Transnational forced migration and negotiating emotional well-being: the case of women refugees in South Africa

Abstract

This study seeks to gain a better understanding of how a group of women refugees perceives their emotional well-being and how they make sense of their emotions. The discussion is based on a comparative qualitative study done in South Africa among Congolese, Burundian and Zimbabwean refugees. Attention is paid to intrapersonal emotional ambivalence and how the emotional well-being of refugees relates to their socio-economic context and more specifically their challenging life experiences. Reference is made to the role children and religion play in respondents’ perceived emotional well-being and hope for the future. In addition, all the respondents had to manage emotions related to transnational familial ties. On the one hand, an acute sense of family separation was experienced. On the other, respondents felt a sense of financial responsibility towards their kin who were left behind. Yet, few respondents had the means to provide family members with any form of financial assistance. This in turn had repercussions for their emotional well-being.

Keywords:

• emotional well-being
• transnational forced migration
• refugees
• transnational family ties
• family separation

Notes

1. “[A] person qualifies for refugee status […] if that person (a) owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted by reason of his or her race, tribe, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, is outside the country of his or her nationality and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of that country, or, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his or her former habitual residence is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it; or (b) owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing or disrupting public order in either a part or the whole of his or her country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his or her place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge elsewhere: or (c) is a dependant of a person contemplated in paragraph (a) or (b)” (Chapter 1, Refugees Act, No. 130 of 1998 of the Republic of South Africa).