In her own words: a refugee’s story of forced migration, trauma, resilience, and soccer

Abstract

This paper presents the narrative of a young refugee woman (‘Makena’) as she moves between Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and the United States. Drawing upon the analytic practice of creative non-fiction, her life history is shared, based upon three interviews with Makena and one interview with her coach. Makena’s narrative, in this form, enables readers to enter into her lived experiences with forced migration, trauma, and resilience, as well as her experiences with two Sport for Development (SfD) interventions: Street Soccer USA and the Homeless World Cup. Through her narrative, readers learn about the role SfD interventions can play in the lives of refugees, exploring both their possibilities and their limitations. Ultimately, Makena expands our understanding of trauma survivors’ experiences within (and beyond) sport.

Keywords:

• Narrative
• creative nonfiction
• sport for development
• inclusion
• homeless

Acknowledgement

I thank Makena for generously sharing her story with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 While this paper is framed in terms of trauma, which has been critiqued in recent publications (e.g. Spaaij et al. 2019), it was guided by these core tenets of trauma-informed practice. Thus, this paper represents a more strength-based approach to understanding trauma, while still recognizing the limitations that come from this framing.