AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022
Adopting a trauma-informed approach means viewing and engaging with a stateless
individual’s behaviours, responses, feelings or emotions and attitudes as a collection of
coping skills arising as a response to rights violations and traumatic experiences. For
this to be achieved, there is the need for multi-systemic changes and commitments
to practices by applying (basic) information of trauma and recovery to design and
deliver policies and services. Providing trauma-informed care and services reduces
situations and circumstances that can lead to additional harm or rights violations
through practices that are not supportive of well-being and recovery. Traumainformed services by any practitioner can increase a stateless person’s ‘choice and
control over the course of their recovery and focus on safety, strengths, spiritual and
emotional well-being, and the development of trusting relationships’.47 In providing
a positive trauma-informed intervention to stateless persons so that they can lead
satisfying and fulfilled lives, trauma practitioners must pay attention to their own
personal wellness. Providing care and services to wounded persons can result in a
variety of psychological reactions that can cause secondary stress disorders and lead
to vicarious trauma. Therefore, trauma specialists and other practitioners working
with stateless persons ought to take care of themselves and set limits on the levels of
emotional energy they can safely exert on their work.
VI. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Due to the inadequate linkages with core social, political, and developmental issues,
stateless persons remain uncounted and disenfranchised — and their very existence
may even be denied. When we observe victims and survivors who have their rights
denied and centre their lives or stories based on hierarchies of victimhood, we
are perpetuating the unjust belief that there are those who are more deserving [of
being heard] through having collective voices. From a quantitative perspective, we
acknowledge that multiple cases increase the credibility of the study. However, when
using a qualitative approach, a small sample is not generalisable and is a limitation
of many studies.
The aim of presenting the case example in this paper is to illustrate the wide range
of interconnecting yet challenging situations that a stateless person may experience
when navigating unjust systems.48 When access to having one’s story recognised
is contingent on the stories of many others who travel a similar road but with
inaccessible stories, this is in effect a denial of basic truth — that each of us must
have interlinking stories to satisfy or ensure acknowledgement of our traumas.
Trauma experience is individual, that is, it is based on the meaning that one attaches
to it and not what others make of it. Trauma-informed research within statelessness
studies calls for these stories to be platformed and amplified in a genuine way49 —
Rose Clervil, Kathleen Guarino, Carmela J DeCandia & CA Beach ‘Trauma-informed care for displaced populations:
A guide for community-based service providers’ Waltham, MA: The National Center on Family Homelessness, a practice
area of American Institutes for Research Health and Social Development Program (2020) 1 at 18.
48
Jeanine Hourani ‘Reclaiming statelessness narratives by resisting “deficit” discourse and amplifying the voices of stateless people’ University of Melbourne (2021) at para 4.
49
Janine Hourani (2021) op cit note 48 at para 7.
47
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