‘We Do Not Use Freezers in Syria’: Realignment and the Pursuit of Belonging Among Refugees in a Norwegian Village

Abstract

In this essay, I introduce a conceptual pair consisting of Bourdieu’s doxa concept and the synchronizing concept entrainment to show how refugee resettlement entails a process of realignment. This realignment, I argue, comes as a result of how people in different locations are subject to different rhythms of everyday life, wherein the construction of normality—as a doxic reality—is produced through a quasi-perfect fit between expectations and reality. The essay explores the arrival stories of refugees in a rural municipality in Norway and presents how they through various strategies realigned their expectations with the local realities they found themselves in: thus pursuing a new doxic reality. Through the essay, I aim to give attention to the micro-processes of refugees’ integration in new communities to illustrate how they engaged with their local communities through entrainment as a process of realignment.