The Place of Safety in Refugees’ Subjective Well-Being

Abstract References to safety feature at the heart of research on refugees’ well-being and livelihoods in destination countries. However, these tend to restrict safety to the absence of important threats, such as threats to a person’s physical integrity. Furthermore, many of these threats are considered resolved once the person seeking refuge is in a ‘safe’ country. Through semi-structured interviews conducted with refugees in the United Kingdom (UK), I identify a distinct form of safeness, which refers to refugees’ own subjective sense of safety. Drawing from a broader literature on subjective well-being, these interviews help define safeness as a positive and continuous feeling, characterised by a sense of peace with oneself in both present and future temporalities, and of the possibility to explore one’s personal boundaries. Importantly, safeness is not entirely relatable to indicators of refugees’ current safety conditions. Alongside a conceptual contribution, safeness has key implications for policymaking in the UK and elsewhere, where assumptions are often made as to what defines safety, and as such how to ensure refugees’ safety.