‘Enemy of the people’: Family identity as social cure and curse dynamics in contexts of human rights violations

Although Social Cure research shows the importance of family identification in one's ability to cope with stress, there remains little understanding responses human rights violations. This is first study explore role identity collective experience such violations: meanings ascribed suffering, coping strategies, and family-based understandings justice. Semi-structured interviews (N = 27) Albanian dictatorship survivors were analysed using Identity Theory informed thematic analysis. The accounts reveal processes at work, whereby groups facilitated shared meaning-making, uncertainty reduction, continuity, resilience-building, self-esteem, support, enhanced through common fate experiences. As well as being curative, families contexts for Curse processes, relatives suffering consequences collectively, while also experiencing intergenerational injustice trauma. seeking achieving justice remain important, preservation one triumphs these stories suffering.