Wellbeing Space and Society最新文献

To respond to the unintended consequences of prevention measures to reduce COVID-19¹ transmission, individuals and groups, including religious leaders, have collaborated to provide care to those negatively impacted by these measures. Amid these various efforts and interventions, there is a need to deepen our understanding of diverse expressions of care across various geographical and social contexts. To address this need, the objective of this study was to investigate how religious leaders in the Philippines practiced care for their communities by meeting emergency food needs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Guided by an ethics of care theoretical orientation, we conducted 25 remote semi-structured interviews with Filipino religious leaders who partnered with a Philippines-based non-governmental organization (NGO) to mobilize essential food aid to their local communities. Through defining the efforts and activities of these religious leaders as care work, we found that religious leader experiences revolved around navigating care responsibilities, caring alongside others, and engaging holistically with the care work. Additionally, we observed how contextual factors such as the humanitarian settings where religious leaders worked, the partnership with an NGO, and the positionality of local religious leaders within their communities, fundamentally shaped the care work. This study expands our understanding of how care is practiced and experienced and also brings greater visibility to the experiences and efforts of local religious leaders in responding to humanitarian emergencies.

The current Venezuelan crisis has spurred one of the largest mass migrations in Latin American history, with estimates of more than 7 million migrants leaving Venezuela (UNHCR, 2023). Most Venezuelans leaving the country are economically disenfranchised migrants fleeing to neighboring countries with limited economic resources. However, there are upper- and middle-class well-educated Venezuelans migrating to other parts of Latin America whose socio-economic status allows for a different migration experience. This paper draws on qualitative research conducted in 2020–2022 which investigated the dynamics of the upper- and middle-class Venezuelan diaspora settled in the suburbs of San José, Costa Rica. Specifically, the research focused on the migration and integration experiences of Venezuelans in Escazú and Santa Ana, modern, upscale suburbs, due to their rapid increase of Venezuelan population. This paper draws on 14 semi-structured interviews in an effort to contribute to the theoretical understanding of the migration and integration process and answer the questions: (1) What are the factors influencing migrants’ decisions to migrate; (2) what capitals do migrants have and how do they mobilize them; and (3) what do the personal accounts of migration decisions and experiences reveal about the overall well-being of migrants? We build on the Push/Pull Plus Migration Drivers (Van Hear et al., 2018) and the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (Sen, 1981; Chambers, 1983) as analytical frameworks. Findings suggest that our composite framework provides a useful lens through which to understand the decision to migrate for upper and middle class Venezuelan migrants to Costa Rica, and sheds light on the initial stages of their integration process. The addition of cultural and political capitals as assets relevant for understanding migration livelihoods is critical in migratory contexts and shed light on the ways in which migrants navigate the formal and informal integration process. More research is needed on the roles well-being and trauma play in all phases of the migration and integration processes.

Refugee immigrants face unique challenges during resettlement in a new country or society, as they are often traumatized by events in their own country of origin, or through the perilous journey of escape over transit countries. They experience several obstacles in the process of cultural adaptation to community life in the US including adequate housing and therefore they can benefit from considerable support for resettlement. Several past literatures have identified various barriers including financial conditions that make the process of finding adequate housing challenging for refugee immigrants in the US. Among them are Myanmar refugees, who have faced decades of discrimination under their native government before they fled from their country, and received the least attention in academic literature focusing on their needs and issues particular to housing. The goal of this study is to explore and understand the current housing and living conditions of the Myanmar refugee immigrants and the factors leading to such conditions. Past researchers have identified the cultural and social background of refugees as influential factors behind the selection of housing. The unique contribution of this study is field level data collected from private residences of Myanmar refugee immigrants in the Vickery Meadow area of Dallas, TX, focusing on their environmental health and well-being specifically in relation to housing as a determinant of health. Dallas has been selected as the study site since it has been listed as one of the top cities with the most Myanmar refugee immigrants.

