The Role of Activities In the Lives of Refugee Youth: A Supportive Context for Navigating Adolescent Development and Acculturation

Background and Purpose: Since 1980, the United States has resettled over three million refugees, and almost half of all resettled refugees are under the age of 18 at the time of arrival. Resettlement policies prioritize working-age adults, largely neglecting the needs of newly arrived youth. Refugee youth are experiencing the same developmental processes as their native-born peers, but with the additional and simultaneous process of acculturation. Understanding what contexts are supportive for refugee youth during these processes is critical to promoting positive development and wellbeing. The goal of this study is to understand the impact of activity in the lives of refugee youth.

Methods: A total of 27 refugee youth living in Erie County New York participated: 25 participated in a semi-structured interview with an object elicitation component, and two refugee youth participated in member checks. Data collection and coding processes were iterative and aligned with a constructivist grounded theory approach. All interviews were recorded and then transcribed before analysis. Multiple rounds of coding were completed which led to the construction of a theory about the role of activities in the lives of refugee youth.

Results: Findings suggest that activities provide space for refugee youths’ identity development, sense of belonging, and overall wellbeing. Refugee youth access to activities is impacted by available support from individuals/programs, invitations to participate, their own sense of responsibility, and by parental or cultural perceptions of safety/appropriateness. Activity participation impacts refugee youth in both their identity development and their sense of belonging, often evidenced by relationships that were built or deepened through participation. Refugee youths’ perceptions of their activities as well as how those activities impact their identity development and sense of belonging contribute more broadly to their wellbeing, evident through emergent definitions of activities as a way to find relief, escape, avoid boredom, and communicate something about themselves.

Conclusions and Implications: Activities serve as an important context for refugee youth as they go through adolescent development and acculturation processes. Activities provide an environment in which refugee youth can wrestle with and develop answers to questions about who they are and where they fit. In light of these findings, resettlement policies should expand their scope to include provisions for youth adjustment and support, including the allocation of funding to enable participation in activities. Activity organizers, i.e., schools or community entities, should consider the accessibility of their programs. This needs to move beyond having the activities to include personal invitations/asks to participate, outreach and relationship development with parents to increase parental comfort with youth participation, and flexibility in activities to allow for participation. Future directions for research include a more diverse sample size (i.e., those from other schools in the area, those from cultural and linguistic backgrounds not included in this sample, those with limited English proficiency, etc.); to understand how, if at all, their experiences differ from those in the sample. Future research could also include quantitative data collection to better understand the relationships between the components in the model.