Major
Political Science
Second Major
French
Advisor
Karen DeBruin
Advisor Department
Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures
Date
5-2020
Keywords
Social integration; Former child refugees; Redefining; Identity Construction; Belonging
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Abstract
How one defines themselves has always been in relation to their environment. Humans tend to identify themselves based on standards that have been created before them whether it be nationality, language, ethnicity, income, human conditions, social class, gender, or sex. A French author, Daniel Calin, defined the self as being objective even though it is largely assigned by biological and social features in its essence. However, this objective definition of self only becomes subjective through the development of a sense of identity of a psychological nature. This research project examines how former child refugees develop that sense of psychological identity. This paper looks to answer how former child refugees define their sense of “self” in the shifting experiences that they encounter from refugee camps and after resettlement to the United States. In order to do this, this paper will be heavily based on works of literature that explore identity construction, post-trauma, resettlement, and social integration. It will analyze findings from secondary sources, newspaper articles and theoretical literature. The focus on the development of post-resettlement child refugees will further explore how children who have come from traumatic experiences not only look to heal and learn about themselves outside of their experiences but how they cope with the idea of belonging in their new environment. As of January 2019, there have been 70.8 million people have been displaced because of persecution, war, and famine according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) statistics, of which. 25.9 million refugees, half of which are children. The resettlement process administered by the UNHCR helps few than 1 percent each year of these refugees to transition from refugee camps to developed nations such as the United States. Rhode Island, like every other state, has resettled thousands of refugees. According to the Refugee Dream Center in Providence, there are about 20,000 refugees in the state, the majority of whom are from Liberia. Others are from Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Iraq, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Gambia, Mauritania, Angola, and Bhutan. Since the United States admitted more refugees through this process than any other developed nation, examining the shift from one multifaceted environment to the next while recognizing that one’s identity can never be resolved is the essence of this project.