Counter-narratives against hardships among Syrian refugee youth and parents

TL;DR

Syrian refugee youth use counter-narratives to cope with identity struggles, challenging the victim narrative often portrayed in media and research.

Contribution

The study introduces counter-narratives as a new lens to understand refugee resilience and identity reconstruction.

Findings

Syrian refugee youths use strategic memory to reconstruct their collective identity.

Refugees employ counter-narratives of strength and competence to cope with identity fragmentation.

The lack of professional help-seeking is linked to identity struggles, not just stigma.

Abstract

The conventional literature and popular media describe the challenges of (Syrian) refugees in terms of their being victims who need to deal with the traumatic events they experienced before and during their flight. Their lack of seeking professional psychosocial help to improve their mental wellbeing is often explained by migrants’ supposed fear of stigmatization. Using in-depth interviews with 10 Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, we show that their main struggle concerns their identity fragmentation as a result of both their displacement and the stereotypical discourses of Muslim/Syrian people as victims or terrorists. In this article, we explore how Syrian refugee youths use strategic forgetting and remembering of both positive and negative memories to reconstruct their (collective) identity. Our finding that Syrian refugee youths use counter-narratives of being strong and competent to deal with their experience of identity fragmentation offers an alternative explanation for refugees not seeking professional help in dealing with their hardships.

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