Refugee Children in Australia: Wellbeing and Integration

Abstract

Whether the children of immigrant populations, including refugees, integrate into the host society is a key challenge facing all countries with large immigrant populations. In Australia, this is crucial given rising numbers and anxieties over refugee settlement in recent decades. Forced migration and displacement due to violence, persecution, or natural disasters with families undertaking perilous journeys fleeing their homes often could mean a turning point and at the same time a stressful event that may have severe negative psychosocial and long-term effects. This can be particularly acute among refugee children, who are typically the least prepared to migrate, have experienced hardship associated with violence and persecution, and must grow up in a new country. From a life course perspective, the integration and wellbeing of refugee children is shaped by the timing and context of migration, including their age at migration and country of origin. In this chapter we draw on longitudinal data from Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) to offer new evidence in our understanding of the integration and wellbeing of refugee children in Australia and policy recommendations to address the social disadvantages facing this population. Our findings indicate that refugee children are outperforming their parents, making intergenerational progress. However, we find some major differences by gender and national origin across a range of outcomes.

The United Nations estimates that at the end of 2019, there were 29.6 million refugees in the world and another 4.2 million individuals who were waiting for the outcome of their asylum claims (UNHCR, 2021). Displacement continues to grow as a result of climate change, conflict, and hunger. Currently, most of the world’s refugees come from Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar. Australia settles around 13,000–14,000 refugees annually with children comprising around 30–40% (Henley & Robinson, 2011). Since the start of Australia’s humanitarian program in 1945, Australia has resettled over 800,000 refugees (Phillips, 2015).

Unlike immigrants who arrive via family or employment, refugees are a particularly vulnerable group who may face greater integration challenges. Many refugee adults and children flee violence and persecution. Forced displacement often means brutal uprooting and dismantling of communities and families, with some refugee children fleeing as unaccompanied minors. Additionally, many refugees arrive with few social networks and economic resources implying significant challenges to their onward journeys over the life course.

Most refugees arrive in Australia as families (McMichael et al., 2011). The Australian Government considers immediate family members to be spouses or de facto partners and children under age 18, though households will likely incorporate those outside of a nuclear family. In fact, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) posits that refugee integration is more successful among family units than individual refugees (McMichael et al., 2011). However, the integration of each family member will differ and for refugee children in particular, their integration may well differ from that of their parents, who arrive in the host country as adults.

Many refugee children arrive in Australia during a formative time in their lives and face different challenges than their parents. From a life course perspective, the integration and wellbeing of refugee children is shaped by the timing and context of migration, including their age at migration, country of origin, and refugee status. While migration in itself represents an important transition that influences one’s life trajectory and future experiences, this will differ for refugee children who migrate at various ages and sometimes under stressful conditions related to conflict and trauma (Kim et al., 2018).

Refugee children will grow up in a new society and culture, needing to learn and communicate in a new language and adjusting to schooling in a foreign education system (Henley & Robinson, 2011; Joyce et al., 2009). While adults rely on established diasporic communities and support networks, refugee children are more firmly grounded in host country education systems (Nunn et al., 2014). In turn, refugee children face several barriers that are strongly related to their wider wellbeing outcomes (Correa-Velez et al., 2010; Trickett & Birman, 2005). To illustrate, perceived discrimination and bullying greatly impede the ability to develop a sense of belonging and also negatively impact their educational outcomes (Correa-Velez et al., 2017), which can drastically alter life courses as education is a key indicator of integration outcomes (Strang & Ager, 2010). Further, peer difficulties in school are associated with lower adjustment and worse health outcomes (Lau et al., 2018). Importantly, resettling in a host country with new belief systems and values will likely challenge their socio-cultural adjustment, which has implications for their wellbeing. To successfully integrate, refugee children will need to overcome these barriers.

One aim of Australia’s humanitarian programme is to facilitate refugees’ full social, economic, and civic participation as well as psychosocial health and wellbeing (Correa-Velez et al., 2010). While the effects of the humanitarian programme have primarily focused on refugee adults, the programme is likely to have more prolonged and sustained effects on refugee children, given their young age at arrival. Refugee children arrive as permanent residents and who they grow up to be has profound consequences on Australia’s social and economic future. In this spirit, this chapter focuses on several aspects of refugee children’s integration, namely wellbeing, language proficiency, and academic achievement (Due et al., 2016). Educational settings are important spaces for socialization and human capital accumulation, which allow refugee children to enhance their social and emotional health (Joyce et al., 2009).

This chapter provides a demographic portrait of refugee children in Australia across national origins using nationally-representative data. We address the following questions: (1) What are the origins and premigration experiences of refugee children? (2) What is the family and household structure of refugee children? And (3) How do refugee children’s psychosocial adaptation and language proficiency differ by national origin and gender?

Integration of Refugee Children in Australia

While there is growing knowledge about the integration of contemporary refugees in Australia, we know far less about the outcomes of refugee children and youth. If refugee children grow up to have poor outcomes as adults, this will have a knock-on effect on the socioeconomic wellbeing of the country. Importantly, failure to fully integrate refugee children into the Australian society will only serve to deepen existing inequalities between the newcomers and the host population.

