Sexual harassment against female migrant domestic workers is a public health problem, which remains hidden and largely underreported. The current paper presents the results of a qualitative research study on sexually victimized migrant domestic workers in four European countries (Austria, Cyprus, Greece, and Sweden). The study aimed at exploring the profile and experiences of victimised individuals. Data were gathered via 66 semi-structured interviews with victimised female migrant domestic workers. Key findings of the current study indicate that the victims: (a) were usually undocumented and had low local language skills; (b) identified domestic work as the only way into the labour market; (c) suffered primarily psychological, economic, and social consequences; (d) had poor social support networks; (e) were poorly connected to governmental support services. This is the first study to explore this hidden problem via direct contact with victims. Addressing barriers of migrants’ social integration seems important. Better regulation and monitoring of this low-skilled occupation could minimise risks for vulnerable employees.

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.