Difference is a teacher. A qualitative study of the benefits of music therapy with refugees and/or asylum seekers in Australia and Norway.

Abstract - Asylum seekers and refugees are growing in numbers all around the world, and research usually focus on these three settings: the post migration-context, in refugee-camps and in resettlement-contexts. Research on the resettlement-context has shown that refugees face difficulties such as adapting to a new culture, accustoming a new social system, establishing a new identity in a cross-cultural setting, learning a new language, building new social networks, and feeling like they belong and have a purpose. Further, research on music therapy with this population has concluded with thoughts on promoting wellbeing, giving agency and empowerment through meaningful activities and musical experiences. This study seeks to explore music therapy with refugees and asylum seekers through interviews with six registered and authorized music therapists, three from Norway and three from Australia. The participants have a considerable amount of experience in this field, and offer broad perspectives from school-ettings, inclusive choir, individual sessions, group-settings in asylum centres, and groups with children and parents together. Informed by hermeneutics methodology, this qualitative study seeks to interpret the data from the interviews, through an altering between viewing the parts and the whole, between pre-understandings and understandings. The six interviews were transcribed, and analysed using a six-step thematic analysis. As a result of the analysis, I found five common themes, which was underpinned by three or four subthemes, showing the complexity in this material. The common themes was: (1) cultural sensitivity, referring to the qualities of the music therapist, (2) connections, described through relations between clients and the music therapists (3) “come alive” understood as vitality through music expression and collaboration, (4) complex transitions, relating to the obstacles in adapting to a new culture and lastly (5) context, referring to the framework of the sessions. Further research is needed to understand and comprehend the refugees perspective, identifying and exploring methods in musical participation, and lastly research that focus on settings in non-Western societies. Key terms: Asylum seeker, Refugee, Cultural sensitivity, Connection, Resource