The Role of National Origin for Refugee Children’s Integration

Refugee children arriving in Australia may face greater risks because of their pre- and post-migration experiences of loss, separation, trauma, and disruption (De Anstiss & Ziaian, 2010). These experiences may vary by national origin or region of displacement (Portes & Rumbaut, 2014). For instance, the reasons that immigrants leave or flee their origin country reflect the conditions in their country of origin (Levels et al., 2008). In turn, the structural conditions of the country of origin can affect the outcomes of refugee children in the host country. For instance, humanitarian migrants may face more premigration traumatic experiences such as violence, torture of family members, separation from parents, personal injury, or living in a refugee camp (Hadfield et al., 2017). Such premigration experiences are linked to refugee’s country of origin and thus, this suggests that disaggregating refugee’s experiences by national origin may illuminate our understanding of the ways in which these experiences shape their integration in the host country. Thus, national origin serves as a useful proxy to capture the connection between premigration experiences and the integration of refugee children.

In general, studies tend to treat refugees as a homogenous whole or focus on a few specific groups (Correa-Velez et al., 2017). For instance, Lau et al. (2018) study the adjustment of refugee children and adolescents but do not examine them by national origin. Rousseau et al. (1998) focuses on broad regions when assessing refugee children’s emotional profiles. Likewise, qualitative research on refugee children often rely on small-scale, interview-based studies involving one or a few national origins (Joyce et al., 2009; Nardone & Correa-Velez, 2016). While these studies are useful for generating theories, they do not allow us to generalize any patterns among a large and diverse population of refugee children. In part, this is driven by data limitations. To our knowledge, detailed data on refugee children from multiple national origins are rare. Australian Census microdata provide detailed information on visa category and national origin but it does not include any information about wellbeing and premigration characteristics. Other large-scale and longitudinal surveys in Australia such as HILDA do not have a large sample of humanitarian immigrants, especially refugee children. In turn, we know little about how refugee children’s premigration characteristics and national origin shape their integration experience in Australia.

National origin is important as refugees from different countries of origin experience different types and levels of exposure to trauma and premigration circumstances (Fazel et al., 2012; Bean et al., 2007; Rousseau et al. 1998). When examining psychological distress, Bean et al. (2007) found that patterns of distress differ by national origin, with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Guinea displaying higher distress scores compared to those from other African countries and China. The national origin group that refugee children belong to matters for their integration as the coethnic community can be a source of support and provide resources that enable integration (Fazel et al., 2012; Liebkind, 1996).

Humanitarian Migrants in Australia

From 2018 to 2019, the largest number of humanitarian visas were granted to individuals born in Iraq (41.5%), the Democratic Republic of Congo (12.4%), Myanmar (11.7%), Syria (10.7%), and Afghanistan (7.7%) (Department of Home Affairs, 2019). Most contemporary refugee groups are viewed as racially different to the mainstream society who have distinct religious affiliations, with Afghans and Iraqis likely to be more visually distinctive in Australian society than Asian or European groups (Waxman, 1999). These differences will likely influence how refugees are received in Australian society and will differ to the experiences encountered by refugees from previous waves that primarily consisted of Bosnians, Iraqis, and black Africans (Colic-Peisker, 2008). A brief country profile of incoming refugees serves to contextualise the circumstances under which they arrived in Australia.

Iraqi Refugees and Immigrants

Roughly 77% of Iraqi migrants in Australia enter through the offshore Humanitarian program (Taylor & Stanovic, 2005) and approximately half of them arrived prior to 2007. Since 2015, there has been a significant focus on the settlement of Iraqi refugees following the Syrian conflict; between July 2015 and December 2017 a total of 13,567 Iraqi refugees migrated to Australia with nearly 8000 in NSW and over 4000 in Victoria (Collins et al., 2018). Despite Islam being the official religion in Iraq, 45% of Iraqis in Australia are Catholics or Assyrian Apostolic Christians (Evason, 2015), probably a result of sectarian conflicts driving out religious minorities from the country. While the Australian Government actively encourages settlement in regional areas, humanitarian migrants tend to settle in areas with members of their own communities. For Iraqi refugees, this is exemplified by the large concentration of settlements in the Fairfield and Liverpool areas of Western Sydney and the Hume City area of Melbourne (Collins et al., 2018). Colic-Peisker and Tillbury (2007) highlight the increased difficulties faced by recently arrived Iraqi refugees in the Australian labour market, pointing to their ‘visibly different’ ethnic identity. By settling in established co-national communities, these difficulties can be mitigated through ethno-specific support networks (Waxman, 1999).

Iranian Refugees and Immigrants

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the subsequent Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, Australia saw an influx of humanitarian migrants with the establishment of a program aimed at protecting religious minorities from the region (DHA, 2018b). This has allowed for successive generations starting in the 1990s to pursue visas under the Family Streams of the migration program (Adibi, 2008). In general, Iranian immigrants show greater representation in skilled migration intakes compared to others in the region, largely due to the increasingly precarious economic climate in Iran (DHA, 2018a). Consequently, Iranians in Australia are engaged in white collar labour at higher rates relative to other Middle-Eastern migrant groups and have higher pre-migration education and qualifications (Adibi, 2008). The majority of Iranians settled in Australia arrived after 2007. Three quarters speak Persian at home while only a third of Iranian refugees in Australia are Muslim, with nearly 30% reporting no religion (Evason, 2016a, b). Perhaps due to the secular tradition prior to the Islamic Republic, Iranians are also known to be more progressive in their cultural interpretation of Islamic practices such as allowing women the choice of wearing a hijab or not. While it is unclear how the overall composition of Iranian refugees compares to their counterparts arriving as non-humanitarian migrants, the Iranian immigrant community in Australia provides an indication of the context that Iranian refugees encounter upon arrival.

