It takes a village to grow stronger A socio-ecological model of resilience in refugees

The present dissertation explores the factors promoting refugees' resilience and complex relationship between these factors and resilience. This dissertation presents a breadth of methodology, using mixed-methods to study refugee resilience. Specifically, we started with an extensive and comprehensive systematic review to scope the literature on risk and protective factors of resilience in refugees. Then, we conducted qualitative interviews to explore refugees’ rich narratives of resilience, and finally, we ended with experimental studies to test causal relations and survey studies to model resilience and its associated factors. Findings from all of the studies conducted for this dissertation offer a multi-layered understanding of the nature of refugee resilience. Refugees’ resilience is determined by internal and external factors across four socio-ecological levels: individual, family, community, and society. This dissertation emphasizes that resilience is not merely an individual capacity, but a context-dependent process influenced by structural conditions and relational resources.