Umeå University's logo

Refugee women can encounter a range of challenges in their new countries, including limited access to health services, education, and employment opportunities, factors that significantly shape and limit everyday lives and opportunities for social participation. This study aims to understand health and social participation in everyday life through dialogue with refugee women and the local organizations addressing applying an intersectional lens. Grounded in an intersectional framework, the study utilized a modified story dialogical method for the workshops. The findings are organized into three key themes: a) Importance of trust and solidarity in the women's everyday, b) Experiencing othering–the pain of not being welcomed and c) "Stand-by mode". The findings underscore how multiple intersectional dimensions, including legal status, socioeconomic position, ethnicity, and migration trajectories, interplay to determine whether participation in and access to health, work, and education are possible or not. Solidarity practices, emerge as strategies for navigating and resisting structural and systemic barriers.

The aim of this paper is to explore everyday life experiences of migration and disability from an intersectional perspective drawing on issues such as gender, class, and ethnicity. This is relevant because when focus is on either migration or disability, unique challenges faced by disabled migrants are neglected, leading to fragmented support and a lack of accurate knowledge. The analysis is based on retrospective data from photovoice sessions conducted within the context of a community-based project, Disabled Refugees Welcome (DRW). A secondary analysis has involved eight of the members from the original photovoice sessions as well as academics. The results are presented in a narrative thematic analysis. The findings show how the combined effects of liminality, structural violence (lack of accessible and adapted housing, lack of access to knowledge about societal resources), and multiple discrimination risks can result in permanent exclusion.

Disabled refugee women can experience a lack of possibilities for social participation in their new country, which can impact their health and well-being. Intersectional approaches that acknowledge the participatory needs of disabled refugees are missing in policies and regulations. This study highlights the capabilities that disabled refugee women use to construct their everyday lives and to experience social participation. For more than one year, interviews and participant observation were carried out with three disabled refugee women. Various qualitative methods have been used to understand the women's everyday lives in an urban area of Sweden. Through an intersectional lens, unequal conditions that affect social participation and access to the health and social care systems were identified, as were individual resources that women use to overcome barriers that would keep them from participating in the new society.

Background: Phronesis is a way of knowing, implying wisdom, experiences, and reflections that guide our judgements. Phronesis, important for learning, is a neglected form of knowledge when applied to research.

Aim: To examine how phronesis is conceptualised and practiced in three research projects.

Method: Data from eight interviews with researchers involved in three research projects was generated. The interview material was analysed. A theoretical matrix of contemporary understanding of phronesis was applied to the material.

Result: Examples of phronesis from three research projects in occupational therapy are presented according to categories of contemporary phronesis; acknowledging embodiment, embracing humility, using perceptiveness, and practicing reflexivity.

Significance: This unique approach of analysing research projects contributes to the understanding of phronesis and its implications for research, providing valuable insights into the researchers’ praxis in their respective projects

Conclusion: There is a need for a greater recognition of phronesis as a dimension of knowledge within all types of research, and within the discipline. By not recognising phronesis as a legitimate form of knowledge, the discipline perpetuates a superiority of knowledge from episteme that dominates our ways of learning about the world around us and where the type of knowledge gleaned from phronesis is consequently marginalised.

Despite current inclusion discourses in Germany, specific groups of children and adolescents with mental health problems are identified by healthcare services as “too difficult to manage”, creating varied exclusion processes. In this study, the term young-system-survivors is used for destigmatization purposes. While occupational science discourses suggest that social inclusion should be addressed at the level of social structures, institutions, and norms, local social policies limit German healthcare practitioners from engaging with young-system-survivors to address both complex social and health issues. Using a critical dialogical approach, this study explored how occupational therapists envision inclusive practices promoting young-system-survivors participation in Germany. The data were collected through individual dialogical interviews and two focus groups with eight German occupational therapists and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings are presented as one overarching theme: The struggle of young-system-survivors to have real opportunities, composed of three subthemes a) Affirming a client-centred stance and continuity, b) Creating possibilities by addressing context-specific demands, and c) Reflecting and enacting advocacy. The findings illustrate how the participants reflect on their fundamental humanistic stance and their occupational perspective to demand a more socially responsive practice. Inspired by scholars developing the epistemologies of the south, this study draws on the concept of Social Occupational Therapy to widen the prospect of establishing multidimensional aspects of social inclusion and calls for collaborative practices to foster the visibility and consideration of young-system-survivors.

Potential traumatic experiences, prior, during and after migration, are the most common risk factors consistently associated with higher rates of mental disorders among refugees. The complex nature of refugee social and health challenges requires a holistic and comprehensive approach to achieve health equity. That is why, interprofessional education and collaboration among health and psychosocial care professionals is becoming increasingly crucial to build strong foundations for socially relevant work for refugees. Academic institutions can provide learning activities to advance students’ interprofessional knowledge and competences before they enter the workforce. This study explored higher education students’ experiences and reflections on a short-term interprofessional exchange that aimed to promote mental health and psychosocial support for refugees. Participants were higher education students from Germany, Greece, Sweden, and Spain representing the fields of psychology, occupational therapy, social work, pedagogy, medicine, and nursing. A qualitative study compromising two focus groups carried out at the end and 18 months after the interprofessional exchanges. Thematic analysis resulted in four themes: a) from curiosity to responsible action, b) my cultural humility journey, c) companion stories, and d) brave spaces and a sense of hope. Interprofessional collaboration emerged as a key strategy in protecting human rights and providing equal opportunities in psychosocial support of refugees. Findings highlight the value of short-term interprofessional exchanges for preparing higher education students in health and social care to move and be responsive in intercultural societies and contexts.

This article contributes to ongoing discussions about frailty and vulnerability in critical gerontology by asserting that possibilities to engage and enact influence in everyday life situations is a crucial dimension of democracy in later life. We discuss how democracy in this sense can be threatened for older persons for whom health and social care services are needed, following from the labelling practices of frailty and the non-recognition of the social processes that set capabilities in motion. We utilise three examples grounded in research with older persons in their home environment in a Swedish context. The examples show how older people use creative, emotional, practical and social resources to integrate activities in a manner that address their needs and capabilities, and influence the situations in direction towards how and when to be engaged in everyday activities. Based on a discussion of the examples, we argue that health and social care services that provide and build social infrastructures need to recognise the potential concurrency of interdependency, vulnerability and agency within older persons’ local everyday practices. This to address capabilities and enable concrete expression of democracy in everyday situations. Overall, we suggest that conceptual and methodological shifts in research, as well as policy and practice, are needed to bring democratic processes forward through the relational and situated aspects of resources, agency and influence.