Afghani Refugees and Immigrants

Decades of conflict in Afghanistan have caused significant forced displacement. Afghan refugees constitute the second largest refugee population in the world (UNHCR). Most Afghanis experience irregular migration (Koser & Marsden, 2013; Nardone & Correa-Velez, 2016). In turn, many may arrive in Australia without authorization and may have transited through other neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan or Iran, before arriving in Australia (Nardone & Correa-Velez, 2016). The UN refugee agency estimates that over half of all asylum seekers in Indonesia seeking resettlement are from Afghanistan (Karlsen, 2016). This represents a common transit point for many Afghani refugees, who were often left in limbo when seeking settlement in Australia. Afghani refugees in Australia particularly benefit from established communities of compatriots, and the recently arrived Afghanis have reduced likelihood of secondary migration compared to other migrant groups (Waxman, 1999). Over 90% of Afghanis in Australia are Sunni Muslims and 60% are men. They also tend to be younger with a median age of 31 compared to Iranian and Iraqi immigrants. While the majority speak Dari at home, a significant proportion also speak Hazaraghi and Persian (excluding Dari) as well as other languages, making Afghanis one of the most linguistically diverse ethnic communities (Evason, 2016a, b).

Middle East/North African (Egypt, Syria) Groups

As a result of an ongoing civil war beginning in 2011, over five million Syrians have fled to nearby countries in the region, including 3.6 million in Turkey (UNHCR, 2020b) and over 130,000 in Egypt (UNHCR, 2020a). Among Egyptian refugees, many are Coptic Christians, a religious minority that continuously faces persecution in their origin country. In response to this crisis, the Australian Government announced an additional 12,000 places in its existing humanitarian resettlement program for those fleeing conflict in both Syria and Iraq (DSS, 2015). Between July 2015 and December 2017, over 13,000 Syrian humanitarian migrants settled in Australia (Collins et al., 2018). As of the 2016 Australian census, 41.3% of Syria-born people in Australia had arrived between 2012 and 2016 (DHA, 2018c). Syrian settlement in Australia is more evenly dispersed across Australian States with less established communities compared to other migrant groups fleeing conflict in the region. Although the majority of Syrian refugees in Australia have secondary school education, a good proportion of them are highly qualified. Syrian women also have a relatively high labour market participation due to men fighting and killed in sectarian conflicts (Collins et al., 2018).

Central Asian (Pakistan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka) Group

Much of the humanitarian intake of migrants from the Central Asia region are resettled from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand (Karlsen, 2016). Of the 154,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, over 140,000 were from Myanmar (UNHCR, 2015). Between 2005 and 2020, Australia has resettled 13,380 Myanmar-born refugees who had sought asylum in Thailand, and a total of 22,462 (UNHCR, 2020c).

Due to increasing ethnic unrest in Bhutan in the 1990s, over 100,000 Bhutanese sought refuge in nearby Nepal, and at the beginning in 2008 Australia began resettling over 5000 Bhutan-born refugees (DHA, 2018a). Most of these refugees are Lhotshampa or ethnic Nepalese from Southern Bhutan. Prior to this resettlement program, the Bhutanese community was not well established with only 1.2% of Bhutan-born people in Australia arriving prior to 2007 as of the 2016 Census. While resettled groups from other regions gravitated towards pre-established communities in Victoria and New South Wales, the Bhutanese people are more centralised in South Australia and Western Australia; 23.7% and 21.9% of Bhutan-born people in Australia respectively (DHA, 2018a).

The Role of Education in the Origin Country

One important factor when examining the integration of refugee children is the educational context in their country of origin. In theory, public education is free to all children up to secondary level in many MENA countries but universal enrolment in schools remains a major challenge (UNICEF, 2020a). Iraq is known to have one of the best education system among the MENA countries where free education for all is provided from primary to PhD level. Yet decades of conflict has led to severe damage to major infrastructures and school closures, leaving hundreds of thousands of children out of school. Between 1960 and 2009, Iraq and Iran spent a significant amount of their modern history in conflict: 52 and 48 years respectively (UNICEF, 2020b). Many children were forced to fight and become child soldiers. The risk of dropping out of primary and lower secondary education is extremely high, especially among girls and those with special learning needs. Children in Iran are slightly better off following major education reforms in 2011 with 95% of primary school enrolment. However, over three quarters of a million children remained out of school in Iran in 2015–16. The situation in Afghanistan is probably the worst where the Taliban imposed an outright ban on schooling for girls. Threats and intimidation of teachers and healthcare workers, and school closure are also widely documented by United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNICEF, 2016).

Consequently, on arrival, many refugee children will have experienced years of being out of school for different reasons depending on their country of origin. Religious identity as well as observance and cultural expectations of gender roles further exacerbate the educational and integration experience of boys and girls from MENA countries. It is therefore imperative to examine integration outcomes of refugee children by national origin and gender.

Measuring Refugee Integration

In general, studies investigating integration outcomes of refugee children have focused on wellbeing, education, and health. Among these, refugees tend to show more mental health difficulties than their native-born counterparts, including higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and problem behaviours (Hadfield et al., 2017). This is likely to differ by national origin and understanding which groups may experience greater difficulties with wellbeing can inform government policies and programmes.

