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Project: Generating hope and dealing with uncertainty: An ethnographic study of the social dimensions of hope in the Swedish asylum-seeking context

This project will study issues of hope and uncertainty among asylum seekers living in asylum facilities and private homes in southern Sweden. Approaching the years after arrival as a timespace characterized by uncertainty, waiting and anticipation, we will study the implication and meaning of hope in the asylum context.

Project information

Project manager
Torun Elsrud
Other project members
Jesper Andreasson, Linnaeus University; Marcus Herz and Philip Lalander, Malmö University
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University, Malmö University
Financier
The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet; projekt grant HS)
Timetable
1 July 2018-30 June 2022
Subject
Social Work (Department of Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences)

More about the project

Hope has been found an important empowering emotion among refugees and migrants who are forced to leave home for an uncertain future. Using hope as an analytical perspective, connected to aspects of social life, this project will study experiences of migration at the receiving end. It will pay attention to the significance of gender, ethnicity, education and age in experiences of the asylum context in relation to hope.

This ethnographic, 4-year longitudinal project will study issues of hope and uncertainty among asylum seekers living in asylum facilities and private homes in southern Sweden. Approaching the years after arrival as a timespace characterized by uncertainty, waiting and anticipation, we will study the implication and meaning of hope in the asylum context. The migrants' initial stay in Sweden, from life at asylum camps to either rejection or temporary or permanent residency in private homes, is characterized by crucial moments/meetings, but also tedious everyday waiting. Doing recurrent interviews with 25-30 migrants and observations in asylum contexts the project approaches questions of how hope is generated, increased, decreased, juggled or lost in the social interaction in which asylum seekers participate.

The design provides a complex empirical material that will be a valuable contribution to understanding the challenges people face during the asylum seeking process and developing emerging knowledge about the significance of hope during migration uncertainty.

The project is part of the research in the Social work and migration research group and in Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.

Staff