Vulnerability and Empowerment: Participatory approaches to health promotion with refugees (EMPOW)
The project
The EMPOW project aims to develop health promotion with refugee communities in three German cities (Berlin, Hanover, Munich). Using a participatory research approach, refugees and community-based organizations are involved as co-researchers and community partners.
Aims and objectives
- Explore and support refugee communities; analyze health-related needs and resources in three locations (Berlin, Hanover, Munich) in a participatory and commu-nity-based manner;
- Jointly develop health promotion initiatives and measures for and with refugees (practical outcome);
- Understand how vulnerability, othering and empowerment are experienced by refu-gees regarding their health (theory development).
Publication
- von Unger, Hella (2023): Vulnerability and Empowerment: Participatory Approaches to Health Promotion with Refugees (EMPOW). Bielefeld: PH-LENS Working Paper Series No. 7, https://doi.org/10.4119/unibi/2985393
Participatory research
In participatory research, community-members (i.e. people with lived experience and every-day-knowledge) have decision-making power. In the EMPOW project, refugees are involved as co-researchers and community partners: they play a key role in deciding on the topics, objectives and methods of the cooperation. Methods that may be applied range from art-based methods, community mapping and photovoice to regular methods of empirical social research. In the long term, participatory research aims to reduce social injustice and health disparities in society. In the short term, communities are supported to address issues of rele-vance to them, to collect and analyse data and to develop health promotion initiatives.
Theoretical background
Vulnerability is a key concept in public health: it helps identify groups in need of special support and protection. In its practical use, though, the term has ambivalent effects. It is of-ten used as a "label" that reproduces unequal power relations and neglects the existing heter-ogeneity within the group, thus underestimating the agency and resources of those consid-ered “vulnerable”.
The EMPOW project aims to develop the concept of vulnerability further. The project will pay particular attention to the perspectives of refugee groups themselves and their capacity for agency, self-determination and empowerment. It will also explore forms of "benevolent othering", i.e. well-meaning constructions of refugees as "others" which can occur in helping relationships and research¬ relationships.
The project refers to the concept of health promotion in order to focus on the social determi-nants of health (i.e. how is refugee health influenced by the living conditions and (restricted) access to the health care system in Germany?). EMPOW aims to promote the mental, physi-cal and social well-being of refugees in the local settings by strengthening community structures and cooperation.
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LMU-Team |
Anna Huber anna.huber@soziologie.uni-muenchen.de |
| Timeline | 11/2019 - 10/2022 |
| Funding |  |
| Research unit | PH-Lens: Refugee migration to Germany: a magnifying glass for broad-er public health challenges (Koordination: Oliver Razum, Universität Bielefeld) |
| Research sites and community partner organizations |
• Berlin: "Global Empowerment and Development Association (GEDA) e.V." und "Projekt Afrikaherz"
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