Successful integration of humanitarian migrants into Australian society can be defined through a variety of measures including education, health, housing, employment, language training, and social connections (Ager & Strang, 2008). These measures of integration are often associated with the particular contexts the migrant groups are leaving behind. For example, pre-migration education, while not improving labour participation in the short-term following migration, does increase access to employment after 2 years (Delaporte & Piracha, 2018). Social integration measures such as English proficiency and self-sufficiency, diverse friendships networks, and having a sense of belonging in Australia are associated with better physical and mental health outcomes (Chen et al., 2019). However, barriers often exist in the cultural adjustments surrounding gender roles and can further entrench disadvantage for refugee women in accessing education opportunities, particularly for those from more traditional societies (Hatoss & Huijser, 2010; Cheung & Phillimore, 2017). This chapter draws on longitudinal data from Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) to offer new evidence in our understanding of the integration and wellbeing of refugee children in Australia and policy recommendations to address the social disadvantages facing this population. We examine language proficiency, household characteristics, and mental health and wellbeing of refugee youth in Australia.

Data and Methods

We analyse data from BNLA, a nationally-representative, household panel study of humanitarian immigrants in Australia, aimed at assisting the government in policy development and programme improvement in a bid to identify barriers to successful integration. The study includes around 1500 refugee migrating units and over 2000 individuals within these units. The sample encompasses individuals who received a permanent humanitarian visa either onshore (asylees) or offshore (refugees) between May and December 2013. Each migrating unit contains a primary applicant and secondary applicants such as spouse or children. All individuals in BNLA must be aged 15 or older and living with an adult primary applicant at the time of the interview. Secondary applicant adolescents aged between 15 and 17 are of particular interest. BNLA collects information on the same respondents since 2013 using face-to-face and telephone interviews. In Wave 3, BNLA conducted a child module that focuses explicitly on the wellbeing and social outcomes of children in the household, with a goal of exploring intergenerational transmission of trauma among refugee communities. The child module consists of two questionnaires completed by the primary caregiver on up to two children aged 5–17 years and a self-report questionnaire by children aged 11–17 using a short Pen and Paper Instrument (PAPI). Our analyses draw on both the longitudinal household survey data and the cross-sectional child module as the two samples include different information about refugee children’s psychosocial outcomes and family background. Our analytical sample contains refugee children from the longitudinal sample (n = 596) and from the Wave 3 child module (n = 159).

A Portrait of Refugee Children

Table 5.1 provides descriptive statistics on key characteristics of our sample of refugee children using the longitudinal household data file of BNLA and the child module. From the literature we know that refugee integration outcomes of women and men vary enormously (see for example Cheung & Phillimore, 2017), so we present these statistics by gender. We discuss the national origin background of refugee children, age at migration, premigration experiences, including whether they spent any time in refugee camps, detention, their migration pathway (on-shore or off-shore) and their English fluency and literacy. We also report on the socioeconomic characteristics of their migrating unit. On outcomes, we focus on refugee children’s health, school achievement and behaviour using data from the child module in Wave 3.

Table 5.1 Descriptive statistics for refugee children by gender

Broadly speaking, our sample is slightly skewed towards female comprising approximately 59%. The average age of the respondents is 18 and their average age at arrival is 15.6. We observe few differences in age and age at arrival by gender though females tend to be slightly older. The higher age at arrival among the sample is likely due to the fact that the longitudinal sample of the BNLA was restricted to persons aged 15 and above. The older age at arrival among our sample suggests that this group may experience additional challenges in the integration process, especially in educational attainment. Children who arrive at later ages are often further behind in school (Busby & Corak, 2014; Corak, 2011). In Australia, the minimum school leaving age is 17. It is possible that children who arrive close to that age may not be accepted for regular school (Corak, 2011). Even if they are accepted, they may experience additional challenges adapting to a completely new academic system and a western-oriented curriculum taught in a language that is not their mother tongue. Many refugee children on arrival may not speak any English at all or are likely to still be developing their English language skills. A later age at arrival for refugee children from non-Anglophone backgrounds is strongly associated with lower educational attainment, which has long-term implications for their adult behaviours and socioeconomic and wellbeing outcomes (Beck et al., 2012).

In terms of national origin, 31% of refugee children in our sample come from Iraq, 22% are from Afghanistan and a further 14% from Iran. We also have a substantial proportion from Nepal (16%), Myanmar (5%), Pakistan (3%), and Sri Lanka (1.6%). Given the smaller size of these groups, we have combined them in one group as South and Central Asia. Likewise, we combined national origin groups from Egypt (0.4%) and Syria (3.1%) together as MENA (Middle East/North Africa) countries, and Congo (4.9%) is included in ‘Other Africa’.

The overwhelming majority of our sample (98%) completed their application off-shore so their refugee status was confirmed prior to arriving in Australia. Among the refugee children in our sample, all females were off-shore applicants compared with 94.4% of males. Arriving in Australia with a confirmed refugee status is advantageous as it allows refugee children full access to refugee resettlement services and resources. For instance, Australia’s resettlement program for humanitarian migrants has been well-regarded (Correa-Velez et al., 2010). In contrast, only 2% were in Australia (onshore) when they submitted their application for a humanitarian visa. Though the rules for asylum seekers have changed over time, this suggests that a small proportion of refugee children were on any kind of temporary status while awaiting for their refugee status to be determined.

Relatedly, a substantial proportion of children spent time in a refugee camp before they arrive in Australia, with approximately 30% of females and 21.7% of male children experiencing this transition, which is likely to have an impact on their integration. By contrast, our data show that only 2% of refugee children were in detention before their arrival. There is mandatory detention for individuals who arrive in Australia without a visa and seeking asylum (Steel et al., 2011). Prolonged detention is associated with lower mental health among refugees (Steel et al., 2006).

