Resilience and identities: the role of past, present and future in the lives of forced migrants

Abstract

Resilience has often been used to understand how forced migrants cope in the face of adversities. It is generally described as a process embedded into the wider social environment, which entails the ability of individuals to respond to ongoing change. While much literature focuses on resilience-enhancing factors, advancing a more subjective understanding of resilience has been neglected. We build on ideas by Krause and Schmidt [2020. ‘Refugees as Actors? Critical Reflections on Global Refugee Policies on Self-Reliance and Resilience.’ Journal of Refugee Studies 33 (1): 22–41. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez059] on the importance of different temporalities for individual agency by examining the role played by individual memories of the past, experiences in the present, and ambitions for the future in resilience processes. Using data from a photo-elicitation study with forced migrants in the North-East of England, we focus on three individual accounts of resilience. Our research highlights how individuals proactively make strategic choices and assume responsibility for their well-being–even if that depends on changing underlying structural issues. We show that, despite a hostile immigration environment, as found in the UK, individuals are able to act and adapt to their environment, although this is limited to a degree. We demonstrate how time matters in personal resilience processes–both as a tactic for resilience for some and a disruptor of resilience for others.