Everyday resilience: Narratives of single refugee women with children

Abstract

This paper offers a critical exploration of the concept of resilience, which is largely conceptualised in the literature as an extraordinary atypical personal ability to revert or 'bounce back' to a point of equilibrium despite significant adversity. While resilience has been explored in a range of contexts, there is little recognition of resilience as a social process arising from mundane practices of everyday life and situated in personenvironment interactions. Based on an ethnographic study among single refugee women with children in Brisbane, Australia, the women's stories on navigating everyday tensions and opportunities revealed how resilience was a process operating intersubjectively in the social spaces connecting them to their environment. Far beyond the simplistic binaries of resilience versus non-resilient, we concern ourselves here with the everyday processual, person-environment nature of the concept. We argue that more attention should be paid to day-today pathways through which resilience outcomes are achieved, and that this has important implications for refugee mental health practice frameworks

Faith Resilience: Everyday Experiences

“…Consequently, this research is unique in its focus on the faith and everyday manifestations of resilience and in that it draws its participants from a number of religious, faith-based communities in Birmingham, a city renowned for its diversity. As Lenette et al argue, resilience is 'situated in everydayness', in daily routines, and it is necessary to recognise that resilience does not only belong to the realm of adversity nor is it an ability of only a few [8] …”

“…It suggests the ability and capacity of 2 of 13 systems, organisations, individuals, cities, communities, or societies to 'bounce back' and be able to maintain their core functioning; adapting positively in the face of a straining or adverse condition [6,7]. Although much of the discussion and conceptualisation of resilience in policy, as well as in the scholarly canon, has mainly revolved around this extraordinary nature of resilience, it is far from fixed and static; it arises not only in the face of significant adversity but is embedded in the ordinary everyday activities and challenges people encounter, a fact which is mostly overlooked in the scholarly canon [8].…”

“…Although Manning and others recognise the multidimensional nature of resilience, the focus is mainly on the role of faith in promoting and being a source of resilience concerning traumatic life events or extraordinary events, such as dealing with and recovering from cancer or the challenges of old age. In such understandings the focus is on the 'static inner characteristic' rather than viewing it as an ongoing process which is part of people's everyday lives [8].…”

‘Eventually the mine will come’: women anti-mining activists’ everyday resilience in opposing resource extraction in the Andes

“…In relation to women, this approach to resilience is evident in research on women enduring various stressful situations, including Mexican migrant women living in the USA (Campbell 2008), Quechua women in post-conflict Peru (Barrios Suarez 2015), and refugee single mothers in Australia (Lenette et al 2012).…”

“…We use the notion of resilience not to negate their struggles, but rather to recognise the women's strengths. The work of Caroline Lenette et al (2012) is particularly useful in developing an understanding of resilience as an ability to negotiate challenging situations and cope with ongoing conflict and adversity. They emphasise 'everyday resilience' (637), the determination to overcome daily challenges, rather than focusing on the spectacular aspects of struggle, or moments of particular crisis.…”