UMSI Master's Thesis: “Refugee”: Using Information Resources to Understand and Navigate a Liminal Identity Space

Abstract

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2018 suggested that there are 25.4 million refugees worldwide (1.4 million refugees in Germany and 60,000 in Greece). But what exactly does the “refugee” mean? News media, state actors, and other bodies speak about refugees in ways that emphasize certain aspects of their experiences. What we do not often understand, is how those identified as refugees speak about themselves. In a partial attempt to explore these questions of information and identity, this thesis presents findings concerning its central question: How do self-identified refugee communities in Athens, Greece and Hamburg, Germany engage with information resources to navigate individual and community identity development during liminal phases of their refugee experiences? By adapting Srinivasan et al.’s (2007) Diasporic Information Environment Model (DIEM) to frame complex information environment questions in migration-related contexts, this thesis describes how each of reflexive ethnography, social network analysis, and community-based action and information services research can help us understand (1) how people define the liminality of refugee experiences, (2) which information resources individuals use to navigate identity and how, (3) the challenges individuals face in so doing, and (4) why the answers to these questions matter. This work makes theoretical updates to conceptions of liminality as an anthropological and sociological concept, identifies obstacles to using information resources to navigate the liminality of refugee experiences, and outlines concrete policy suggestions and directions for future research.