Communal proactive coping strategies among Tamil refugees in Norway: A case study in a naturalistic setting

To our knowledge, the current study is the first to make use of ethnographic fieldwork methods to investigate this type of coping as a process in a natural setting over time. Participant observation was employed within a Tamil NGO in Norway between August 2006 and December 2008.Tamil refugees in Norway co-operated to appraise their shared life situation and accumulate resources communally to improve it in culturally meaningful ways. Long term aspirations were related to both the situation in the homeland and in exile. However, unforeseen social events created considerable challenges and forced them to modify and adapt their coping strategies.We describe a form of coping previously not described in the scientific literature: Communal proactive coping strategies, defined as the process by which group members feel collectively responsible for their future well-being and co-operate to promote desired outcomes and prevent undesired changes. The study shows that proactive coping efforts occur in a dynamic social setting which may force people to use their accumulated proactive coping resources in reactive coping efforts. Theoretical and clinical implications are explored.The present study focuses on communal proactive coping strategies among Tamil refugees in Norway. Research on coping strategies has tended to focus on how individuals respond to stressors [1-3]. This has entailed two epistemological limitations: 1) Individuals may gather social support to cope with their problems, but we have little knowledge about conjoining, interactive group efforts to cope with common problems. 2) Individuals may respond to stressors, but we need more knowledge about what people do in advance to reduce the likelihood of stressors occurring at all. Acknowledgement of these limitations has resulted in research on communal and proactive coping strategies.Collective forms of coping have been conceptualized and studied in a number of distinct scientific disciplines with divergent theoretic