The changing family dynamics of people from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds and its impact on health and wellbeing

Safe and supportive families constitute one of the strongest determinants of health and developmental outcomes for young people globally, and improving health outcomes requires supporting young people's daily life within families [1]. For people from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds (hereafter refugees and asylum seekers), the process of resettlement has a strong bearing on family dynamics, namely through family loss/separation, changes to gender roles, intergenerational tensions, resource loss and loss of status [2]. Research suggests that diminished family functioning and intergenerational conflict can be the result of parental trauma [3, 4] and difficulties reconciling traditional parenting practices informed by interdependent societies with the social norms in receiving countries, which emphasise individual responsibility for parenting [5, 6]. Changing power dynamics also contribute to family instability in so far as young people often acculturate (develop English language skills, adapt to new culture and so on) at a faster rate than their parents/caregivers and regularly take on the role of language broker [7].

The family can be seen as a major shock absorber of tensions generated by wider social factors. For refugees and asylum seekers these include housing precarity, poverty, trauma, discrimination, social isolation, and visa uncertainty, all of which have compounding effects on health and wellbeing [8-10]. There is a need for research which offers a nuanced perspective on how refugee families absorb these tensions and the associated impacts on health and wellbeing from a multi-generational perspective. To date, there is no research that has focused on multi-generational perspectives from the one family. Although the research team have previously considered research concerning parental perceptions of their child’s wellbeing [3] taking a multi-generational approach will enable an examination of the very differences in viewpoints that can contribute to intergenerational conflict. Asylum seeking families are also largely absent from the literature. Including the voices of this group is significant as they are often underrepresented in research and face additional risks to family functioning and health, particularly in relation to prolonged uncertainty which is a key driver of poorer health outcomes.

The project will explore the impact of resettlement on family relationships for people from asylum seeking and refugee backgrounds, and associated effects on mental health and wellbeing.