Respondents in the longitudinal sample were asked eight questions at each wave about their post traumatic experiences. We subsequently created a dichotomous measure to assess whether they were likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or not. Our data show that almost half of refugee children in our sample (44.6%) experienced PTSD. This is unsurprising as experiences of trauma and conflict can have long lasting impacts and impede children’s ability to learn in school and to adapting to a new life in Australia. Table 5.1 shows that female children show significantly higher rates of PTSD (47.2%) relative to their male counterparts (40.9%). This is consistent with Bean et al. (2007) and Phillimore and Cheung (2021) who found that female refugees typically exhibit worse mental health outcomes.

The overwhelming majority (94.5%) of refugee children continue to live with the primary applicant whom they migrated with, though males were more likely to do so (98.4%) relative to females (91.8%). Most refugee children live in households with around 5–6 persons, suggesting that refugee children belong to larger families or live with household members outside of the nuclear family.

The Importance of Home Environment

To fully understand the home environment refugee children are being brought up in, it is important to consider the background of the migrating unit, which consists of all persons who migrated to Australia under the same migration application. The migrating unit is comprised of a primary applicant who sponsors refugee children as dependants. While the migrating unit is not necessarily the parents of refugee children, it is likely to be the case given how Australian immigration policy acknowledges family relationships; spouses and children are the main relationships recognized as secondary applicants. In turn, it is unlikely that refugee children will have migrated with family members outside of their nuclear family. Therefore, we use migrating unit as a proxy for family background.

A risk factor for refugee children’s integration may be the overall level of disadvantage in the household. Some ways to understand this include the average education and the labour market participation of the household. Educational attainment is measured as a categorical variable with a value of “0” representing no formal education and a “4” representing a university degree. As indicated in Table 5.1, refugee children live in households where the average highest education has a value of 1.8, which roughly approximates to less than 7 years of formal schooling. In most educational systems this would be below lower secondary level. It is well established in the cultural reproduction literature that parental education is a strong predictor of children’s educational attainment (Evans & Kelley, 2002). Low educational resources in the household means that refugee children are unlikely to benefit from any cultural and social capital in the home environment for their education.

The overall level of English proficiency of the household is also another important aspect shaping the integration of refugee children. A potential risk factor for many refugee children is low English proficiency among co-resident adults. Four questions on English language ability were asked in the BNLA survey for all adult and children respondents: how well they understand, speak, read and write English on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (very well). We developed two measures of English proficiency: fluency and literacy. We took the average scores of understanding and speaking to measure English fluency, and those of reading and writing for English literacy. Therefore, a higher score indicates a higher level of English fluency and/or literacy.

Table 5.1 shows that on average, refugee children live in households where the average English proficiency is about 1.8 or “not well”. The low English proficiency of refugee parents (or co-resident adults) in addition to having low levels of formal education, will make it difficult to for them to succeed in education and subsequently in the labour market. This is because these adults will not be able to provide assistance with refugee children’s school work. Taken together, these household characteristics will have profound implications for the integration of refugee children.

A further risk factor for refugee children is the low level of labour market participation of household members such as the refugee adults. In our sample, refugee children lived in households where adults were employed only 12.9% of the time across the survey years. There is also a small gender difference as girls tend to live in households with slightly lower labour market participation levels (12.2%) than boys (14.1%). Socioeconomic disparities in households could have long term implications for children’s economic wellbeing.

It is likely that low education compounded with poor English proficiency contribute to the low levels of labour force participation among co-resident adults. This ‘domino’ effect of multiple disadvantages poses enormous challenges for refugee parents to integrate into the Australian society themselves. This may indicate that adult refugees have limited ability to seek professional help. They are also unlikely to have informal social networks that can provide information about schools for their children. Given the low rates of paid employment among refugee adults, they will have little choice but to resort to welfare and state benefits. Unemployment and low income, in turn, could lead to poor integration for the entire family and above all no or few resources to support their children’s education and healthcare needs.

Gender and Refugee Children’s Integration and Wellbeing

Given the diverse backgrounds of refugee children, their integration pathways are likely to vary by subgroup. In this section, we will examine a number of indicators of refugee children’s wellbeing and integration by gender. We focus on children’s English language fluency and literacy and indicators of their mental health and wellbeing, such as SDQs (Strength and Difficulty Questions), and life satisfaction.

Language Proficiency: Fluency and Literacy by Gender

Refugee children in the BNLA sample have far higher English proficiency than their parents or co-resident adults, with an average score of 3 for fluency and 3.1 for literacy, compared to 1.8 for their parents. Girls also have slightly higher fluency and literacy scores achieving 3 and 3.1 compared to boys with a score of 3 for both outcomes. Despite some gender differences, we find that all refugee children surpass the English proficiency of their migrating unit, showing clear signs of intergenerational progress in English language proficiency.

Socioemotional Wellbeing by Gender

To understand refugee children’s social-emotional wellbeing, BNLA asks a series of questions using the standard Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Total Difficulties Score for Children. SQD is a multidimensional behavioural screening questionnaire that asks a series of questions about a child’s behaviour for individuals aged 3–16. The questions cover emotional symptoms, inattention, peer relationship problems, prosocial behaviour, and conduct problems and are ranked in a score. BNLA contains both a self-assessed SDQ completed by the child and a separate SDQ questionnaire completed by the parent based on their assessment of the child. Total Difficulties is measured using a score ranging from 1 to 40 with a higher score indicating greater difficulty in their adjustment.

