Refugees as an empowering practice: Former refugees' experiences with empowering other refugee families towards participation in sports clubs in Denmark
Translated title
Flygtninge som empowering: Tidligere flygtninges oplevelser ved at støtte andre flygtningefamiliers vej til at deltage i idrætsforeninger i Danmark
Author
Term
4. semester
Education
Publication year
2022
Submitted on
2022-01-02
Pages
36
Abstract
In 2021, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) initiated a program in which DRC recruits former refugees as volunteers and educates them in the empowerment method for them to support an assigned refugee family in the process of coming to participate in civic clubs in Denmark. In this article, I will examine how these volunteers are taught the method of empowerment and explore how they experience their contact with the affiliated refugee families they are to support. I will answer these questions based on Elisheva Sadan’s conceptualisation of empowerment (Sadan 2004) by observing meetings and workshops for volunteers in the DRC and conducting interviews with volunteers and employees of the DRC. This article contributes to research in forced migration and sport by pointing out how former refugees may come to take up roles as volunteers rather than merely participants in sports clubs. In addition, the study will provide organisations like DRC with knowledge about applying the empowerment method to support former refugees as volunteers and assist newly arrived refugee families in taking part in civic activities.
Keywords
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