Standing Up, Reaching Out and Letting Go: Experiences of Resilience and School Engagement for African High Schoolers from Refugee Backgrounds

The significance of engagement between Australia and Africa is gaining increasing attention, and few groups represent the future of this engagement better than the many young people born in Africa who have resettled in Australia on humanitarian visas. Educational attainment is one of the main developmental tasks of adolescence, and is valued by adolescents of refugee background, their families and communities, and the wider Australian society. However, secondary schooling places high demands on humanitarian entrants who arrive with low levels of prior education. These young people encounter these demands when they are already facing challenges presented by adolescence, the refugee experience, migration, and acculturation. Through a series of semi-structured interviews and focus groups, young African-Australians told their stories of resettlement and schooling, discussed the challenges they faced, and the ways in which they sought to overcome those challenges. Qualitative analysis identified themes relating to identity, resilience, optimism and the ongoing task of engaging with an Australian education