HELLENIC JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY
ÉSSN 1790-1391
Edited three times a year by the Psychological Society of Northern Greece
(PSNG)
Volume 7, Issue 1, 2010
Legally responsible:
George Grouios, President of the Psychological Society of
Northern Greece
Department of Physical Education and Sport
Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 24
Thessaloniki, Greece. Phone: +30-2310-992177; E-mail: ggrouios@phed.auth.gr
Editors
| Editor-in-Chief: |
Anastasia Efklides |
Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece |
| Associate Editors: |
Maria Dikaiou
Angeliki Leondari
Georgios D. Sideridis |
Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece
University
of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece |
| Assistant Editors: |
Irini Dermitzaki
Mary H. Kosmidis
Filippos Vlachos
Plousia Misailidi
Pagona Roussi |
University
of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
University of Ioannina, Greece
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece |
|
Guest Editors of the
Special Issue |
Maria Dikaiou &
Eleni Hatzidimitriadou |
Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece & St. George’s
University of London/Kingston University, United Kingdom |
Editorial Board
Anastasia Efklides
George Grouios
Shulamith Kreitler
Diomedes Markoulis
Robert Neimeyer
Markku Niemivirta
Jose M. Prieto
Wolfgang Schnotz
Yannis Theodorakis
Maria Tzouriadou
Marja Vauras
Marcel Veenman
|
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
University of Memphis, USA
University of Helsinki, Finland
Complutense University, Madrid, Spain
University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
University of Turku, Finland
University of Leiden, The Netherlands
|
Publisher:
ELLINIKA GRAMMATA: Emm. Benaki 59, 106 81 Athens, Greece
Ôel: ++30-210-3891800 - Fax: ++30-210-3836658
Bookstore: Zood. Pigis 21 & Tzavela 1, 106 81 Athens, Greece
© Copyright 2010: Psychological Society of Northern Greece (PSNG)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) for commercial purposes without the written permission of the copyright owners. Manuscripts submitted to the journal in no case are returned back
Volume 7,
Issue 1, 2010
|
HELLENIC JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY
Founded 2004 |
SPECIAL ISSUE:
FORCED MIGRATION AND SOCIAL CARE
Guest Editors:
Maria Dikaiou & Eleni Hatzidimitriadou
ELLINIKA
GRAMMATA
Prologue
Maria Dikaiou & Eleni Hatzidimitriadou
..........................................................................V Migration and ageing:
Settlement experiences and emerging care needs
of older refugees in developed countries
Eleni
Hatzidimitriadou.................................................................................................1
Migrants, refugees and mental health care in Europe
Charles Watters……….……….........................................................................................21
Social integration of refugees and asylum applicants in Greece
Maria Kiagia, Maria Kriona,
& Eugenie Georgaca..…....………................................................38
Exploring highly-educated refugees’ subjective theories of
their psychosocial experiences
Maria Psoinos .………..…………………....……………….……….........................................................69
Greek
teachers’ cross-cultural awareness and their views on
classroom cultural diversity
Despina Sakka..………..…………………....……….............…….....................................….…...........98
Hellenic Journal of
Psychology, Vol. 7 (2010), pp. vii-xi
| |
PROLOGUE
Maria Dikaiou & Eleni Hatzidimitriadou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
& St. George’s University of London/Kingston
University, UK
|
|
This special issue,
entitled Forced migration and social care, is concerned with
the provision of social care for migrants and refugees in
European countries. Social care in this context covers a
wide area of concerns ranging from health care provisions to
social support systems and factors influencing the promotion
of human well being in contemporary societies. Despite the
different theoretical approaches in the way social care is
defined and materialized in different countries, economic
and sociopolitical systems, today there is growing consensus
among social scientists as to the urgent need for providing
migrants with effective services.
Exploring the need for effective services to
migrants has become an issue of vital importance for most
countries today, given the ever growing number of migrants
and refugees all over the world. This is mostly relevant for
traditional immigration countries such as Australia, Canada
and the United States of America where there is already a
debate about the social care of migrants. Nonetheless this
increase is also affecting the European continent.
