Forced Migration and Refugees: Trauma Experience and Participatory Care

Abstract

The author examines forced migration—today a major world phenomenon—with a specific focus on the status of refugees. She underscores certain aspects of this potentially traumatic experience and considers it from dislocation to relocation in a new country. The article presents reflections on trauma and resilience processes and on a participatory care process based on interventions with migrant populations used at the social cooperative Terrenuove in Milan, Italy. The author blends general theoretical ideas with those of transactional analysis and uses a case study to illustrate the discussion.

Keywords:

• Transactional analysis
• social responsibility
• refugees
• forced migration
• trauma
• resilience
• intercultural interventions
• network group
• dislocation
• acculturation
• asylum

Disclosure Statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Susanna Ligabue

Susanna Ligabue is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy), a psychotherapist, and president of CPAT, an Italian national TA association that is associated with the European Association for Transactional Analysis (EATA). Susanna is a founder fellow of Centro di Psicologia e Analisi Transazionale and of Terrenuove, a social cooperative in Milan, Italy. She teaches and supervises at the postgraduate School of Specialization in Psychotherapy of the Center of Psychology and TA in Milan (recognized by the Italian Ministry of University and Research) and at ATc–TA Counselling School. She has published several articles in the Transactional Analysis Journal (on script and the body) and in the Italian TA journal Quaderni di psicologia Analisis Transazionale e scienze umane. Susanna has served as the author and/or editor for issues on script and attachment (2001), connecting languages (2004), dreams (2005), trauma (2008), script protocol (2009), and emotions (2011). She has also published chapters about the treatment of migrants in books published by Terrenuove and Franco Angeli Editions. Susanna can be reached at Centro di Psicologia e AT, Via Archimede 127, Milan 20129, Italy; email: [email protected].