Asylum Seekers

Source thejakartapost, 26 June

add as buddy

Marisa Duma description:
Social and political sciences student aficionado on a mission to moon. You may find several writing samples on the blog. Contact me at marisaduma@outlook.com or LinkedIn. Thank you for reading!

Rohingya asylum seekers find shelter at Kebon Baru, Jakarta. Having fled from conflicting Myanmar, the Rohingyas are a portion of around 6,000 asylum seekers–due for refugee status–to temporarily settle in Indonesia. Rohingya asylum seekers are not settling permanently in Indonesia, despite the fact Indonesia with Islam as religion of the majority may be an appropriate country for Muslim Rohingyas. Coordinated by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UN HCR) for Indonesia, a social intervention of asylum seekers as crisis group is a preliminary, and supposedly obligatory, phase prior to a resettlement. Crisis situation arising from hazardous events–"suffered (or fear) persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because they are a member of a persecuted 'social group' or because they are fleeing a war or natural disaster" (UN HCR)–cause social disintegration and disorganization to which a crisis group is deprived from its social functioning. Methods of intervention serve either curative, preventive, promotive, or developmental purposes, also attributing certain purpose to another. The main purpose of social intervention is for the crisis group to regain social functioning. Misconception of "seeking refuge" often occurs when the social function to acquire coping and adapting mechanisms deliberately or not omitted from intervention process and inevitably, crippling its outcome. When granted permission, lacking proper social functioning may induce worsened social issues at designated "third" countries. Understanding a place of refuge as social environment, it then ought to contain and maintain elements of: transaction, energy, interface, adaptation, coping, interdependency within social interaction. Thus, not merely measured on geopolitical dimension however also sociological dimension, signifying granted refugees as subject of their assigned sociopolitical resource and surroundings.

Readings: Boediman Hardjomarsono, dkk (2007), Zastrow & Ashman (1987)