Abstract:
Understanding the intersection between refugee lives and trauma provides important insights into the impact of political violence and has helped illuminate such concerns to the eyes of the world stage. However, the experiences of trauma are not the only considerations we should embrace. This paper presents two divergent viewpoints on trauma in the refugee literature. The first provides a predominantly biomedical understanding of trauma related to forced migration. Associated with the medical model, this perspective generally uses Western diagnostic categories of distress to understand the negative effects and sequelae of forced migration. The second perspective questions the value of applying Western forms of psychopathological phenomena to groups of people who come from diverse localities and traditions. This medicalised shift can consequently obscure the political, cultural and social realities that resettling refugee communities emerge and highlights the necessity of conceptualising refugee lives beyond trauma dominated perspectives. This review presents refugees broadly and then contextualises this discussion with Sudanese refugees resettling in Australia.