Racial Othering and Relational Wellbeing: African Refugee Youth in Australia

Tebeje Molla ()
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Tebeje Molla: School of Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC 3025, Australia

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Racialised and culturally distinct refugee groups increasingly face hostilities and negative representations in countries of resettlment. The experience of African refugee youth in Australia illustrates this general trend. This paper explores how racial Othering discourse seriously undermines the group’s wellbeing. The article concentrates in particular on two aspects of relational wellbeing, the capacity to move in public without fear or shame and the ability to feel a sense of belonging to the place where one lives in. Theoretically, the paper draws together work on wellbeing from a capability approach and relational perspective with interdisciplinary literature on racial Othering. Empirically, the paper demonstrates the pervasive culture of racial Othering through media identifications of African youth with criminality and gang violence and illustrates impacts on young people’s wellbeing through data from interviews with African refugee youth. The youth’s accounts show how it feels to be a problem and what it means not to belong.

Keywords: African refugee youth; Australia; racial Othering; wellbeing; refugee integration; the capability approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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