An Ethnographic Study of Teenage Refuge: Life after Wartime for Bosnian Teens in Chicago

This presentation is based upon an ongoing ethnographic investigation of Bosnian adolescents and their families in Chicago following resettlement in the 1990's and early 2000's. It investigates their lives amongst the conditions of refuge provided by the state, city, schools, social and psychological services. In the United States, too often, their voices and concerns are neither heard nor acknowledged by the institutions that society has appointed to manage the problems through their practices of "multiculturalism", "bilingual education", "human rights", and "trauma relief". This reflects a poor understanding of the relationship between trauma and culture, both on behalf of traumatologists and culturalists. The ethnographic analysis has yielded a reconceptualization of trauma and culture called converting cultural capital which describes cultural strategies by which teen refugees attempt to manage enormous historical, social, cultural, economic, familial and psychological changes associated with refugee trauma. From this position it is also possible to imagine a new vision of social and mental health services for refugee youth.

A paper to be presented at the symposium, "Culture, Trauma and Cultural Rights", chaired by Yael Danieli

Other Presenters: Ethiopian Jews' Narrative of the Journey to Israel: Culture & Trauma (BenEzer); Cultural Rights and Trauma (Stamatopoulou)

Friday, October 31 from 4 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.
19th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies
The Palmer House Hilton
Chicago, IL