Statistics indicate that, while Europe received 14% of the
total number of forced migrants in 2007 (United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], 2008), the international
immigration rise has reached 9% of the total population in
Southern Europe – an area with inherent welfare deficits −
thus creating an amalgam of new demands on the existing
social care systems, originally built to respond to the
needs of the majority indigenous populations (United
Nations, 2006; UNHCR, 2006). In fact, it is true that, for
most countries in Central and Southern Europe, the issue of
migrant social care provision is only beginning to be
addressed (Ingleby, 2005).
It is not only the statistical representation of
migrants in the host country population that is of relevance
to this discussion. More significantly, the pragmatics of
social care, especially the promotion of health and social
well-being, and its human rights dimensions are important
issues in this context. The host society has a vested
interest in maintaining the standards of health and social
well being of these populations as migrants and refugees in
poor health are also facing severe difficulty to integrate
into mainstream society. In addition, health and social
well-being are fundamental human rights that governments
have a duty to ensure in order to maintain appropriate
living conditions for all their residents. As Ingleby (2005)
points out, inappropriate, ineffective services to the needs
of certain groups, are denying them full citizenship in
society.
According to relevant research, additional
factors that determine health and social care service
responses to the needs of these groups are migrants’
sociopolitical position and their degree of influence on
political decisions, racist and discriminatory attitudes
towards migration, diversity in the host countries, as well
as official policies that regulate migrants’ and refugees’
lives (Miller & Rasco, 2004). Besides underscoring the
statistical, pragmatic and sociopolitical importance of
migrants, the present special issue is organized with the
purpose of pointing out the multidimensionality of the
issues involved in exploring their needs with reference to
health and social care provisions; the importance of
bringing together research, theory and practice with the
purpose of formulating proposals for effective social care
provision policies, is also highlighted.
Focusing on a European context, the articles of
the special issue present theoretical and methodological
perspectives adopted in exploring the needs of migrants
(mostly economic) and refugees living in a widely different
range of situations: elderly and mental health patients in
Europe, ethnically diverse refugees and asylum
seekers/applicants in Greece, and highly educated refugees
in Britain. Finally, an exploration of the needs of
professionals involved in welfare service provision, that
is, teachers working with migrant children in culturally
diverse schools in Greece, is also presented.
Despite the fact that articles in the present
special issue explore the situation of different migrant
groups living in different European countries, they share
some commonalities. They all acknowledge the need for a
shift in the epistemological paradigm for analyzing
migrants’ needs and problems. Contrary to traditional
approaches, they point out to the need for psychologists,
and social scientists in general, to rethink the assumptions
and epistemological framework of a “pathology-oriented”
model. The call to challenge the pathology model and engage
instead in activities promoting social care provision for
migrants and refugees is highly relevant to research and
improvement of existing policy-making and practice. In
particular, the five articles either review or present
research evidence informing the way health and social care
services are designed and implemented. In this context, the
first two articles focus exclusively on the relations of
migrants with social care and emphasize the social
psychological phenomena, which are involved and characterize
the above relationship. When focusing on two specific
migrant and refugee groups, the elderly and mental health
service users, the main question is about the needs of these
groups and the way society (i.e., legal and social policy
systems, social care organizations, researchers, and the
public) respond to these needs. The purpose here is not to
simply state problems faced by these groups, most of which
have already been discussed in the extant literature, but to
identify the dynamics underlying the problem-response
relationships.
Most specifically, the first article by
Hatzidimitriadou offers an overview of the older refugees’
experiences and needs in the receiving countries. The author
explores the relation between research and policy directed
to this group of forced migrants by examining a number of
definitional, conceptual and practice challenges. Drawing on
both psychological and gerontological research, she points
out to the need for developing new theoretical frameworks
which will allow for a better understanding of the dynamics
of migration in later life and the introduction of
strategies for successful integration.
In the same line, the second article by Watters
is concerned with the provision of mental health services
for migrants and refugees in Europe. The author asks
critical questions about the type of research involved and
its relevance to social care practice. He identifies the
main characteristics of the way most services respond to
migrant and refugee needs and puts forward recommendations
for more effective and culturally appropriate social care
policies and practices.
The next two research articles are referring to
the specific situation of refugees in Greece and Britain.
