Resilience in Precarity: A Contiguum Approach to Understanding the Non-Linear Lived Trajectories of Afghan and Eritrean Refugee Families

For decades, the story of a refugee has often been told as a straight line: a person leaves a dangerous home, travels through a transit country, and finally arrives in a safe nation where they begin the work of rebuilding. This simple map suggests that once a person crosses a border and finds shelter, the chaos of displacement ends and a new, orderly chapter begins. However, the reality of forced migration is rarely so neat. People do not live their lives in separate boxes labeled "danger," "travel," and "safety." Instead, their experiences overlap, loop back on themselves, and happen all at once. To understand how people survive and thrive in these conditions, researchers must look beyond the idea of a linear journey and examine the messy, simultaneous demands of daily life. This requires understanding two key ideas: the constant instability forced upon people by laws and borders, and the active, creative ways families use their relationships and skills to keep moving forward.

A team of researchers at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research set out to test this complex reality by listening to the life stories of refugee families. They focused on two groups: people from Eritrea and people from Afghanistan, both of whom have faced long periods of conflict and political instability. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 32 individuals, including members of the same families, to hear how they described their own lives. They did not just ask where people had been; they asked how they made decisions, how they cared for their children, and how they planned for the future while living in uncertainty. By piecing together these narratives, the study reveals that refugee lives are not a sequence of steps but a continuous, overlapping web of challenges and solutions.

The researchers found that for these families, the journey did not start when they left their home countries, nor did it end when they arrived in Germany. In Eritrea and Afghanistan, life was already filled with interrupted dreams. A father might have planned to become an engineer, or a mother might have trained as a nurse, only to have those plans blocked by war, military service, or economic collapse. When they finally left, they did not leave their past behind; they carried their professional identities, their family obligations, and their hopes with them. These elements continued to shape their decisions in transit countries and after they settled in Germany. The study shows that the struggle to find safety, the need to earn money, the duty to care for family, and the desire to learn a new language are not separate phases. They happen at the same time, often pulling people in different directions.

In the countries where these families first sought refuge, such as Iran or Ethiopia, they were not simply waiting for permission to move on. They were actively trying to build a life. They worked informal jobs, started small businesses, and sent money to relatives, all while navigating strict laws that often forbade them from working or owning property. One Eritrean mother described how she and her husband set up a small shop in a refugee camp, using a relative's name to register it because refugees were not allowed to do so themselves. They survived on a mix of meager food rations and the income from this shop, all while planning their next move. This was not a pause in their journey; it was a period of intense, simultaneous survival and planning. The instability of their legal status did not stop them from trying to create stability for their children.

The journey through transit countries, often involving dangerous border crossings and reliance on smugglers, was also a time of active resilience. Families did not just endure; they adapted. They used language skills they had picked up along the way to fix a broken boat engine in the middle of the sea, or they relied on networks of other travelers to avoid soldiers. These moments of danger and moments of resourcefulness existed side by side. The researchers found that even in the most precarious situations, families were making decisions about their future, saving money for the next leg of the trip, and protecting their children. The journey was not a passive drift from one place to another; it was a series of active choices made under extreme pressure.

Even after arriving in Germany, which offered safety and legal protection, the challenges did not simply vanish. The families faced new forms of uncertainty, such as long waits for asylum decisions, difficulties in having their foreign degrees recognized, and the pain of being separated from family members who were still abroad. A nurse from Eritrea spent nearly three years waiting for her qualifications to be recognized, a period during which she was also raising children alone and learning German. She described this time not as a waiting room before her real life began, but as a continuation of her struggle, where she had to manage multiple crises at once. For her, and for many others, the arrival in Germany did not mark the end of the journey. It was just another place where they had to juggle the overlapping demands of legal paperwork, housing searches, and family reunification.

The study argues that we need a new way of thinking about these experiences, one that the researchers call a "contiguum." This is a way of seeing life as a series of overlapping domains rather than a straight line. Imagine a person trying to walk through a crowded room where they are trying to talk to a friend, carry a heavy box, and avoid spilling a cup of coffee all at once. They are not doing these things one after the other; they are doing them simultaneously, and each action affects the others. Similarly, refugee families are constantly managing protection, livelihood, education, and family care all at once. These needs do not wait for one another to be solved. They exist together, shaping each other in a continuous loop.

This perspective changes how we understand resilience. It is not just about bouncing back after a disaster or having a strong personality. Instead, resilience is shown in the everyday practices of families who keep trying to build a future while the ground beneath them shifts. It is in the mother who learns a new language while working two jobs, or the father who sends money home while waiting for his own documents to be processed. These are not isolated acts of survival but part of a continuous, relational effort to hold a life together. The researchers found that these families do not wait for a perfect situation to begin planning for the future. They make plans while they are waiting, while they are working, and while they are uncertain.

The findings suggest that policies and support systems often miss the mark because they assume a linear path. Governments and aid organizations often design programs that expect refugees to learn a language first, then find a job, then get housing, and then reunite with family. But the people in this study showed that these things happen all at once. A family might be learning German while also trying to find an apartment and sending money to a relative in a transit country. When support systems treat these needs as separate steps, they fail to address the reality of the families' lives. The study suggests that to truly help, support must be flexible enough to meet people where they are, acknowledging that their lives are a complex web of overlapping needs that require parallel solutions.

Ultimately, this research offers a clearer, more human picture of what it means to be a refugee. It moves away from the idea of a victim waiting to be saved and toward a view of people who are actively navigating a complex world. Their lives are not defined by a single moment of departure or arrival, but by a continuous process of adaptation and hope. By recognizing that their struggles and their strengths happen simultaneously, we can better understand the depth of their resilience and the complexity of their journeys. The story of these families is not a straight line from danger to safety, but a rich, tangled path where the past, present, and future are always connected.