Counter-Voices of Resilience, through a Critical Realist Lens

Drawing on critical realist ontology and critical realist discourse analysis, the chapter analyses how the concept of resilience can be and has been applied to Black, Asian, and minority ethnic families and communities in ways that are biased, stigmatising, and pathologising. It argues that current definitions of resilience need to be redefined and reconceptualised, particularly in settings dominated by White middle-class voices that define what ‘positive emotions’, ‘successful traits’, and ‘coping mechanisms’ entail. Here, through racism and flawed perceptions and interpretations of resilience and ‘Othering’, members from ethnic minority communities are defined as in need of resilience support, whilst at the same time their experience of structural racism is being erased. Reframing resilience thus means taking account of multifaceted and interactive effects of personal, material, institutional, and political factors that impact on behaviour, well-being and resilience, as well as acknowledging that the way in which ‘behaviour’ is received is by default flawed, if this is largely informed by an oppressive White middle-class viewpoint.