Browsing by Author "Valtonen, Laura"

This thesis is an ethnographic case study on project Safety Net, which provides psychosocial peer support for unaccompanied minor asylum seekers in the Helsinki metropolitan area. About 150 underage asylum seekers unaccompanied by family arrive in Finland yearly. Project Safety Net peer tutors visit the group homes that the children live in, and provide an opportunity for them to share their experiences in their own languages. The aims of this research were to understand the circumstances of unaccompanied minor asylum seekers, and to gain insight into the ways in which the provided peer support works. This study also critically considers how child asylum seekers are represented in the practices and rhetoric of the Finnish asylum process, and how project Safety Net relates to these representations. Methods used in this research included participant observation, interviews, and group discussions. The data was analyzed thematically and systematically. For unaccompanied minor asylum seekers, factors that increase the need for support were found to be separation from family, the inherent temporariness of the asylum seeker status and a concern for the future, language difficulties, a feeling of isolation, and developmental issues related to adolescence. The weekly visits from Safety Net peer tutors was found to be significant in providing support. This research shows that Safety Net peer tutors have many different roles through which peer support works. As friends, they offer a change to the daily routines of group home life and are trusted confidants. Often they take on the role of a family member. They may also act as spokespersons on the children’s behalf, while also offering advice on how to navigate in the Finnish society. They can be significant role models as people who have once been refugees themselves and have successfully adapted to the Finnish society. Elements that make project Safety Net successful were found to be most importantly the use of the children’s own languages, a communal nature within the project, and the shared experience of being a refugee. Peer tutors also experienced benefits from working in the project. The analysis of refugee representations uncovered certain distancing and silencing practices such as the isolated placement of the asylum seekers, bureaucratic expression, and the representation of asylum seekers as essentially untrustworthy. Safety Net was found to offer several significant counter-representations, notwithstanding the fact that it is not completely immune to the prevailing political representations.