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Journal of Refugee Studies Advance Access originally published online on August 8, 2007
Journal of Refugee Studies 2007 20(3):441-460; doi:10.1093/jrs/fem003
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© The Author [2007]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Living in Religious Time and Space: Iraqi Refugees in Dearborn, Michigan

Marwa Shoeb1, Harvey M. Weinstein2 and Jodi Halpern3

1Joint Medical Program, University of California, Berkeley/San Francisco
2Human Rights Center and School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
3Joint Medical Program and School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley

marwa.shoeb{at}ucsf.edu

Mental health assessments of refugees during and after conflict have relied heavily on Western psychiatric constructs and standardized scales, despite the overwhelmingly non-Western backgrounds of most survivors of contemporary wars. A strict dependence on the paradigms and language of Western psychiatry risks inappropriately prioritizing syndromes, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, which, however important, are eclipsed by the concerns of local populations for whom indigenous idioms of distress may be more salient. Working in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest population of Iraqi refugees in the United States, 60 Iraqi refugee life stories were collected and analysed. These narratives provided rich data regarding the centrality of faith to the constructs of Iraqi identity, home, and future in the wake of political violence and exile. For these refugees, the description of the dislocation that results from uprooting is replaced by an alternative home that transcends time and space.

Key Words: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) • mental health assessments • Harvard Trauma Questionnaire • Iraqi refugees in US • Islam

MS received February 1, 2006 ; revised MS received July 1, 2006
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