Exploring staff and service users' constructions of a community organisation working with refugee people in London

• Main Author: Russon, C. E.
• Published: University of East London 2008
• Subjects: 150
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.532705

Refugee people and the community organisations (COs) that work with them have been constructed within and by a variety of legal, social and political contexts within the UK in ways which have shaped their lives and work. Common constructions of refugee people as pathologised or threatening; and of COs as representative, integrative and also lacking have warranted a variety of social practices both comprising and governing the work of COs, and which have both empowering and disempowering effects for them and their service users. Despite the centralisation of COs in service delivery for refugee people, there is little research about them, and few accounts have either focussed on how they work or drawn on the perspectives of staff and service users of COs themselves. This study is an exploration of staff and service users' constructions of a CO working with refugee people in London. Nine people who were either staff or service users of a counsellingbased CO were interviewed and these interviews were analysed using discourse analysis drawing on the work of Foucault (e.g. 1961, 1977) and Malson (1998). Analysis of these interviews led to the identification of three main constructions of the work of the CO. These were 'Therapy 'under erasure'; 'Language and culture as currency' and 'Negotiating restrictions on agency'. Each of these constructions is discussed, together with the social practices warranted and actions made possible by them. Implications for power and agency are also addressed. In the final section, an evaluation of the research and its implications are presented.