Familie, Psyche und Radikalisierung: Erkenntnisse aus Experteninterviews zu Rückkehrerinnen im Phänomenbereich des Islamismus

Based on the specific challenges faced in professional support for women who have returned to Germany from IS combat zones with their children, this study investigated particular focus areas in daily counseling practice. This study draws practical insights from working with female returnees (N = 12 case reports) based on interviews with professionals from civil society and state networks of BAMF, as well as with officials involved in return coordination. In this qualitative study, narrative interviews with professionals gathered impressions and insights into the life stories of returnees in Germany. The focus is on the influence of mental health issues and family circumstances on radicalization and deradicalization processes. The findings show that many women had already faced significant psychosocial burdens, as well as experiences of violence and abuse, prior to their departure. After their return, both the women and their children showed signs of trauma. This presents a dual challenge for the professional support system: while some women rejected therapeutic support, in other cases, suitable support could not be found. The topic of “professional therapy” for this particularly vulnerable group remains an ongoing challenge for the support system currently available in Germany, consisting of reintegration facilities, governmental assistance measures, and everyday support structures. For professionals, the inadequate processing of these often-traumatic experiences posed an additional challenge in reintegration work with the women. The observed avoidance behaviors hindered the distancing, deradicalization, and reintegration of the women and led partially to social isolation, which affected not only the returnees but also their children in a particular way. To improve counseling work with low-threshold access in the future, data collection was carried out as part of this study.