Parenting in Protracted Refugee Situations: Systematic Review

• In Event: What happens to family dynamics in a protracted refugee situation?

Abstract

No literature review to date has focused on parenting in protracted refugee situations, which are situations in which approximately 78% of all the refugees worldwide live. To consolidate the scattered knowledge on this topic, we registered and are conducting the first systematic review on this topic (PROSPERO; CRD42022289404). Using data and definitions from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), we identified 150 protracted refugee situations in 72 countries. We then screened approximately 17,000 documents in English, Arabic, French, Urdu, and Italian for research on parenting during a protracted refugee situation. The ten electronic databases that were searched for peer-reviewed material were MEDLINE, APA PsycINFO, APA PsycArticles, ERIC, CINAHL, MIDIRS, Sociological Abstracts, Embase, CENTRAL, and Web of Science Core Collection. Inclusion of grey literature included three components: we searched (i) non-published scholarly work on ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I; (ii) website pages on ReliefWeb, Refworld, MHPSS, ALNAP, ECOI, ACAPS, UNHCR, UNRWA, WHO, CVT, Amnesty, HRW, ICRC, IOM, State.gov, and Freedom House; and subsequently searched (iii) local materials produced on the first 100 websites for each of the 72 countries that have ‘hosted’ a protracted refugee situation. Currently, we are in the final stages of screening titles and abstracts and will review the full-text documents and begin data extraction from October 2022. Early results suggest that the literature on parenting in protracted refugee situations is considerable, but overrepresents a small number of refugee populations and host countries. Most of the literature is focused on infants or adolescents, potentially overlooking middle childhood. Mothers are overrepresented in studies and only a handful of studies examined fathers. While there is heterogeneity in the design of studies, overall, the literature appears to have a bias toward studying anxiety-related aspects associated with parenting (e.g., trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder), with less research focusing on depression, resilience, or positive aspects of parenting. Much of the work on understanding factors affecting parenting is done on events that happened prior to displacement (e.g., exposure to war trauma) rather than on events associated with daily stress (e.g., discrimination in the host country). There seems to be a dearth of research on family dynamics in these situations in general, including how spousal relationship quality impacts parents’ relationship with their children. We also find a limited body of work investigating the bidirectionality of child behavior and parenting in protracted refugee situations. In gathering the known knowledge on parenting for an overwhelming majority of refugees, living in countries that offer them no durable solution, our review provides insights relevant to a wide audience of researchers, clinicians and policymakers working with or for displaced families in war-stricken and impoverished regions across the globe.

Authors

• Qusai Khraisha, Trinity College Dublin
  Presenting Author

• Beatrice Volta, University of Padova

• Nadeen Abu Jaber, Trinity College, Dublin

• Azza Warraitch, Trinity College Dublin

• Kristin Hadfield, Trinity College Dublin