Counselling Practices in the Suffering Trajectories of Ukrainian Refugee Women in the Loiret Department (France)

The article seeks to identify the meanings of counselling practices which are constructed in the trajectories of suffering of female Ukrainian refugees in the Loiret department, France. Having described the methodological under- pinnings of my research project, which draws on Alicja Kargulowa’s (2023) concept of emergent and relational social resonance in counselling-studies discourse, I analyse a sample of Ukrainian refugee women’s narratives in terms of migration networks as structures within which the refugees’ lives unfold, referring to those lives as trajectories of suffering.

My interpretation of the Ukrainians’ narratives shows that informal counselling practices are more appreciated than formal and institutional ones. I label the former as interventionist practices, also calling them last-chance, self-generated or induced, language-based and situationally provoked (here by the war in Ukraine) practices possessed of performative power. I show the imperative of ethical responsibility, considerable sensitivity and delicacy, at the same time illuminating the relevance of spontaneous and purposively constructed informal counselling help for female Ukrainian refugees.

Keywords: Ukrainian refugee women, counselling practices, trajectory of suffering

Aneta Slowik, Studia Poradoznawcze/Journal of Counsellogy, 2024, vol. 13 ISSN 2299-4971, https: doi.org/10.34862/sp.2024.4