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The Institute of Social Medicine, Rehabilitation Sciences and Health Services Research considers students in their role as researchers to be an important component in gaining new insights in science. Within their activities as project collaborators, student assistants or, in particular, when preparing and writing theses, they help to highlight important developments and findings through their contributions.

Master theses

as part of the research project

Paula Witzel (Therapeutic Social Work degree programme)

Topic: Self-representations of mother-child dyads from Ukrainian war zones. A narrative positioning analysis of two contrastive cases.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the fastest and largest forced migration processes since the Second World War. The majority of refugees are mothers and their child(ren). Their sense of identity is characterised and influenced by the necessary rotation between different frames of reference and the confrontation with various (critical) events, challenges and expectations. It remains to be seen how those affected can succeed in carrying out their identity work despite the influences and assimilate their wealth of experience into the work process in a meaningful way. It is interesting to clarify whether there is a connection to the sense of coherence and the development of resilience. No connection between the concepts appears to have been established in science to date.

The study is based on the object-founded and context-sensitive methodology of reconstructing narrative identity. An evaluation design from the analysis of positioning activities and presentation procedures is used. The sample is made up of two sub-families. The analysis includes one narrative and semi-structured individual interview with a mother and one subsystem interview with the additional presence of a child per sub-family. There is an intergenerational comparison as well as a comparison between the sub-families.

The results suggest that narrative representational features of different styles refer to functional coping processes of the experiences. The positioning and the focus on solution-orientated exceptions that occur in the problem-saturated storyline offer potential conclusions about the assimilation work. In the first sub-family, the mother, in contrast to her child, appears to have found a functional way of coping with trauma and assimilation work. In the second sub-family, mother and child have achieved functional trauma management. However, only the child is likely to have successfully assimilated. The results indicate that there is a possibility of meaningful assimilation of forced migration experiences. It can be assumed that the assimilation work is influenced by the constitution and the interactions between resources, evaluation processes, the sense of coherence, the (supra-) situational processing of identity and the course of the resilience process.

Leonie Krahl (Master in Therapeutic Social Work) 

Topic: Meaning and transmission of forced migration in family memory A qualitative content analysis based on contrastive individual cases. 

Families as communities of memory visualise their past in the context of their communicative family memory. The past has a lively effect on the present via transgenerational processes, with the family memory shaping norms, values and identity. The aim of this master's thesis is to analyse the memory content of communicative family memory using two contrasting families in which the grandparents' generation was expelled from the former East German territories after the Second World War. The next step is to generate hypotheses on family structure in relation to family memory. The investigation will be carried out with the help of interviews and analysis using qualitative content analysis, in which category systems are formed in order to make comparisons between the contrasting individual cases. Considerable differences can be observed in families with regard to the communicative handling of the past and the significance of memories. One family actively engages in remembrance work, which strengthens their unified community as a family and promotes a reflective approach to their past by utilising it for their future. In contrast, in the other family there is little transmission of the expulsion in the family memory and it gives the impression of distancing or isolation from its past. In the course of generating the hypotheses, a connection between the family memory and the degree of family cohesion can be surmised: A high significance of the family past as well as recurring shared memories in conversations can contribute to connectedness as well as close ties within the family. The investigation of the hypotheses by means of case reconstruction represents a step towards building on this work.

Fady Guirguis (Master in Therapeutic Social Work) 

Topic: Transgenerational effects of value orientation in the context of forced migration after the Second World War. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the types of values of families expelled from and fleeing Silesia and their descendants. 

Changing values and the transmission of values have been increasingly scrutinised in many academic disciplines in recent years. However, this has not been sufficiently addressed in the context of forced migration and there are hardly any empirical studies in this regard. Methodology: Using a mixed-methods design, a sample (nationwide) of N = 746 people expelled from Silesia and their descendants will be analysed to determine their value types. The main measuring instrument is the "Portraits Value Questionnaire" (PVQ-21). The ESS dataset was used to compare the value orientation of the respondents with the overall population in Germany. In addition, qualitative data was used to investigate the possible influence on the emergence of value types among the displaced persons and on the transmission of values among the second and third generations. Results: Displaced persons have higher values of tradition, conformity, achievement, stimulation and universalism than the total population of the same age in Germany. Overall, the displaced families (three generations) show above-average universalism, whereas the value type hedonism is below average for them. Conclusion: The experience of displacement appears to play a particularly strong role with regard to the value orientation of the displaced persons themselves. While the values of conformity and achievement serve to increase social recognition and are seen as a protective strategy against discrimination in the host country, the significance of the value types tradition and universalism is linked to the loss of home.

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