The Past, the Present, and the Future: A Qualitative Study Exploring How Refugees' Experience of Time Influences Their Mental Health and Well-Being

Abstract

The experience of time has a decisive influence on refugees' well-being and suffering in all phases of their flight experiences. Basic safety is connected both developmentally and in present life with a feeling of continuity and predictability. Refugees often experience disruption of this basic sense of time in their home country due to war, persecution, and often severe traumatization, during flight, due to unpredictable and dangerous circumstances in the hands of smugglers, and after flight, due to unpredictable circumstances in asylum centers, e.g., extended waiting time and idleness. These context-dependent disruptions of normal experiences of time may lead to disturbances in mental life and extreme difficulties in organizing one's daily life. This article is based on narrative interviews with 78 asylum seekers and refugees in asylum centers in Norway, exploring their experiences before, during, and after flight. The distinction between abstract, chronological time, and concrete time connecting situational experiences (daily activities, such as daily rhythm of sleep and wakefulness) proved important for understanding how the experiences became mentally disturbing and how people tried to cope with this experience more or often less successfully. Prominent findings were loss of future directedness, a feeling of being imprisoned or trapped, disempowerment, passivity and development of a negative view of self, memory disturbances with difficulty of placing oneself in time and space, disruptions of relations, and a feeling of loss of developmental possibilities. Some had developed resilient strategies, such as imagining the flight as a holiday trip, to cope with the challenges, but most participants felt deeply disempowered and often disorientated. The analysis pointed clearly to a profound context dependent time-disrupting aspect of the refugee experience. An insecure and undefined present made participants unable to visualize their future and integrate the future in their experience of the present. This was connected with the inherent passivity and undefined waiting in the centers and camps, and with previous near encounters with annihilation and death. A response was often withdrawal into passivity.

“I Have No Capacities That Can Help Me”: Young Asylum Seekers in Norway and Serbia – Flight as Disturbance of Developmental Processes

“…This study presents qualitative data from a mixed method study with participants recruited in Norway and Serbia. Results from this study have been presented in earlier publications (Grøtvedt et al, submitted;Sagbakken et al, 2020). Quantitative data related to traumatic events and indicators of mental health are presented in a separate article (Grøtvedt et al, submitted).…”

“…Among those who were in Norway and were waiting for decisions or had been rejected, the tone and quality of their stories was different, often characterized by hopelessness, confusion, worry, and a sense of dislocation. In a previous work, we analyzed how living in inconclusive life situations that unfold in the context of a bewildering, bureaucratic system that is difficult to understand or influence causes feelings of confusion and powerlessness ( Sagbakken et al, 2020 ). Being left in a situation of insecurity and unpredictability, often for several years, distorts people’s perception of time when they lose the ability to visualize their future life.…”

“…To achieve this, one needs some stability in order to connect the past and the present with the future and to imagine what one can develop to become or how one’s identity can develop. This difficulty in imagining a future with possibilities seemed to create a sense of uncertainty and meaninglessness, which caused impairment in the sense of reality, whereby cognitive organization of perceptual impulses became extremely demanding due to difficulties in distinguishing the important from the unimportant ( Sagbakken et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Protracted uncertainty characterizes longer phases of the refugee experience, often lasting many years, making it extremely difficult to plan or imagine a future with possibilities ( Horst and Grabska, 2015 ). These uncertainties have obvious negative effects on young people’s ability to endure difficult situations and to activate psychosocial resources ( Sagbakken et al, 2020 ).…”

Different Relations of Religion and Mental Health

“…While religiosity appears to protect from PTEs and marginalization in the case of Middle Eastern RA, future studies should also target other coping strategies. Coping strategies may differ in individuals as PTEs took place mainly in the past, whereas acculturation occurs in the present and future (Sagbakken et al, 2020). As religiosity has different associations with mental health and resilience in RA and IA, longitudinal studies are needed to detect (a) when, (b) for whom, and (c) in which contexts these differences occur.…”