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“Seeing the Life”: Redefining Self-Worth and Family Roles Among Iraqi Refugee Families Resettled in the United States

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Abstract

Social and geographic displacement is a global phenomenon that precipitates novel stressors and disruptions that intersect with long-standing familial and social roles. Among the displaced are war-torn Iraqi refugee families, who must address these new obstacles in unconventional ways. This study explores how such disruptions have influenced associations between gender and apparent self-worth experienced by Iraqi refugee families upon relocation to the USA. Further, the psychosocial mechanisms requisite of any novel approach to a new social construct are explored and reveal that production in the family is at the core of instability and shifting power dynamics during resettlement, preventing family members from “seeing the life” in the USA that they had envisioned prior to immigration. Over 200 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Iraqi participants and mental health providers were conducted over the course of the study, which demonstrate a plasticity among social roles in the family and community that transcends the notion of a simple role reversal, and illustrate the complex positionalities that families under stress must approximate during such physical and social displacement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona, A.T. Still University, 5850 E. Still Circle, Mesa, AZ, 85206, USA

    Matthew Nelson

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

    Julia Meredith Hess

  3. Department of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

    Brian Isakson

  4. Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

    Jessica Goodkind

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  1. Matthew Nelson
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  2. Julia Meredith Hess
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  3. Brian Isakson
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  4. Jessica Goodkind
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Correspondence to Matthew Nelson.

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Nelson, M., Hess, J.M., Isakson, B. et al. “Seeing the Life”: Redefining Self-Worth and Family Roles Among Iraqi Refugee Families Resettled in the United States. Int. Migration & Integration 17, 707–722 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0441-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-015-0441-1

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