Managing Trauma: A Restorative Process

Abstract

In today’s era, the world faces the largest number of displaced people since the World War II, wherein a massive number of refugees fleeing to various countries has become a new reality. The response by the media and public indicates fear, anxiety, and a lack of trust, which are logical consequences of the current discourse that focuses on blame and anger. This chapter describes theoretical perspectives of trauma on the brain, and shares various restorative approaches emphasizing a compassionate-witnessing model. It discusses the urgent need of creating safe communities for the refugees and suggests restorative practices to facilitate the process. The authors share actual examples from a refugee-hosting camp in a Western European country, and how the integration of restorative practices allows trust and respectful communication to develop and strengthening relationships. This makes it possible to use restorative approaches to respond to conflicts. The chapter recommends how staff, educators, and volunteers could respond with compassion and empathy to traumatized refugees. The suggested restorative processes could be shared with staff and volunteers’ training, higher education faculty in preparing future teachers to work with refugee students, and with teachers who are challenged, working with refugee population.

Citation

Rundell, F., Sheety, A. and Negrea, V. (2018), "Managing Trauma: A Restorative Process", Sengupta, E. and Blessinger, P. (Ed.) Refugee Education: Integration and Acceptance of Refugees in Mainstream Society (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120180000011004