The first article by Kiagia, Kriona, and Georgaka, gives a
picture of the typical refugee situation and asylum seeking
process in Thessaloniki, a Greek city, by presenting
findings from semi-structured interviews with refugees and
asylum applicants of different nationalities. Following the
principles of critical and community psychology and drawing
parallels with other countries, this article explores
refugees’ own perceptions of their living conditions and
needs as well as their views on their treatment by the Greek
state and society.
Psoinos, on the other hand, is focussed on the
situation of highly educated refugee groups in the United
Kingdom. She reviews existing debates in the area of
migration and psychological health care and explores how
highly educated refugees in the UK can inform these debates
by eliciting their problems and needs in their own terms. By
analyzing semi-structured interviews, she explores the
meanings refugees attach to their post-migration
psychosocial experiences and considers whether these views
are aligned with experts’ conceptualizations of refugees’
problems. She also puts forward suggestions about
interventions for improving refugees’ health by
acknowledging all its richness and diversity.
The last article by Sakka deals with another
sector of social care provision, namely intercultural
education in Greece. As with health care the teaching in
multicultural classrooms has become a key issue in
scientific and public discourse given the increasing numbers
of migrant students in Greek schools and the demand for
teachers to respond to the needs of these students. Using
quantitative data from elementary and secondary education
teachers, the study explores their cross-cultural awareness
and views on cultural diversity. Findings concerning the
contradictory and conflicting character of teachers’
attitudes towards cultural diversity are discussed within
the context of designing and implementing new teacher
training programs. The author suggests that such programmes
should incorporate not only strategies for teaching new
curricula but also teachers’ training needs as they are
shaped by today’s multicultural classroom.
Overall, the contributors of this special issue
conclude that existing social care service provisions, which
were developed to meet the needs of the host country’s
indigenous populations, are most likely to fail meeting the
needs of migrant and refugee populations. A range of
structural and attitudinal factors are responsible for these
shortcomings: professionals’ lack of insight into the needs
of migrants and refugees, inaccessibility to services due to
language barriers and cultural differences, lack of
culturally sensitive and appropriate social care systems,
lack of understanding and knowledge of migration and
post-migration stresses, reluctance of service providers and
professionals to develop effective responses due to
financial and training implications, and wider xenophobic
and discriminatory attitudes shaping social care provision
and public attitudes alike. A meaningful shift in policy and
practice of social care for migrants and refugees would only
be realized in the context of a more intercultural and
holistic service delivery approach of social care for all
residents in migrant-receiving countries.
There are several colleagues we would like to
thank for making this special issue possible. First, we
would like to thank Professor Anastasia Efklides,
Editor-in-Chief of the Hellenic Journal of Psychology, for
her invitation to us to guest edit this special issue. We
would also like to express our gratitude to the authors of
the articles for their contributions. Finally, we are
indebted to the anonymous reviewers of these articles for
their valuable feedback.
References
Ingleby, D. (2005). Editor’s introduction. In D. Ingleby
(Ed.), Forced migration and mental health: Rethinking the
care of refugees and displaced persons (pp. 1-28). New
York: Springer.
Miller, K. E., & Rasco, L. M. (2004). An
ecological framework for addressing the mental health needs
of refu-gee communities. In K. E. Miller & L. M. Rasco
(Eds.), The mental health of refugees: Ecological
approaches to healing and adaptation (pp. 1-68). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
United Nations. (2006). International
migration and development: Report of the Secretary-General.
New York: United Nations.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
(2006). 2005 global refugee trends. Geneva,
Switzerland: UNHCR.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
(2008). 2007 global trends: Refugees, asylum-seekers, re-turnees,
internally displaced and stateless persons. Geneva,
Switzerland: UNHCR.
Address:
Maria Dikaiou,
School of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece. E-mail: mdikaiou@psy.auth.gr
Address: Eleni Hatzidimitriadou, Faculty of Health
and Social Care Sciences, St George’s University of
Lon-don/Kingston University, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon
Thames, Surrey, KT2 7LB, United Kingdom. E-mail:
e.hatzidimitriadou@hscs.sgul.ac.uk
|
