pathological reading of migrant women's symptoms and psychological needs, using diagnostic categories that might not relate to their cultural assumptions and motives (Macías-Gómez-Estern, 2022). In our paper we will analyze these accounts related to migrant women's mental health from a critical and psychology perspective, where the tension between the need to recognize the sociocultural origin of mental problems (and pathologies); and the urgency of recognizing resilience, agency, and power in migrant women is at play. Our reflections are informed by community-based research with migrant women in Spain, with a special focus on Latinas as one of the most represented migrant communities in this European country.
Youth Migrants at Risk in Northern Laos: Exploring Interwoven Vulnerabilities and Health Concerns View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pascale Hancart-Petitet
Various studies have examined the social effects of development policies on internal migration in Laos, and have pointed out how migratory movements often stand as the consequences of the social metamorphoses generated by development. Escaping poverty, combined with the desire to live differently, is leading the urban migration process of young people. The future prospects of rural families have shifted away from being dependent solely on land, now placing emphasis on the training and social networks embraced by the younger generation. The journey of young people involved in rural-urban migration brings forth a combination of both opportunities and risks. Given the significant transformations in the region, notably driven by China's expanding influence across various domains, such as trade and the entertainment sector along the border shared by Laos and China, there is an imperative to generate qualitative scientific insights that take into account both a complex colonial/postcolonial past and local sociocultural rapid transformations. Within the HEALTH Project, funded by Initiative 5%, our preliminary research focuses on the Special Economic Zone of Boten in the Luang Namtha province. Through ethnographic studies and interviews with health center staff, truck drivers, construction workers, sex workers, and others, we aim to capture the context, underlying factors, prevailing practices, and consequential impacts related to migratory patterns and infectious risks. Our findings shed light on interconnected vulnerabilities and multifaceted health concerns in the region, highlighting a critical issue: the high-risk sexual behaviors and vulnerabilities faced by young individuals working in the entertainment and sex work industry.
