'Between heaven and hell': Subjective well-being of asylum seekers
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2021Author(s)
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10.1111/ijsw.12435Metadata
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Hartonen, Ville R. Väisänen, Pertti. Karlsson, Liisa. Pöllänen, Sinikka. (2021). 'Between heaven and hell': Subjective well-being of asylum seekers. International journal of social welfare, 30 (1) , 30-45. 10.1111/ijsw.12435.Rights
Abstract
Nearly 1.4 million asylum seekers arrived in Europe in 2015. With an unprecedented 822% increase in the number of asylum applicants, Finland experienced the largest increase in applicants than any other European country that year. In this study, we investigated asylum seekers’ experienced subjective well‐being (ExSWB) construct in comparison with their evaluated subjective well‐being (EvSWB) construct. A mixed methods approach with convergent design was adopted for the study, which combined quantitative data on asylum seekers’ (n = 181) ExSWB and EvSWB with qualitative data on the elements of ExSWB and EvSWB. The findings point at a limbus phase in asylum seekers’ livelihood transition between the borders for international protection in Finland. The Cantril self‐anchoring striving scale was used by the participants to describe this passage ritual of ambiguity. Furthermore, we also found gender differences related to coping and subjective well‐being, which supports previous findings on asylum seekers’ well‐being.