• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.145-155
• /
• 2019

The strength or resilience of refugees is a less emphasized area as the discourse in refugee mental health study mainly weighs on pathologizing the effects of refugee experiences. Within the lenses of strength and resilience, this study explored how refugees and asylum seekers, who experienced violence and loss, coped with trauma and hardship in their newly established lives in South Korea. In this study we analyzed survey data collected from 100 participants (55 asylum seekers and 45 refugees) through open-ended questions. We analyzed narratives for both content and form and provided evidence for factors that reflect coping strategies used by participants to overcome their life adversities. The findings gave rise to; (a) character traits like strong religiosity, personal determination, patience to forbear, hopefulness, and peaceful acceptance of current circumstance; (b) relationships, in the sense of meaningful strong bonds within family members and the instinctive personal resourcefulness to utilize support resources within and outside of their communities; (c) learned skills after migraing to korea; (d) knowledge sets in how to get by in korea; (e) personal talents, and (f) extra abilities that gave power to pass socio-economic difficulties. The findings underscore the importance of considering the strength-based approach either in discussing resilience or intervention. Our approach will allow practitioners to acknowledge that refugees and asylum seekers potentially have a unique set of strengths and abilities that they rely on to overcome their immediate and future problems. It will also guide practitioners as they devise their intervention schemes.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.60 no.5
• /
• pp.138-144
• /
• 2017

Purpose: Following legal reform in 2013, the annual number of asylum seekers entering South Korea has increased from 1,143 in 2012 to 5,711 in 2015. We interviewed six African refugee mothers of young children regarding their health needs and barriers to access maternal child health services. Methods: We recruited mothers who had visited a clinic for immigrants between July 2013 and August 2015. Participants were African refugee women, aged over 18 years, who had given birth in Korea within the previous 5 years and had come to Korea over a year before recruitment. Interview questions examined participants' experiences in pregnancy and childbirth and concerns regarding their child's health status. Initial data analysis involved all researchers' immersion in the entire collection of transcripts. We then noted recurrent topics and themes and identified similar issues. Results: At the time of giving birth, 5 participants were asylum seekers and one had undocumented status. The following barriers impeded their access to maternal child healthcare: socioeconomic factors (unstable social identity, low economic status, difficulty obtaining health insurance), language barriers (lack of linguistically appropriate health information, limited access to translation services), and cultural barriers (religious and cultural differences). Weak social support also hindered access to healthcare soon after migration; however, social links with the community emerged as a key coping strategy following settlement. Conclusion: We identified barriers to maternal and child healthcare and coping strategies among African refugee mothers in Korea. Future research should assess refugees' health status and improve health access and literacy among refugee mothers.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.169-198
• /
• 2019

This study focused on the increase in refugee-related discourse in Korean society with the recent inflow of asylum seekers to Jeju Island. The purpose of our study was to understand the trends in public opinion concerning the acceptance of refugees by analyzing the content of refugee-related video commentary on YouTube. Topic modeling was conducted to analyze the main points, context, and ideas in the comments. The results indicated that the media mainly focus on the pros and cons of refugees, restricting the refugee issue to the problem of acceptance with a narrow focus on the case of Jeju Island. Refugee acceptance was treated as overwhelmingly unacceptable in the comments. We found that commenters often used negative discourse in the comments as a device for reproducing and amplifying hate speech.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.125-147
• /
• 2020

On the World Refugee Day in 2017, Yao Chen, a Chinese actress, philanthropist, and social media influencer, posted messages in her Weibo in support of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Yet, social media users quickly interpreted this supportive message of the refugee program as encouraging people to "accept and receive refugees" (jieshou nanmin) into China. Particularly, the category of Middle Eastern refugees elicited most criticism in China's cyberspace. As the inclusion of refugees is an integral part of immigrant multiculturalism, this article examines the limits of multicultural imagination of refugees―particularly those from the Middle Eastern and North Africa―in contemporary China. I argue that the limits of multicultural imagination in contemporary China is profoundly shaped by an intricate interweaving of domestic policies and global imaginaries toward refugees. By deploying a mixed methodology, such limits are examined from legal-institutional, ideological, and sociocultural perspectives. More specifically, three interrelated aspects will be highlighted in the article: (1) the global circulation of right-wing populism imaginaries, and their entanglements with the anti-Muslim sentiments in contemporary China; (2) the current insufficiency of the legal-institutional framework regarding refugees and asylum-seekers, which needs to be contextualized in China's modern history of dealing with refugee issues; (3) population politics, the rise of Han-centric nationalism, and their constraining impact on the interpretation of historical events related to cultural diversity. In conclusion, this article also offers potential implications for further examining the different yet potentially intersected genealogies of multicultural imaginaries beyond the Middle Eastern and North African refugees in Asia.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.62-88
• /
• 2017

Global polarization at different scales has been more intensified than ever before. So, more complicated geographies are associated with global poverty and inequality, and their subsequent problems such as famine, disease, environmental degradation, and asylum seekers. These problems are apparently confined to specific countries and regions. However, they are a consequence of historical-geographic (post)colonial interconnectedness. In this sense, since the early 1960s, international development cooperation has significantly contributed to resolve or alleviate them. Especially, in 2015, the Millenium Development Goals(MDGs) project is finished and Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) are newly set up as a global project to end human poverty. It is assumed that donor's IDC to accomplish SDGs will be more complicatedly implemented because SDGs contain more expanded and diversified forms of project targets than before. They are both possibilities and limits in the sense of development geography.