Guiding refugee women who have experienced violence: Representation of trust in counsellors’ journals

This article analyses the importance of trust in counselling for refugee and other migrant women who have experienced gender-based violence. The data consist of journal entries written by social workers, case workers, legal counsellors, and psychologists working for seven non-governmental organizations providing counselling services for women in six European Union countries. The analysis focuses on how trust is represented in the journals and how it is linked to agency and vulnerability. Trust is necessary to build a form of agency that enables refugee women to be vulnerable in the sense that they expose themselves to the actions and expectations of the persons who help them. This form of vulnerability makes it possible to recount the events that have made them vulnerable in the sense of having been subjected to harmful actions. In the journals, the presence or absence of trust is always assessed by the counsellors, and the voice of the refugee women is not clearly present.