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Studies have shown that a high proportion of refugees have been subjected to potentially traumatic experiences (PTEs). PTEs, including torture, are powerful predictors of mental ill health. This paper reports a review of refugee trauma history self-report measures used in population studies. Methods: A review of existing instruments and checklists, up to September 2015, was performed. Results: The types of measures for refugee trauma history vary from semi-structured interviews and medical records to extensive multi-item trauma-checklists. The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ) was the most commonly used instrument for measuring trauma history among refugee populations. Few checklists included PTEs during the flight. Conclusion: Trauma history checklists are often used as a tool to control for background variables when studying refugees' mental health and have mostly been developed in clinical or semi-clinical settings. There is a need for acceptable, reliable and valid brief checklists for measuring trauma in refugees, for the purpose of performing larger scale population studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absence and presence have generally been discussed as two aspects of either a temporal or a spatial relationship. With an Arendtian notion of presence as the capacity to define space and to appear in front of others, this article explores undocumentedness as a condition of simultaneous presence and absence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with undocumented persons in Sweden, it is argued that the undocumented spatiality is paradoxical and Möbius. This article shows how concealment, disguise, diffusion and appearance are key to the different manifestations of presence and absence in undocumented people’s lives. It also shows how undocumented persons, by using their politically absent yet physically present bodies as vehicles for practicing dissensus, can find possibilities for recognition and action in public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including social sciences, cultural geography, and language study.