Nurturing Relations after Forced Migration : A practice-theory perspective on participation, inclusion and belonging in the lives of unaccompanied young people

Abstract

The overarching aim for this study is to understand how former unaccompanied refugee minors’ social participation unfolds in their networks of family and friends as they build new lives in Finland. As these young people move to a new country without their family, they undergo simultaneous transitions in terms of their age and development, country and culture, and security. During these transitions, family and friends can be significant sources of support but at the same time, these transitions pose new conditions of how relationships can be accessed and maintained. Using the theory of practice architectures as a theoretical lens, this research explores past (pre-migration) and present practices which these young people engage in as part of their social participation. It investigates how these practices persist or evolve within the new conditions of Finland and explores how young refugees contribute to their own and others’ wellbeing and build belonging in their new home country.

The research answers the following questions: 1. How do unaccompanied young people’s social participation change within new conditions in Finland ? <ul> a. How do their ways of being together change through their transitions into new material-economic arrangements?</ul><ul> b. How do their ways of communicating change through their transitions into new cultural-discursive arrangements?</ul><ul> c. How do their ways of relating to family and friends change through their transitions into new social-political arrangements? </ul> 2. How is reciprocal support generated through participation in practices with family and friends?

The participants were 17 refugees who had arrived as unaccompanied asylum- seeking minors in Finland and who, after receiving permission to stay, have begun building independent lives as adults there. They participated in the international Drawing Together Project which investigated relational wellbeing in the lives of young refugees in Finland, Norway and Scotland. This study examines the Drawing Together project’s Finnish data, which consists of semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and participant-generated artworks.

Findings suggest that participants’ social participation was prefigured, but not pre- determined, by the new cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements in Finland. The most noteworthy arrangements include geographical distance from the past relationships, reliance on communication technology, language barriers when creating new relationships, and the need to adapt one’s practices to new gender norms. Drawing on existing and new skills and knowledge, participants were often, but not always, able to overcome barriers by engaging in new practices or adapting old ones to new conditions in order to make and maintain relationships based on reciprocal support, understanding and trust.