Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Charles Watters, Keira Pratt-Boyden and Reima Ana Maglajlic
This review and theoretical analysis paper aims to bring together literatures of place, mobility, refugees and mental health to problematise the ways in which social support is…
Abstract
Purpose
This review and theoretical analysis paper aims to bring together literatures of place, mobility, refugees and mental health to problematise the ways in which social support is practised on the ground and to rethink its possibilities.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on an interdisciplinary understanding of social support that focusses on the social networks and significant and intimate relationships that mitigate negative mental health and well-being outcomes. The authors explore the dialectic relationship between place and mobility in refugee experiences of social support.
Findings
The authors argue that, in an Euro-American context, practices of social support have historically been predicated on the idea of people-in-place. The figure of the refugee challenges the notion of a settled person in need of support and suggests that people are both in place and in motion at the same time. Conversely, attending to refugees’ biographies, lived experiences and everyday lives suggests that places and encounters of social support are varied and go beyond institutional spaces.
Research limitations/implications
The authors explore this dialectic of personhood as both in place and in motion and its implications for the theorisation, research and design of systems of social support for refugees.
Originality/value
This paper surfaces the dialectics of place and mobility for supporting refugee mental health from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Details
Keywords
Lucia Garcia‐Lorenzo, Sevasti‐Melissa Nolas and Gerard de Zeeuw
Stories and the telling of stories constitute a major part of our daily life, yet how this happens is not clearly understood. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the ways in…
Abstract
Purpose
Stories and the telling of stories constitute a major part of our daily life, yet how this happens is not clearly understood. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the ways in which stories challenge the notions of knowledge that are common in the “classical” scientific tradition. It also aims to focus on the function of stories in the collaborative, interpersonal and inter‐organisational dynamics of the way knowledge is built up in daily life.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores changes in the notion of knowledge (and what is considered scientific method). Firstly, it identifies various genealogies in which previous limitations on the experiences to be included as knowledge have been extended. Secondly, the paper will look at experiences that link to the telling of stories, and explore the way they challenge as well as link to previous notions and extensions of knowledge in collaborative contexts.
Findings
A core characteristic of stories and their telling is an increase in people's awareness both of others as sources of intentional variation as well as of their cultural and human heritage.
Originality/value
The paper initiates a much‐needed discussion of the nature of knowledge as it relates to story telling. It links the experiences elicited by story telling to a genealogy of knowledge that identifies the difficulties of including experiences other than observations (e.g. uncertainty, intentionality). To study stories one needs to search for constraints on how individuals link to other individuals. The paper proposes how one might study stories by considering how they contribute to an extension of existing concepts of knowledge.