No one chooses to be a refugee (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 2007). Refugees are ordinary people with long stories (Fine 1991). Escaping danger is the first of many challenges. To survive, they must navigate a new culture, language, set of life skills and, sometimes, occupational deprivation (Whiteford 2005). Amid occupational chaos, refugees adapt to lost life roles, new life roles and drastically changed life roles (Driver & Beltran 1998). Consider Nada’s story:

Refugees are not inherently disabled or diseased (Schwartzman et al 2006). Nada will intuitively press on towards occupational performance and well-being (Wilcock, 1993 and Lentin, 2002). Yet healing and community reintegration may stall with mounting occupational problems. Personal and occupational problems (e.g. trauma and new life skills) are likely to be compounded and perhaps overshadowed by environmental problems (e.g. politics of poverty, restrictive visas, cultural accessibility of services, community discrimination, etc.) (Whiteford, 2000 and Drexler, 2005). Nada soon finds herself trapped and treading water in an occupational void of disruption, dysfunction and deprivation. These occupational problems perpetuate ‘refugee-ism’ long past the initial trauma, haunting and undermining her recovery.

Perhaps settled refugees or church groups could help. Perhaps professionals such as trauma counsellors could help. But what happens when the primary issues are occupational in nature (Yerxa 1993)? What happens when community and professional intuition is not enough? When navigating the variables to create and enable occupational opportunities is so complex that the helping community and professionals are equally stuck?

Occupational therapists have long enabled life skills for new life roles through redesigning and recycling occupations after lost life roles. Occupational therapists have long been facilitating the person, occupation and environment to promote occupational performance and well-being (Polatajko 2001). Our mandate of creating and enabling occupational opportunities is not limited to disability or disease (Gray 1998). Our profession exists to enable occupationally well people and occupationally just societies (Kronenberg et al 2005). Occupational Opportunities for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (OOFRAS) exists to help our profession uphold its mandate with refugees (Smith 2005).