Table 5.1 indicates that the average SDQ score for all refugee children in our sample is 10.1. However, when we disaggregate this by gender, we find that refugee girls have a much higher SDQ score (13.5) compared with boys (7.7). When we examine children’s SDQ scores as assessed by their parents, we see a similar gendered pattern with parents reporting higher SDQ scores for their daughters (10.4) compared with sons (8.8). While a SDQ score under 15 is considered “normal”, higher scores among refugee girls would suggest they need more support for their developmental needs and social-emotional wellbeing.

Another aspect of children’s wellbeing is life satisfaction. When children were asked “how happy with how things are in life for me right now”, 24% of refugee girls strongly agreed compared with 38.2% of boys. By contrast, 11.9% of females strongly disagreed with the statement compared with only 4.2% of males. In general, refugee girls appear to show worse wellbeing than their male counterparts. It is possible that adolescent girls in general experience more psychosocial and social-emotional problems. It could also be that refugee girls find it more challenging growing up in a new country and adapting to western cultural norms and gendered roles.

The Enduring Effects of National Origin and Children’s Outcomes

Thus far, we have considered the characteristics of refugee children and their migrating units and found notable differences by gender. To further understand the diversity of this group, we examine refugee children’s outcomes by national origin.

Premigration Experiences

To begin, we examine how premigration experiences differ by national origin to understand refugees’ different premigration journeys and pathways prior to their arrival in Australia. Australia’s Humanitarian program comprises an on-shore (asylum seekers/asylees) and an off-shore (refugees) component, depending on where the application for a humanitarian visa was processed. Whether immigrants arrive on-shore or off-shore will structure their postmigration experiences, including whether they spend time in detention or in a refugee camp, whether they are on temporary visas, and the level of uncertainty and precarity they experience.

Our data show notable national origin differences in refugee children’s migration pathway. In particular, all Iraqi and Afghani refugee children in our sample arrived via the on-shore pathways or were asylum seekers. In contrast, Iranian (97.3%), Central Asian (93.5%), and Middle East/North Africans (89.3%) are more likely to secure their refugee status prior to arriving in Australia. This suggests that Iraqi and Afghani refugees were likely to have endured more precarious statuses and limited access to resources while awaiting confirmation of their refugee status. Asylum seekers often find it impossible to make plans for the future given their temporary status. This will negatively affect their ability to invest in human capital and their labour market mobility. Not only has research found a negative association between lengthy asylum processes and psychopathology (Laban et al., 2005), uncertainty can have profound detrimental effects on the psychosocial development of refugee children.

We find that some groups are much more likely to spend time in a refugee camp prior to arrival. Consistent with their premigration pathway, those who arrived in Australia as refugees are also more likely to have spent time in a refugee camp. For instance, 97.3% of Iranians arrived with their refugee visas and 29% spent time in a refugee camp before they arrived. Likewise, 93.5% of Central Asians arrived with their refugee status and 63% of them had spent time in refugee camps before they arrived in Australia. In contrast, 100% of Iraqi and Afghani were asylees and only 1.4% and 2.7% spent time in a refugee camp prior to their arrival in Australia. In sum, Afghani and Iraqi refugee children will have likely experienced more uncertainty than refugee children from MENA countries, Asia, and Iran. The BNLA does not record the length of time spent in refugee camps. Whether in Kenya, Jordon, Pakistan or Greece, most camps are run by NGOs funded by UNHCR. Many of these temporary accommodations are basic tarpaulin tents or makeshift huts with poor insulation. Inadequate access to running water, no electricity and unhygienic toilets, compound with limited onsite healthcare facilities make this transition a ‘living hell’ (Guardian, 2020). Compared to the uncertainty onshore asylum seekers have to endure, refugees who have spent time in camps are also subject to considerable precarity. The tolls of living in camps on their physical and mental health can be significant and far-reaching (Fig. 5.1).

Fig. 5.1

Migration pathway by country of origin. (Source: Building a New Life in Australia survey, waves 1–5)

English Language Proficiency by National Origin

Most refugee children arrive from non-English speaking countries. As reported above in the analysis by gender, despite the low English proficiency of household adults, most refugee children understand and speak English “well”. Our results disaggregated by country of origin also show similar patterns of English proficiency among migrating units with immigrant adults from Middle East/North Africa showing the highest English proficiency and those from Central Asia showing the lowest. This may be due to the fact that English is widely spoken in Egypt and Syria but not in Myanmar or Nepal. Nonetheless, Fig. 5.2 shows lower group variation by origin country in English proficiency among refugee children compared with co-resident adults.

Fig. 5.2

Children’s and migrating Unit’s English language literacy by gender and country of birth

Note: English literacy scores range from 1 to 4 with a higher value indicating greater English literacy. Source: Building a New Life in Australia survey, waves 1–5

Overall, we find that refugee children have a solid command of English proficiency. Most groups, with the exception of Central Asians, have an average English proficiency score of 3 or higher. Despite the fact that in most cases English is not their first language, this high level of English proficiency among refugee children is encouraging. It bodes well for their integration given the importance of English skills in progressing in the Australian schooling system and the labour market.

As noted in Table 5.1, girls have slightly higher English language fluency and literacy than boys. However, when we disaggregate language fluency and literacy by gender and country of birth, the gender differences appear smaller and are more dependent on the country of origin. For instance, in Fig. 5.6, among Afghani children, girls shower higher English literacy (3.1) than boys (2.9), but among Middle Eastern/North African refugees, the reverse is true, with girls showing lower English literacy (2.9) than their male counterparts (3.1). Our data show that the gap between refugee children and their migrating unit is far wider in literacy, indicating that refugee children have been making great strides in English language since arriving in Australia.

