Authors#
- Ling Ling Tai, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal (presenter)
- Rita Guerra, ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal
- Kinga Bierwiaczonek, Leibniz Institute for Psychology, Germany
Abstract#
The global refugee population has doubled since 2016. In the first half of 2023, there were more than 110 million forcibly displaced people, and this trend will likely continue. In addition to the usual challenges of adapting to the host society, refugees also carry the physical and psychological burdens of forced displacement and human rights violations. The Psychological Antecedents of Refugee Integration (PARI) model (Echterhoff et al., 2020) includes two psychological factors as its central theme: perceived forcedness (i.e., the subjective experience of forced displacement) and related perils (i.e., the subjective experience of dangers associated with forced displacement). These factors are theorized to influence the refugees’ integration processes while coping with the demands of the host society. Moreover, post-arrival demands typically faced by refugees include perceived discrimination in various domains such as housing, employment, healthcare, and education. Evidence shows that discrimination negatively affects participation in host societies, reduces migrants’ adoption of the host society’s culture, reduces the likelihood of integration, and generally hinders subjective well-being Less known is the role of host country’s context for refugee psychological responses to displacement. In this study, we thus compare two refugee groups in two different contexts: refugees in Portugal and Zomi refugees in Malaysia. Portugal is a signatory of the UN Refugee Convention and Protocol and has a comprehensive integration policy, including healthcare access for asylum-seekers and cultural diversity education in schools. Portugal is ranked ‘Top Ten’on the Multicultural Policy Index. In contrast, Malaysia, does not have a national asylum system and are not signatories of the UN Refugee Convention and Protocol. The non-recognition of refugees means they have limited access to housing, employment, education, healthcare, and protection. Treated as “illegal immigrants”, refugees regularly face detention without trial or representation, forced removals, deportation, criminal prosecution, and corporal punishment by the local authorities. Provided these differences between contexts of reception, we expected that refugee groups in these two countries differ in their perceptions of discrimination, well-being, and their correlates. Indeed, results showed that perceived discrimination and related perils were significantly higher for Zomi refugees in Malaysia, while subjective well-being and perceived forcedness were considerably higher for refugees in Portugal. For both groups, perceived forcedness was negatively related to subjective well-being, but perceived discrimination was not significantly associated with subjective well-being. For refugees in Portugal, perceived discrimination was positively related to perceived forcedness. For Zomi refugees, perceived discrimination was positively associated with related perils. We propose that group differences are a product of the host country’s social and political factors. Limitations, practical implications, and future research avenues are discussed.
This presentation took place at the:
- The XXVII International Congress of The International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology, on the 7 August 2024, in Bali, Indonesia
- 33rd International Congress of Psychology, on the 23 July 2024, at Prague, Czechia.
- 82nd Annual Conference of the International Council of Psychologists, on the 20 July 2024, at the Prague University of Economics and Business Prague, Czechia.