Adopting a qualitative research method strategy, data was collected using multiple approaches including survey, focus group interviews and in-home visits over a period of three months. The primary factor influencing housing desirability and affordability, as identified in this study is financial condition followed by proximity to relatives and/or friends, access to public transportation, school, neighborhood safety and cleanliness of the unit. Overall, this refugee population have shown signs of adapting their lifestyle to cope with the current housing condition, including interior aesthetical improvement, growing native food in the small available patio or balcony area, and cooking outside in backyard, balcony, or patio.

This study on the living conditions of the Myanmar refugee population is a first of its kind in the urban community of Vickery Meadow area of Dallas, TX. The results identified through this research will contribute towards the existing efforts to help with the resettlement process of this refugee population. Future studies can use the results of this research to identify and highlight some program recommendations to the local resettlement agencies in the Dallas, TX area and the state and federal government on how to address the housing affordability, need and quality issues during the resettlement process of immigrant refugees.

There is a lack of research on young trans people's everyday leisure. This article analyses how leisure, defined within a broad spatial context beyond sport and physical activity, is perceived and experienced by trans youth in relation to their mental health and wellbeing. We draw upon theoretical concepts of cisnormativity and spatiality to our analysis of sixteen interviews with young trans people (16-25 years old) in Sweden. Three themes emerged. The first refers to how both queer- and non-queer-specific leisure spaces connect people with similar (and different) experiences regarding queer and trans identities and shows how these identities can shift in importance. The second highlights how creative spaces (e.g., theatre, cosplay) can offer opportunities to carve out a leisured space to explore different gender identity/ies and expressions that are often crucial and life changing. The final theme illustrates how leisure is avoided, postponed, waited for, and reclaimed by trans youth. Excluding mechanisms such as transphobia, cisnormativity, and the lack of access to gender-confirming care can hinder young people's leisure participation. Our analysis illustrates the complex connections between leisure and mental health among young people with trans experiences. Leisure can be a source of discomfort and distress but also of belongingness and affirmation of one's identity. Finding and accessing strengthening leisure spaces demands emotional investment, engagement, and navigation.

The therapeutic landscapes literature has evolved considerably since the concept was first proposed to understand how experiences of health and wellbeing unfold and develop through physical, social and symbolic dimensions of landscape encounter. Informed by a critical scoping review, this paper charts how the senses have been attended to across the therapeutic landscapes literature published since 2007 (the publication date of the previous edited volume on Therapeutic Landscapes). We focus specifically on literature pertaining to ‘nature-based’ therapeutic encounters, responding to calls to re-situate the body in wider interdisciplinary scholarship around nature, health and wellbeing. We attend to imagined and embodied visual, sonic, olfactory, haptic and gustatory sensations, and the varied ways in which these are interpreted and made sense of individually and collectively. In line with prominent visual landscape preoccupations, this body of literature largely privileges and focuses on the visual sense. While there is increasing interest in auditory, haptic and olfactory qualities of encounter, taste remains largely overlooked. This uneven focus neglects the potential richness and diversity of therapeutic sensescape encounters, as well as the cultural and social sensory histories that shape how contemporary encounters may be experienced and interpreted. Suggestions for future research are outlined, including methodological and empirical directions across the social sciences, arts and humanities.

The study presents key findings on the outcomes of psychological wellbeing in the aftermath of a flood as well as the interplay of social, institutional, and environmental processes that influence psychological wellbeing. Eight focused group discussions and 15 key informant interviews were conducted in five villages in the Bongaigaon District of Assam six months after the devastating floods occurred in August 2021. Four themes are identified that concern the presence or absence of institutions and agencies, social capital, secondary stressors, and the availability of resources. Participants bemoan the institutional inability to support a reliable early warning system and strong structural measures to protect them from flooding. The majorities of residents in the study area make a livelihood out of subsistence farming and have limited resources. Shared helplessness and the inability to mobilise assistance have led to the development of camaraderie. When it comes to sharing insurance information, the displaced people report the envious nature of the community, where members seek the best for themselves before anyone else. The limited resources restrict the scope of the profit accrued from social networks. Relocation to substandard shelters, concern for children's academic impairment, the potential loss of community properties and the burden of repairing them, and visitors coming to see their predicament are the secondary stressors that impair psychological wellbeing. It is also reported that those who were able to migrate have already left; for those remaining in the temporary shelters, migration is too costly an option, and they are seeking institutional intervention.

