The Self in the Strange Identity formation among newly arrived Refugees in Great Britain

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According to the British Refugee Council, the world today faces one of the most severe forceddisplacement crises in modern history (see Refugee Council, 2016). Smoldering disputes and escalatingconflicts in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East have forced more than 65 million people worldwideto flee their homes and seek asylum and protection elsewhere, often in entirely unknownsurroundings. Most have sought refuge in neighboring countries, with developing regions hostingabout 86 percent of the world's refugees under UNHCR mandate in 2015. Though relatively fewrefugees have come to Europe, the United Nations Refugee Agency has reported that more than amillion displaced people arrived on the continent in 2015 by sea alone, mostly from Syria, Afghanistanand Iraq (see UNHCR, 2016). In comparison to other European countries, Great Britain is known for asomewhat harsh asylum system. The Red Cross states that there are an estimated 117,234 refugeescurrently living in the United Kingdom, which amounts to about 0.18 percent of the British population(see British Red Cross; see Refugee Council, 2016).Unlike other migrants, refugees have been forced to leave their home countries due to violentconflicts and other life-threatening conditions, and usually do not act out of their free will. With theflight from their homes and familiar environments, and the entry into the strange surroundings of anunknown country, newly arrived refugees enter a state of high uncertainty. Since the understandingof the self is highly dependent on factors such as social context, time and space, such a drastic shift islikely to have an impact on their very perception of selfhood (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000: 18; Paasi,2001: 10).During my Master's project, I would therefore propose to study the identities and the identityformation as well as transformation in newly arrived refugees in the United Kingdom and therebycontribute to the discussion of self-understanding and identification in the context of flight andmigration, which currently is a topic of pressing global importance.