Hope collection

How can understanding refugees' experiences of post-traumatic growth help practitioners foster greater civic engagement and resilience in refugee communities?

Practical Advice/Tips for Practitioners

• Promote Community Involvement: 
  Encourage civic participation among refugees as it empowers them to reshape traumatic experiences into positive community contributions, enhancing personal resilience and collective identity.

• Facilitate Narrative Sharing: 
  Create safe spaces for refugees to share personal histories of trauma and growth to build empathy, solidarity, and understanding within the broader multicultural community.

• Support Political Engagement: 
  Support pathways for refugee political participation, recognising that active involvement strengthens community integration, advocates for justice, and addresses societal inequalities affecting refugees and migrants.

• Integrate Post-Traumatic Growth in Programs: 
  Incorporate principles of post-traumatic growth into mental health and resettlement services to acknowledge refugee strengths, foster optimism, and leverage trauma for positive development.

Abstract

Refugee livelihood studies have mostly focused on policy and international aid programming and have yet to explore refugee people’s long-term development beyond the initial resettlement period. This article examines the experiences of Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Tamil refugees resettled in Australia during the height of the multicultural agenda in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on fifty oral histories, the article argues that refugees’ struggle and transformation of trauma in the past fuelled civic engagement in their new host communities. It explores the nexus of refugee lived experiences, livelihoods, and post-traumatic growth in the context of multicultural Australia to consider refugee livelihood as a long-term process. Crossing disciplinary boundaries of history and psychology, the article shows how some refugees re-interpret their trauma as motivation for positive change, a manifestation of post-traumatic growth, expressed as civic engagement, including becoming political actors in response to their histories of trauma, resistance, and growth beyond resettlement.

Full paper access

Sarah Green, Anh Nguyen Austen, Niro Kandasamy. (2024). Refugee livelihood perspectives: Post-traumatic growth in histories of Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Tamil Refugees in Australia. Journal of Refugee Studies. 37(2), pp. 471–485.

Contact the researcher

Dr Anh Nguygen Austen
Anh.Nguyen.Austen@acu.edu.au

Learn more about Dr Anh Nguyen Austen’s research