Occupation and Participation in Everyday Life: Women's Experiences of an Austrian Refugee Camp

Refugees often spent weeks, months and sometimes years in refugee camps. To gain an understanding of everyday life within refugee camps, an ethnographic study was designed to describe and explore engagement in daily occupations of women living in an Austrian refugee camp. Data gathered through observations and interviews were analyzed using a comparative method. The findings show that women experience their engagement in daily occupations as altered in many ways. The process was described as a struggle between 'being' and 'becoming', where the need to reengage in meaningful occupations was threatened by contextual factors. At the same time, the women seemed to experience the conditions differently, depending on the consequences for resettlement. The two themes "Daily occupations - a struggle against restrictions" and "Travelling towards the future" were intertwined. Though camp life was seen as restricting, constraining conditions were tolerated as long as they did not delimit personal goals for the future. In conclusion, participation in daily occupations within a refugee camp turned out to be a challenge, influenced by a range of factors internal and external to the person.