{"id":1883,"date":"2025-12-15T20:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T20:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hub.salford.ac.uk\/inclusive-society\/?p=1883"},"modified":"2025-12-15T20:58:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T20:58:15","slug":"what-actually-is-wellbeing-for-groups-who-are-marginalised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hub.salford.ac.uk\/inclusive-society\/what-actually-is-wellbeing-for-groups-who-are-marginalised\/","title":{"rendered":"What actually is wellbeing for groups who are marginalised?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reflections on the emergence of wellbeing in place for asylum seekers and refugees<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr Josephine Biglin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

15th December 2025<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Refugees often arrive in the UK with significant pre-existing trauma from war, disaster, and forced displacement: experiences which are deeply disruptive to health and wellbeing. UK asylum policy compounds this harm. Asylum seekers are forced to live in poor housing on a no choice basis, banned from working, and dependant on very meagre benefits which they must prove they are destitute to claim. The figure allocated to these benefits is based on what the poorest 10% of the British population spend per week on essential living items. Therefore, they are systematically made to live in poverty<\/a>. Even for those granted status, the threat of deportation, or far-right violence, as well as decades of a demonising and hostile press, entrenches long-term precarity. Against this backdrop, the places and practices that offer moments of wellbeing become meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do we mean by wellbeing?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biomedical models define health <\/strong>as the absence of disease, focusing on biological factors and wellbeing<\/strong> is dominantly understood through frameworks that break it into discrete, measurable components.<\/a> Most of us think of wellbeing as something we can measure: how happy we feel, how financially stable we are, or how well we sleep. This is linked to positive psychology which focuses on acquiring skills for \u2018happiness\u2019. However, critics argue that this shifts blame and responsibility from systemic issues on to individuals.<\/a> This framing, where the individual is constructed as responsible for their wellbeing, is particularly problematic for marginalised groups, including asylum seekers and refugees, who are denied access to the resources these models assume are available, for example secure employment, suitable housing and financial resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus of my work has been to explore wellbeing in place beyond these dominant ways of thinking about health and wellbeing. Rather than focusing on biomedical forms of health or reports of components of wellbeing I have focused on what is embodied, sensory and practised within various places identified as significant for wellbeing, recognising the need to capture what is active in our world \u2013 which is basically everything \u2013 we don\u2019t live in a static representation of the world but in something constantly moving and evolving.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My research involved three projects: two studies in community allotments for asylum seekers and refugees and a participatory project using creative methods and walking interviews to explore wellbeing in place for this group. Rather than asking people to explain what wellbeing means to them, I paid attention to what was happening<\/em> in the places they spent their time, their movements, their senses, and the atmospheres around them. This meant collecting non-standard data such as photography, videos and soundbites as well as noticing things like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n