Trauma as Displacement: Observations from Refugee Resettlement

Abstract

Trauma does not have a single definition. Within Western paradigms, across humanities and social sciences, it has largely been characterized through temporal and spatial dislocation. Critical studies of trauma, however, suggest that such framings of rupture, catastrophe, and mass displacement can obscure longer term and structural forms of violence, such as colonialism and gender-based violence. This article explores the displacement, emplacement, and transitivity of trauma through the process of refugee resettlement. It is part of a broader qualitative study that traces how trauma concepts and practices are mobilized in the process of refugee resettlement, specifically for Iraqis who are resettled in the United States. This article argues that trauma is neither a one-time event that is endlessly relived and reactivated in identical episodes nor does trauma emplace a singular geography. Rather, trauma can be understood as a set of serial emplacements and displacements across multiple sites, in our case transnationally. Apart from the distress and geopolitics of war, securitized migration policies produce trauma for people who have been displaced. This trauma of family separation, however, should not be regarded merely as an extension of war-making but as an additional manifestation produced by the global refugee regime.

创伤没有统一的定义。在西方人文和社会科学领域, 创伤很大程度上被描述为时间和空间上的混乱。然而, 对创伤的批判性研究表明, 这种基于破裂、灾难和大规模迁移的框架, 可能模糊了长期性和结构性的暴力形式（例如, 殖民主义和性别暴力）。本文探讨了难民再安置中创伤的迁移、安置和传递。本研究属于追踪难民再安置过程中（特别是再安置在美国的伊拉克人）对创伤的理解和实践的定性研究。本文认为, 创伤既不是相同情况下不断再现和激活的一次性事件, 也不存在于单一的地理位置。相反, 在我们的跨国案例中, 创伤是一组多地的、系列的安置和迁移。除了战争带来的痛苦和地缘政治, 保障性移民政策也给迁移者带来了创伤。然而, 家庭分离带来的创伤, 不仅仅是战争的延伸, 也是全球难民制度所产生的另一种表现。

No existe una única definición sobre trauma. Dentro de los paradigmas occidentales, en las humanidades y las ciencias sociales, el trauma ha sido caracterizado en gran medida por la dislocación temporal y espacial. Sin embargo, los estudios críticos sobre el trauma sugieren que tales marcos de ruptura, catástrofe y desplazamiento masivo pueden ocultar formas de violencia estructural de largo plazo, tales como el colonialismo y la violencia de género. Este artículo explora el desplazamiento, el emplazamiento y la transitividad del trauma a través del proceso de reasentamiento de refugiados. El artículo forma parte de un estudio cualitativo más amplio que busca determinar cómo los conceptos y prácticas relacionadas con el trauma se movilizan en el proceso de reasentamiento de refugiados, con particular referencia a los iraquíes que son reasentados en los Estados Unidos. En este artículo se sostiene que el trauma no es un evento único que se revive y reactiva sin cesar en idénticos episodios; ni tampoco emplaza el trauma una geografía singular. Mejor que eso, el trauma puede entenderse como un conjunto de emplazamientos y desplazamientos seriados a través de múltiples sitios, de manera transnacional en nuestro caso. Aparte de la angustia y la geopolítica de la guerra, las políticas migratorias permeadas de seguridad traumatizan a la gente que ha sufrido desplazamiento. Sin embargo, el trauma de la separación de la familia no debe considerarse meramente como una extensión de la guerra sino como manifestación adicional producida por el régimen global de refugiados.

Key Words:

• displacement
• feminist
• geopolitics
• Iraqi refugees
• trauma

关键词:

• 迁移
• 女权主义者
• 地缘政治
• 伊拉克难民
• 创伤。

Palabras clave:

• desplazamiento
• feminista
• geopolítica
• refugiados iraquíes
• trauma

Acknowledgments

Thank you to our anonymous reviewers and Kendra Strauss for their feedback, which improved this article.

Notes

1 We largely leave aside personal and collective narrations of trauma, a vast and complex topic, nor do we offer refugee accounts as evidence of trauma. We did not elicit mental health status or accounts of trauma in our interviews with people who have been resettled.

2 These constellations roughly encompass Pain’s (2020) categories of memorial places, layered places, and hardwired places for our first set and her categories of retraumatizing places and mobile places for the second.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF; Award ID BCS-1461615). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are ours and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

Notes on contributors

Patricia Ehrkamp

PATRICIA EHRKAMP is a Professor and Chair of the Geography Department at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include immigration, citizenship, transnationalism, and the geopolitics of refugee resettlement.

Jenna M. Loyd

JENNA M. LOYD is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI 53706. E-mail: [email protected]. She researches health politics, migration politics, and their intersection.

Anna J. Secor

ANNA J. SECOR is Professor of Human Geography at Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 2LE, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research seeks to understand difference, politics, and space in everyday life in Turkey and in refugee resettlement to the United States.