Psychosocial Experiences of African Migrants in Six European Countries a Mixed Method Study Social Indicators Research Series
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Social Indicators Research Series 81 Erhabor Idemudia Klaus Boehnke Psychosocial Experiences of African Migrants in Six European Countries A Mixed Method Study Social Indicators Research Series Volume 81 Series Editor Alex C. Michalos, Faculty of Arts Office, Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada Editorial Board Ed Diener, Psychology Department, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA Wolfgang Glatzer, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany Torbjorn Moum, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway Ruut Veenhoven, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands This series aims to provide a public forum for single treatises and collections of papers on social indicators research that are too long to be published in our journal Social Indicators Research. Like the journal, the book series deals with statistical assessments of the quality of life from a broad perspective. It welcomes research on a wide variety of substantive areas, including health, crime, housing, education, family life, leisure activities, transportation, mobility, economics, work, religion and environmental issues. These areas of research will focus on the impact of key issues such as health on the overall quality of life and vice versa.- An international review board, consisting of Ruut Veenhoven, Joachim Vogel, Ed Diener, Torbjorn Moum and Wolfgang Glatzer, will ensure the high quality of the series as a whole. Available at 25% discount for International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS). For membership details please contact: ISQOLS; e-mail: office@isqols. org Editors: Ed Diener, University of Illinois, Champaign, USA; Wolfgang Glatzer, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Torbjorn Moum, Univer- sity of Oslo, Norway; Ruut Veenhoven, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6548 Erhabor Idemudia • Klaus Boehnke Psychosocial Experiences of African Migrants in Six European Countries A Mixed Method Study 123 Erhabor Idemudia Klaus Boehnke Faculty of the Human Sciences Jacobs University Bremen North-West University Bremen, Germany Mmabatho, South Africa The Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation (AvH), Germany for Sponsoring the Study and Making Open Access Publication of the Book Possible ISSN 1387-6570 ISSN 2215-0099 (electronic) Social Indicators Research Series ISBN 978-3-030-48346-3 ISBN 978-3-030-48347-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48347-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. This book is an open access publication. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To all african migrants in diaspora Preface This book has a long history. It started in the year 2000 when the first author contacted the second author, then still at Chemnitz University of Technology, for support with his application for a fellowship from Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (AvH). The second author was just about to begin his term of office as Secretary General of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP). The application eventually was successful. The second author, however, had meanwhile given up his lifetime professorship at the Department of Sociology in Chemnitz to accept a fixed-term contract as Professor of Social Science Methodology at the then International University Bremen, now Jacobs University. Soon after the second author had resettled to Bremen, the first author started his Humboldt fellowship there, at that time still being affiliated to the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. In two stays of several months each, the first author conducted a small study on the mental health of African migrants to Germany with a special focus on incarcerated migrants. This study was eventually documented in a book by both authors, titled ‘I’m an alien in Deutschland—A quantitative mental health case study of African immigrants in Germany’. Both authors stayed in close contact afterward and published additional work on Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa. Contact then again intensified when the second author successfully nominated the first author for the Georg Forster Award of AvH, an award honoring high-quality academic work by scientists from the Global South. The award came with a lump sum prize money sufficient to allow the data gathering for the study reported in this book. It must be highlighted that data gathering (both quantitative and qualitative) in all six countries included (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and UK) and rested entirely on the shoulders of the first author. He initiated the necessary snowballing to secure sufficiently sizable samples and conducted focus group discussions and an in-depth interview in each country all by himself without any further assistance, thereby frequently ‘being at the limits.’ Already until here, the eminent importance of support from Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung will have become evident. The book that readers hold in hand, however, would not have been possible without yet further support from AvH. In 2019, the foundation supported the first author’s work once more by financing a six-month stay not only of the first vii viii Preface author at the institution of the second authors, but also by financing an additional postdoctoral fellow from the first author’s research unit to accompany and support him during that time (see acknowledgements at the end of the preface). Without this support, the completion of the book manuscript would have been close to impos- sible, in particular because of the scarcity of time on the side of the second author. He had meanwhile been elected to the office of President of IACCP. Simultaneously, he co-heads the Center for Sociocultural Research at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow next to his professorship at Jacobs University. Chapter 1, Setting the Scene, provides the general background of emigration, especially of youth, from countries of Africa to Europe and the global statistics of African migration—with an emphasis on African migrants in general and the consequences of migration for African countries. A general debate of the politics of African emigration countries, the colonial past of all receiving countries, and the intertwining of both are also being offered in this chapter. Chapter 2 discusses Patterns and Current Trends in African Migration to Europe; historical perspectives of African migration patterns are portrayed, for emigration countries as well as for destination countries, and in the context of colonial ties. Purposes and motivation for travels, then and now, are discussed. Trends of these patterns are discussed within the rapid social change paradigm, as sketched, e.g., by Silbereisen and Tomasik (2010). As our chapters are meant to lend themselves to stand-alone reads, a certain amount of redundancy with the prior and the subsequent chapters come deliberately. Traveling Routes to Europe (Chap. 3) takes off from the prior chapter and as such focusses on various routes migrants use and their motivations to do so. The chapter offers details on the ‘backside’ of how people travel, the challenges migrants have to overcome, the involvement of migration mongers, motives for emigration, etc. The chapter dwells on the preferred routes, why they are chosen, and what happens on these routes, supported by oral evidence from in-depth and focussed group discussions. Traumas are discussed within the context of the mental health paradigm, looking in particular at the post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS), a full-fledged post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and well-being in more general terms. The next Chapter (4) discusses Theoretical Explanations of Migrations, Mental Health, Well-being and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Unlike in classical neo-positivist studies, theories, for the present research, are not the basis from which to generate hypotheses, but are the frame for understanding the data. The survey study encompassed in the to-be-reported research serves the purpose of being a resource for ‘quantitative hermeneutics.’ Theories relevant to the variables touched upon in the present study are reviewed; mental health theories, well-being theories, migration theories, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and post-traumatic stress disorder theories are core to this chapter. The scarce body of literature on mental health effects of migration among African migrants is reviewed. The role of theories in the research process of the present study is discussed and connected with participants’ experiences.