Household Structure and Family Size by National Origin

It has long been established that family resources are crucial for the educational success of children especially when they are younger (Mare, 1980). In this section we examine how refugee children’s family background and household characteristics differ by national origin. We focus on the size, human capital resources, and socioeconomic and linguistic characteristics of their household adults.

We find that family and household resources differ by national origin. The first key difference is in the level of human capital that they arrive with. In Fig. 5.3, we examine the average education level of the migrating unit by national origin. Overall, the average education of the migrating unit varies widely by national origin though all are quite low. No group shows an average education with an equivalent of a high school certificate. Refugee children from Afghanistan and Central Asia grow up among co-resident adults in the migrating units with the lowest average education. The highest average education of Afghani and Central Asian migrating units is less than elementary school. The migrating units with the highest education are from Iraq and the Middle East/North Africa where adults achieved somewhere between 7 and 11 years of schooling.

Fig. 5.3

Average education and % employment by national origin

Source: Building a New Life in Australia survey, waves 1–5

Note: Education scores range from 0 to 4 with a higher value indicating higher average education

Figure 5.3 also shows the employment profiles of co-resident adults, measured by the percent of time in paid employment of adults in the migrating unit. We created a summary measure by using the current employment question (“are you employed in paid work?”) for each wave and averaging the time that adults were employed over the 5 survey years. Overall, we find that refugee children from Middle East/North Africa live in migrating units with the highest levels of adult employment where co-resident adults were employed about 58% of the time. In contrast, this is much lower among refugees from Iran (16.7%), Central Asia (14.7%), Iraq (6%), and Afghanistan (6%). The low levels of adult employment from migrating units from Iraq and Afghanistan suggest that refugee children from these groups may be particularly disadvantaged from their family’s lower employment level and lower socio-economic resources. Being dependent on state benefits and the struggle to make ends meet could have a detrimental impact on refugee children’s psycho-social developments as well as educational attainment. In sum, our findings indicate that refugee children from Afghanistan and Central Asia are particularly disadvantaged as indicated by their households with low levels of employment and formal education.

Mental Health and Wellbeing by National Origin

We also consider how children’s socioemotional characteristics differ by national origin. In Fig. 5.4 below, we show the SDQ scores reported by child respondents and their parents. Except for Iranian refugee children, we find that parents typically rate their children’s SDQ as lower, indicating fewer socioemotional problems, than children’s self-assessment. This may suggest that refugee children experienced greater difficulties than their parents were aware of. We also find variation in SDQ scores by national origin. Overall, we find that MENA refugee children show the lowest SDQ scores, which is confirmed by both the self-assessed (6) and parental assessment scores (5.7). We find that Afghani (9.9) and Iraqi (9.2) refugee children show the highest self-assessed SDQ scores whereas Irani (9.2) and Iraqi (8.6) refugee children show the highest parent-assessed SDQ scores. The disparities between parental- and self-assessed SDQ scores may be causes of concern. This may be indicative of the challenges that refugee children encounter during their integration progress and the extent to which this is evident to their parents. Additionally, while it is common for children to experience intergenerational conflicts with their immigrant parents, this may be exacerbated in refugee families who on average have endured greater hardships during their migration journey (Portes & Rumabut, 2014).

Fig. 5.4

Strength and difficulties questionnaire total difficulties scores (Self-assessment and parental assessment) by Country of Birth. (Source: Building a New Life in Australia survey, waves 1–5)

Another measure of subjective wellbeing in the BNLA is refugee children’s self-rated health. Again, we examine the details by national origin. Figure 5.5 shows large between-group variations in self-rated health. Among refugee children, those from MENA countries rank the highest in self-rated health, with 75% rating their health as ‘excellent’. We find a large drop off though, as only 35% of Afghani children rank their health as ‘excellent’ followed by 42.7% of Iranian children. Central Asians show the lowest as only 29% rank their health as ‘excellent.’ Both groups of refugee children reporting excellent health are from other Africa and MENA countries yet the former are all asylees and 90% of the latter obtained refugee status before arriving. It is unlikely that migration route or having spent any time in refugee camps is associated with self-rated health.

Fig. 5.5

Percent excellent self rated health by national origin. (Source: Building a new life in Australia survey, waves 1–5)

How National Origin and Gender Matter for Refugee Children’s Outcomes

In this final section, we consider the extent to which national origin and gender together may shape wellbeing. It would be ideal to examine how refugee children’s outcomes vary by gender and national origin but small cell sizes on many of the outcomes prevent us from doing so. Our descriptive results in Table 5.1 showed some disadvantages for girls with a higher proportion of refugee girls living in refugee camps and reporting PTSD than refugee boys. However, disaggregating by gender conceals some interesting patterns of disadvantage for some groups. Even by simply disaggregating the figures by gender and national origin, we can see refugee children from Iraq suffered from a much higher level of PTSD than their peers in other countries. Equally, a staggeringly high proportion (83.4%) of refugee girls from MENA countries (Syria and Egypt) have reported suffering PTSD. The same pattern is for refugee boys in other African countries. These conditions are likely to be triggered by deeply traumatic experiences associated with violence and conflicts in both the Middle East and certain African countries (Fig. 5.6).