To understand how COVID-19′s stay-at-home orders impacted youths’ sexual and social development, we conducted five virtual focus groups (n = 34) with adolescent girls’, trans’, and non-binary youths’ aged 16–19 between April-June 2021 in the GTA. We queried experiences of home, privacy, and sexual wellbeing during Canada's third wave. Auto-generated zoom transcripts were coded using an inductive framework with NVivo. Field notes and team discussions on the coded data informed the analysis. This paper explores how sexual wellbeing during the pandemic is practiced in relation to, dependent upon, and negotiated at home. Using intersectionality theory and embodiment theory, this research analyzes how youth's diverse identities shape their understandings and experiences of sexual wellbeing. We found youth needed spaces where they were not only unseen, but importantly, unheard. We argue sound as an important piece of boundary-work that reveals the way youth construct space during precarious times. Youth primarily negotiated sonic privacy through (a) sound-proofing, (b) sound warnings and (c) “silent reassurance”, a term we coined to describe the precursor of silence from other household members in order for youth to feel safe enough to practice sexual wellbeing. We found that white youth cited the bedroom as the best space for sexual wellbeing practices, but BIPOC youth felt the bedroom was only their best available option and still found they had to negotiate privacy. Attending to intersectionality theory, we expand on McRobbie and Garber's (1976) bedroom culture concept and widen Hernes’ (2004) concept of physical, social and mental boundary-work to include sound as a fourth type, which straddles among them. This research shows how privacy, gender and sexual identities were negotiated at home in times of extreme uncertainty, highlighting how implications of home as a ‘place’ during the pandemic, constructs sexual wellbeing. Mapping how and where youth practice embodied sexual wellbeing exposes the ways that private and public understandings of identity relate to sexuality and geographies of home. We understand the home as a complex space that can not only determine sexual wellbeing, but where health promoting boundaries can be negotiated. We conclude with suggestions for supporting adolescent sexual wellbeing, inside and outside the home, during and after COVID-19.

In addition to their educational purposes, public schools and their surrounding properties are essential to community liveability, as they enrich the daily lives of children, parents, and nearby residents. Yet, decisions are being made to close schools in Ontario, Canada based on declining enrolments, without due consideration of these benefits. Since 2011, over 400 public schools have been closed in Ontario, causing communities across the province to lose essential hubs. In a province where significant socio-spatial inequities persist, public school closures could worsen the conditions of daily living for residents in neighbourhoods that have already been deprived of resources and opportunities through failed public policy. The objectives of this study were to document the spatial scope of public school closures in Ontario, to understand the population change profiles in communities where closures happened, and to elucidate how these closures temporally relate to structural vulnerabilities of the communities in which these closures took place. Using Census-derived deprivation index scores geo-coded dataset to both currently open and recently closed public schools in Ontario, our analysis revealed three key findings. First, school closures have occurred disproportionately in small to mid-sized cities and rural communities. Second, there is no evidence of significantly declining child populations prior to school closures, in communities where schools closed. And third, closures were more common in higher deprivation communities in small to mid-sized cities. Taken together, these findings offer critical insights on the challenges that many communities face due to insufficient and inequitable policies that govern school closure decisions in Ontario. The study signals an urgent need for a more collaborative, forward-thinking, and equity-oriented school closure decision-making model that supports residents and protects communities from losing a vital public asset.