Displacement and Transit: Traumatic Stress in the Lives of Refugees

Understanding trauma and helping refugees to cope with its impact is “… one of the most critical clinical, societal and research challenges facing the health communities” in the new millennium (Miller, 1996, p. xxii). To be human is to be exposed to harmful, as well as to positive, life events, and we saw in Chapters 4 and 5 that Bosnian refugees often experienced extremely negative events in the course of war. In this chapter we discuss trauma and its effects on the lives of refugees, and we consider the proper place of trauma in understanding Bosnian families in resettlement. This is followed by a discussion of the experiences of Bosnian refugees, who shared with us their stories of escape and life in refugee camps prior to arrival in the United States. War and resulting displacement can be a major source of trauma for refugees, but traumatic stress is created through resettlement activities as well.