Fig. 5.6

Percentage with PTSD by gender and country of birth. (Source: Building a new life in Australia survey, waves 1–5)

Discussion and Conclusion

Overall, we find that refugee children are outperforming their parents. Despite living in disadvantaged households, refugee children are doing well and making intergenerational progress. However, we find some major differences by gender and national origin. Our analyses emphasise the importance of national origin, gender, and pre-migration characteristics in understanding the settlement experience and integration of refugee children in Australia. Our findings show significant differences between boys and girls as well as origin country differences in the range of outcomes examined.

In terms of health and mental wellbeing, girls have higher SDQs and lower self-rated health than boys. Refugee children from MENA countries appear to fare better compared to their peers from Central Asia, Iraq or Afghanistan. They tend to report lower SDQ, as do their parents. MENA refugee children also report better health status and higher levels of English Fluency, and to a lesser degree English literacy. The evidence thus far seems to support the notion that prolonged conflict is associated with long-term consequences among refugee children. The MENA countries in our sample are Egypt and Syria were in conflict for 5–6 years during the period of 1960–2009. This stands in stark contrast with Iraq and Iran where most of the population were subject to decades of war and atrocities.

Since most of the refugee children in BNLA have not completed their schooling, we are unable to assess their educational attainment. After linking the child questionnaire to the main survey, particularly to key variables such as national origin, the large amount of missing data prevented further regression analysis of any particular outcomes of interest.

Policy Recommendations

Building a new life in a new country requires resilience and resources. Refugee children are not a problem that needs to be fixed. We should also move away from the discourse of identifying the ‘good’ or ‘deserving’ refugees so that we can only ‘let the right ones in’. Most refugee children settle in the neighbouring country next to their home country because the majority are far too poor or lack the resources to travel to wealthy countries in the west. Considering nearly half of the refugee children in BNLA experienced PTSD, it would be difficult to overstate the scale of the ordeal they have been subjected to throughout their treacherous journey getting to Australia. They may have lost their parents, been out of school for years, subjected to sexual violence, forced to become child soldiers in sectarian conflicts or simply displaced. Integrating these young people into the wider society requires a better understanding of the ways in which their pre-arrival experiences shape their future. Refugee children come from extremely diverse backgrounds and we argue that understanding the national context of their country of origin would greatly help towards a more targeted approach in policy intervention.

First, we know that girls have disproportionately suffered from being out-of-school in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. It would be difficult to quantify the amount of lost schooling due to the extremely volatile conflicts these children experienced. Refugee children regardless of their gender, would need extra resources in schools to support their learning and integrate them into a new educational environment. Importantly, resources would also be needed to support families and migrating units where, as our findings show, refugee children are living with poorly educated co-resident adults with poor command of English who are largely not in paid employment. Targeted policy initiatives aimed at supporting co-national social networks may strengthen the human capital outside the households of these refugee migration units. Many highly-educated Iranians and Egyptians migrated to Australia but not via humanitarian routes. These co-national communities serve as a readily available resource that government and NGOS can harness to provide the much-needed support for refugee children and their families.

Second, concerning mental health and wellbeing, evidence has shown that women are more likely to suffer from depression than men in the general population and especially among refugee women (Kuehner, 2016). They are also significantly more likely to report poorer physical as well as mental health (Cheung & Phillimore, 2017). Our findings on refugee children support this. Not only were refugee girls more likely to have been in refugee camps and to report PTSD, they were also less likely to rate their health as excellent and report higher levels of difficulties compared to refugee boys. This could be due to the fact that women are more likely to suffer from sexual violence while fleeing their countries. The renewed conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea are a chilling reminder of the horrific sexual violence suffered by displaced women and girls. Without early interventions and appropriate programmes of support between schools and healthcare providers, refugee girls may experience poorer mental health and wellbeing well into their adulthood and for years to come.

Third, we expect refugee girls from Muslim countries will face additional barriers navigating their way through their new life in Australia, where cultural expectations are radically different from those in their home country. Unlike single-sex schools in some Muslim countries, most schools in Australia are co-educational where boys and girls study together. Yet their refugee parents may have a very different set of cultural expectations regarding gender roles in the home and in public spaces. Refugee girls would need to adapt in a very short space of time to negotiate conflicting expectations in the new society. While research has found that social networks such as religious groups and co-national organisations can act as a source of support for better mental health (Bakker et al., 2016), they can also act as the “guardian” of more conservative gender roles and in turn cause additional tension to the integration of adolescent refugee girls.

Fourth, we know that Iraqis tend to settle with their established communities. Co-nationals tend to look out for each other and share information from schools to employment opportunities. It would make sense for integration programmes to target intervention in supporting and strengthening these community organisations. Our evidence points to a persistent disadvantage of refugee children from Central Asia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Policies and programmes need to be comprehensive enough to promote structural integration to enable refugee children to transition to a full member of the Australian society in all aspects: stable and quality housing, accessible and affordable healthcare, culturally sensitive education, training and pathways to employment including language programmes. At the same time, policy intervention needs to be targeting resources to the groups with most acute disadvantages: girls from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Central Asia.

Refugee children in the BNLA sample are the ‘lucky ones’. Babies who were in offshore processing centres on Pacific Islands Nauru or Manus in Papua New Guinea do not have any rights of entry because they were not born in Australia even though their parents were granted refugee status. These offshore processing centres are considered by many as detention centres. Since July 2013, the Australian Government no longer accepts asylum seekers by boat from offshore processing even though they are recognised as refugees. The destiny of these stateless refugee children are likely to be much grimmer than the ones who made it onshore. Much more needs to be done to urgently review such polices so that hundreds and thousands of these children can also have a chance to build a new life in Australia.