Recovery from Refugee Trauma in Social Work Theory and Practice: Toward a Critical-Bio-ecological and Survivor-Centered Trauma (C-BEST) Synthesis Model

Refugee trauma is often framed either as an individual clinical problem or as a broad social condition. Both approaches are limited. The first can detach distress from the social-political conditions that produce it, while the second can understate embodied distress, identity disruption, and the lived complexity of recovery. This article proposes a theoretical model, Critical-Bio-ecological and Survivor-Centered Trauma (C-BEST), that integrates critical social theory, intersectionality, ecological/ecosystemic thinking, survivor-centered practice, and neurobiology to extend trauma recovery theory for refugees. Within this model, recovery is conceptualized not as a linear reduction of symptoms but as a socially embedded process through which safety, identity, regulation, connection, and agency are renegotiated over time. Although this article is conceptual rather than empirical, C-BEST is linked to the pre-existing Clinical Ethnographic Narrative Interview (CENI) and Trauma Recovery Rubric (TRR) as one compatible approach to analytic operationalization (Koutra et al., 2022; Saint Arnault, 2017). The CENI elicits culturally situated narratives of trauma and recovery, while the TRR organizes such narratives into recovery domains and pathways. C-BEST extends beyond this architecture by theorizing the political, ecological, and neurobiological conditions through which refugee recovery is constrained or enabled. C-BEST thus offers an integrated framework for social work theory, practice, and education, while also informing interdisciplinary practice and human rights-informed advocacy.