Social Resilience and Migration
Currently, I am researching social resilience and migration, in the context of challenges and changes that shape migrants lives in the host country. My research project investigates the young adult migrants’ lived experiences in the host country with an emphasis on social resilience as a phenomenon characterized by the social experiences and practices of young adult migrants in the host country. In this connection, I see social resilience contingent on social experiences and interaction with the environment (as social actors) constructing and co-constructing the meaning of social aspects of the resilience. Hence, to conceptualize and investigate social resilience, I am interested in understanding social experience and social practices corresponding (3Cs) Change, Challenge, and Continutiy.To give voice to the 'social' in social resilience, I explore the concept of social resilience beyond its limited and displine-centred definition that conceptualizes it as abilty or capacity to withstand adversity. Gaining indepth insight of young adult migrants' lived experiences in Sweden, I ground the conceptulization of social resilience in the social experiences and practices providing a bottom-up perspective.
The concept of resilience - Focus shifted from trait perspectives to social constructionist perspective
The current concept of social resilience, which developed from the classic definition of resilience, neglects social resilience as a social phenomenon including social experiences and practices in the face of change and adversity. I argue that framing social resilience as a capacity or ability undermines its characteristics as a complex and contextualized social phenomenon that contributes to adaptive and transformative abilities in the context of migrants' lived experiences. In this article, I present a social constructionist approach to conceptualize social resilience. From a life course perspective, I emphasize on migrants' lived experiences. In this context, I describe status, network, support, and visibility as four institutionally embedded dimensions of social resilience that interconnect environmental factors to impact social experiences and practices. Social resilience is a phenomenon characterized by migrants' lived experiences marked by uncertainty and turning points embodied in the host country's political, economic, cultural, and social contexts -
A poster “Stop calling me RESILIENT” by Tracie Washington that she presented in the street of New Orleans in 2005.
“Every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re so resilient,’ that means you can do something else to me.”
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