Peer relationships at residential care institutions for unaccompanied refugee minors: An under-utilised resource?

Abstract

Without access to their own families, how do young, unaccompanied refugee minors re-establish their social lives in ways that facilitate a sense of togetherness in their everyday lives during resettlement? This question was approached by exploring the young persons’ creation of relational practices and the kinds of sociomaterial conditions that seemed to facilitate the evolvement of these practices, including the professional caregivers’ contributions. Interviews with 11 boys and 4 girls (aged 13–16) from Afghanistan, Somalia, Angola and Sri Lanka, as well as their professional caregivers in their country of residence, Norway, were analysed systematically by searching for, and categorizing, the variation of relational practices among the young persons. Three overarching practices are presented. First, the young persons worked to connect past, present and future contexts through collective meaning-making practices. Second, they regulated their peers’ emotions through emotional care practices. Third, they widened each other’s social networks through practices of social inclusion. Following the resettlement procedure the young persons moved from one kind of institution (care centre) to other parts of the country and to another kind of institution (group home) where the relational practices mentioned above appeared to be less prevalent. The article suggests that arranging everyday life as collective enterprises, as well as housing peers with similar cultural backgrounds, were central for the evolvement of the relational practices. As such, the article both elucidates a range of health-promoting relational practices that the young persons’ realised as a group as well as how these practices are embedded in sociomaterial conditions.

Continuity and Social Support: A Longitudinal Study of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors’ Care Networks

“…Our results show that participants actually maintained many components of their networks despite the disruptive migration context, and thus challenge the assumption that previous links are entirely severed and that URMs need to reconstruct their social networks completely after arrival in the new country (Kovacev & Shute, 2004;N ı Raghallaigh, 2011;Omland & Andenas, 2020). Confirming previous findings, families (N ı Raghallaigh, 2011) and ethnic peers (Omland & Andenas, 2020) represent the most meaningful as well as the most stable sectors of social support over time despite the many disruptions. Other connections that were particularly constant over time were volunteers, as well as social workers and guardians, on condition that they offer close, affective relationships (Eriksson et al, 2019).…”

“…Next to the longitudinal design of the study, the professional training as a clinical psychologist and work experience with URMs of the first author facilitated thick stories. Emphasizing topics like well-being created further trust in the backdrop of ongoing asylum procedures (Omland & Andenas, 2020). The semi-structured, in-depth interviews included open questions about well-being, demographic background, itinerary of the journey, coping strategies, arrival in the new country, living conditions, social support and their future.…”

Psychosocial attributes of housing and their relationship with health among refugee and asylum-seeking populations in high-income countries: systematic review

“…Switzerland [44], Norway [46], and Sweden [49]. Most studies (n=25) included adult ASR [23][24][25][27][28][29]31,32,[34][35][36][39][40][41][43][44][45][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54], and were published between 2015 and 2022 (n=24) [23][24][25]28,29,31,32,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][42][43][44][45][46][49][50][51]53,…”

“…The number of participants in qualitative studies ranged from 6 to 106, and in quantitative studies from 105 to 5,678 persons. 19 studies focused on the outcome of mental health [23,[26][27][28][29][35][36][37]40,41,43,[45][46][47][49][50][51][52][53]. We found housing as a main topic in seven studies [26,27,31,32,35,52,54], in the remaining 25 it was a side topic.…”

Navigating Cultures: Narratives of Becoming Among Young Refugees in Norway

“…Participation is not an abstract idea, but is necessarily specific, embodied and situated in particular locations (Omland & Andenas, 2019). Exploring specific social participation in everyday life empirically can shed light on important dynamics and mechanisms, like when…”