Counter-narratives against hardships among Syrian refugee youth and parents

The conventional literature and popular media describe the challenges of (Syrian) refugees in terms of their being victims who need to deal with the traumatic events they experienced before and during their flight. Their lack of seeking professional psychosocial help to improve their mental wellbeing is often explained by migrants’ supposed fear of stigmatization. Using in-depth interviews with 10 Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, we show that their main struggle concerns their identity fragmentation as a result of both their displacement and the stereotypical discourses of Muslim/Syrian people as victims or terrorists. In this article, we explore how Syrian refugee youths use strategic forgetting and remembering of both positive and negative memories to reconstruct their (collective) identity. Our finding that Syrian refugee youths use counter-narratives of being strong and competent to deal with their experience of identity fragmentation offers an alternative explanation for refugees not seeking professional help in dealing with their hardships

Self-control and early adolescent antisocial behavior: A longitudinal analysis

Contains fulltext : 73179.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The article discusses a three-wave longitudinal study that investigates the relationship between self-control and aggressive and delinquent behavior of early adolescent boys and girls. The sample consists of 1,012 Dutch adolescents (mean age = 12.3) in their first year of secondary education. Structural equation modeling analyses reveal that high levels of self-control consistently decrease aggressive and delinquent behavior in the subsequent 6 months follow-up intervals. Results for the total sample do not support the hypothesis that self-control is influenced by previous levels of aggression or delinquency. For boys, the partial evidence found indicates reciprocal effects of self-control and delinquency.21 p

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Creating Places for Women on the Internet: The Design of a 'Women's Square' in a Digital City

Under what conditions do women create places for women on the Internet? And what kinds of difficulties do they meet if they try to do so? These questions are studied by comparing two groups of women involved in the design of (parts of) Amsterdam's digital city DDS. The female designers, who were involved as DDS was set up, did not want to pay attention to women's issues. This can be explained by looking at their position in feminist debates in Dutch society, their position in the organization of which they were a part and their personal identity. The second group of women, who were part of a women's organization, differed in all these respects. Thus, they had no problems in wanting to pay specific attention to women in DDS by building a 'Women's Square'. The problems of this second group of women were caused by the late stage at which they entered the design process. The ideas on gender and technology of the initial group of women had by then solidified in the script of DDS, making it hard for the second group to design the Women's Square in the way they wanted it. In this article it is argued that designers, women's organizations and subsidizing organizations should stimulate women's groups to get involved in the design of new technology at an early stage. From this case study, one can conclude that leaving women's issues to individual female designers is not an effective strategy. \u

Battling the Binaries? Revisiting 'He, She and IT Revisited'

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Configuring the user as everybody: Gender and design cultures

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Scientists in Belgian comics: Typology, chronology and origins

This article presents an overview of the scientist as a special character in Belgian comics. In the years after World War II and during the first stages of the Cold War, scientists were introduced in many long-term Belgian comic series. The first aim of this article is to find structural commonalities in the scientist as a comic character. The characters are classified following a typology: geniuses, wizards, puzzlers, adventurers, nerds, mad scientists and the misunderstood genius. The second aim is to explain the appearance of the stereotypical character of the scientist in Belgian comics. To trace its origin, the histories of some real scientists and of scientists in novels and films are discussed. It is argued that the way scientists are portrayed in Belgian comics is mainly the result of pragmatic choices the authors have to make, inspired by the work of colleagues and examples from other art forms.status: publishe

From the wizard to the doubter: Prototypes of scientists and engineers in fiction and non-fiction media aimed at Dutch children and teenagers

The aim of this paper is to gain insight into the prototypical scientists as they appear in fiction and non-fiction media consumed by children and teenagers in the Netherlands. A qualitative-interpretive content analysis is used to identify seven prototypes and the associated characteristics in a systematic way. The results show that the element of risk is given more attention in fiction than in non-fiction. Also, eccentric scientists appear more often in fiction. In non-fiction, the dimension useful – useless is more important. Further, fictional scientists are loners, although in reality scientists more often work in a team. In both fiction and non-fiction the final product of the scientific process gets more attention than the process itself. The prototype of the doubter is introduced as an alternative to the dominant representations, because it represents scientists and engineers in a more realistic and nuanced way.status: publishe