The Role of Identity-Remembrance in the Syrian Refugees' Adaptability: An Interdisciplinary Assessment

Abstract

This article examines self-perception and its impact on the adaptability to new living contexts symptomatic of different socio-cultural and religious/theological identity-formation contexts. By relying on an interdisciplinary hermeneutic, it touches upon the issues of selfhood and otherness from an interdisciplinary theological and social-theoretical perspective by laying its foundations deep in the connections of theological/religious and cultural perceptions of the identity formation of displaced people in their new host life-settings. Such connectedness is demonstrative of self-perception trajectories, which foreigners go through in their attempts at integration and adaptation, or lack thereof, to the new and challenging living spheres they join. The article focuses on the Syrian refugees in Europe and analyses how their religious or theological self-perception relates to their confrontation with the new challenge of forming a new self-identification strategy that can enable them to answer the question 'who am I?' in the heart of their strife to exist in their new expatriate lands. The article touches upon this complex and multi-faceted matter from the specific perspective of the role of memory and remembrance in the journeys of self-perception and identity reformulation of these Syrians and their hosts, and in their religious and cultural ramifications.