Editorial

Citation

(2011), "Editorial", International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, Vol. 7 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmhsc.2011.54807caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, Volume 7, Issue 3

The refugee experience is often characterized in terms of rupture: a rupture from family and friends, cultures, language and landscape. The movement to a new land is challenging for all migrants, but particularly so for those existing without economic resources or social capital. Elmeroth offers an important insight into the absence of a sense of coherence among refugees in Sweden and the implications of this for refugee integration. She adopts a phenomenological/hermeneutic analysis of refugee narratives offering a nuanced reading of refugees’ own sense of coherence and rupture.

The issue of coherence is simultaneously important in refugees’ lives and it services provided to them. In complementary papers, Tribe and Calvert, and Calvert offer insights into the workings of the Sri-Lanka Trauma Group. They highlight case studies of Sri Lankan victims of war and the interventions offered by an NGO that has worked for 14 years with those affected. In doing so, they offer insight into the fine grain of interventions offering reflexive accounts that provide insight into issues of transferability.

The contribution of Watters too addresses issues of coherence, in this case, the coherence of services offered for migrants and refugees. He highlights the importance of analyzing and implementing services through a framework that incorporates entitlement, access and appropriateness. In so doing, he argues that examination of one or two of these aspects provides an analytically unsatisfactory model that is furthermore of limited utility in service provision. He argues that all three aspects should be incorporated in the study of health care for migrants and refugees.