Working With Refugee Families

This important new book explores how to support refugee family relationships in promoting post-trauma recovery and adaptation in exile.

This stirring and insightful book explores how family dynamics among refugees are affected by the trauma of forced migration. Written by an experienced family therapist, it uses a systemic perspective to understand the impact on couple relationships and parenting, as well as the broader issue of cultural and social assimilation. Shedding light on the complex and relational nature of the trauma experienced by refugee families, including issues around gender and mental health, Shadi Shahnavaz examines the clinical implications for those who care for them. The unique, in-depth interviews with refugees provide a rare insight into their journey to England and the adverse experiences they encounter along the way. Rather than a simple reflection on practice, Shahnavaz invites the reader to think about the ways in which they can connect with others, even in challenging and unfamiliar situations. Working Systemically with Refugee Couples and Families is essential reading for any therapist or counsellor working today.

The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. Over the years the composition of immigrants has significantly changed. From receiving immigrants from primarily Europe, the United States is now home to people from countries around the globe. One of the common challenges encountered by immigrant and refugee families and youth is to successfully resettle and integrate into the host country that is culturally different from their country of origin. Depending on the context of migration, families and youth oftentimes face additional challenges ranging from potential trauma prior to immigration, language, employment, education, healthcare accessibility, integration, discrimination, etc. This book focuses on different issues experienced by immigrant and refugee families and youth as well as programs implemented to serve these populations. These issues pertain to the individual at a personal level (attachment, trauma, bi-cultural self-efficacy, behavioral problems, and mental health), family (parenting, work-family conflict, problems such as domestic violence), community (risk factors such as racial discrimination and protective factors such as social capital) and policy (immigration policy and enforcement). Part I of the book focuses on immigrant and refugee families and Part II focuses on immigrant and refugee youth. By increasing our awareness of issues pertinent to immigrant and refugee families and youth, we can better provide culturally respectful and sensitive services and policy to this population at a time when they are navigating between their host culture and home culture in addition to dealing with challenges encountered in resettlement. The book is a significant new contribution to migration studies and social justice, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of social work, public policy, law and sociology. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Ethic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work.

"Immigrant and Refugee Families: Global Perspectives on Displacement and Resettlement Experiences uses a family systems lens to discuss challenges and strengths of immigrant and refugee families in the United States. Chapters address immigration policy, human rights issues, economic stress, mental health and traumatic stress, domestic violence, substance abuse, family resilience, and methods of integration."--Open Textbook Library.

Research on linguistically and culturally sustaining education has recently placed increased attention on the need to rethink the field by promoting more equitable linguistic pedagogical opportunities for all students, including immigrant and newcomer youth. It has been evident for some time that immigration patterns around the globe have been increasingly shifting, posing a new challenge to educators. As a result, there is a gap in the literature that is meant to address educational practices for immigrant communities comprehensively. The Handbook of Research on Advancing Language Equity Practices With Immigrant Communities is a critical scholarly book that explores issues of linguistic and educational equity with immigrant communities around the globe in an effort to improve the teaching and learning of immigrant communities. Featuring a wide range of topics such as higher education, instructional design, and language learning, this book is ideal for academicians, teachers, administrators, instructional designers, curriculum developers, researchers, and students in the fields of linguistics, anthropology, sociology, educational policy, and discourse analysis.

This text offers a comprehensive portfolio of approaches to support young children with refugee backgrounds. It covers trauma-informed pedagogies, transitioning to school, authentic inclusion, play, social and emotional learning, and intergenerational trauma. In early childhood centres around the world, teachers and directors can be uncertain of how to meet the needs of newly arrived children. Based on empirical research in five countries, this book offers insights from early childhood educators who are working hard to support families and young children with refugee and asylum-seeker experiences. It illustrates the link between theory and practice and the importance of developing culturally sensitive classroom strategies to effectively support the emotional and cognitive needs of multilingual, multicultural students whose common experiences may only include displacement, trauma, and loss. Rather than offering a measure for ‘success,’ this book shares the knowledge and experience of practitioners who understand the work and the very particular circumstances of these children’s lives. The authors bring these perspectives together in order to inspire other professionals who face this challenging work, encouraging the reader to reflect, to consider how relevant some of the ideas may be in their own contexts, and to contemplate the principles which allow their professional actions to make a difference. This book is an essential resource for early childhood educators and leaders who want to ‘open the door’ to genuinely inclusive, empathetic, and supportive practice. It will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of early childhood and primary education.

In this book, internationally migrant families invite us to listen to the storylines of their mostly muted voices as they navigate the local schools in their new cultural context. They call us to hear them as they grapple with issues they encounter. They implore us to feel like an outsider and see the school as a foreign culture with language and communication barriers. The book is organized to enhance this carework. Each chapter begins with a vignette that includes the voices of one or more members of international migrating families, while introducing the context of the chapter. At the end of each chapter readers will find specific implications to consider. These are constructed with preservice teachers, practicing teachers, and educational administrators in mind. As you read each chapter, there is the call for school transformation. The families in this book entreat school personnel to engage with international migrant families and to embrace a risk and resilience model as we strive together for success. These storylines challenge us to examine our personal storylines for biases and deficit understandings and call us all to purposefully rewrite these in the spirit of possibilities as the families in this book have embodied for us.