Refugees coming to Europe face many problems in addition to the traumatic events they experienced in their country of origin. Thus, their lives and health are often at risk during the migration. The Central Mediterranean route is one of the most dangerous sea routes to Europe. It stretches from sub-Saharan Africa to Italy. In very poor conditions, the refugee journey sometimes lasts more than a year and is accompanied by hunger, violence and deception by smugglers, the local population and the authorities, who lock them up in prisons or use them for forced labor. Those who survive the journey face new problems upon arrival in Europe. Fear of being sent back, racism and complicated procedures for obtaining documents are just some of the problems they face upon arrival. Even after several years of living in a European country, they still face racism when looking for a job, an apartment or when trying to show their talents and fulfill their full potential. Despite facing potentially traumatic events on a daily basis, many refugees show signs of high psychological resilience.
In this master's thesis, I use the Connor-Davidson scale of resilience to measure the level of resilience of individuals and complemented by semi-structured interviews, determine which factors influence the strengthening of their resilience and investigate the influence of integration and religion.
In the theoretical part of my master's thesis, I talk about the mental health of refugees, trauma and PTSD. In the following, I define resilience and list different opinions and theories about it, focusing on previous research on refugee resilience. In the empirical part, I present the findings of qualitative and quantitative research, namely the Connor-Davidson scale of resilience and semi-structured interviews, which I conducted with nine participants in Sicily, who came to Europe from Africa via the Central Mediterranean route.
The findings of the research show the importance of religion as a factor in the resilience of refugees and the process of integration in cooperation with the personality characteristics of the interviewees. I also learned about other resilience strategies of the refugees who participated in the research.
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