Projects > Teenage Refuge

Although more than half of all refugees are children, the experiences of teen refugees have not to date been well documented or studied. Teenage refugees are exposed not only to war, genocide and other forms of political violence, but also to many other adversities associated with migration and resettlement. How do the experiences of refugee trauma look from their eyes? For teenage refugees a transition from childhood to adulthood often coincides with a movement from one country and culture to another. This makes their situation highly complex and often difficult to understand. How is it for instance that some teen refugees successfully navigate the transitions, but many others do not? Surely, the conditions under which they experience themselves as refugees as provided by their families, by the host society, the state and its services, will have a significant long-range impact upon their lives. But it is difficult to know what kind of intervention in what context best serves teen refugees and brings about successful transitions.

Many teen refugees experience a social and cultural marginalization that is not being adequately addressed by existing educational, social and mental health services. In the United States, too often, their voices and concerns are neither heard nor acknowledged by the institutions that society has appointed to manage the problems through their practices of "multiculturalism", "bilingual education", "human rights", and "trauma relief". How do these approaches to managing the problems of teenage refuge look through the eyes of teen refugees? How could teens' worlds and voices be better represented, either through means of oral history or visual arts? Can the theoretical critiques of these institutional practices and related neo-liberal policies be integrated into a concrete case study of a specific situation?

To address these concerns, the teenage refuge collaborative brings together multi-disciplinary academics, community arts activists, community based mental health providers, educators and teen refugees and their families. It fosters dialogue, exchange, and is developing major collaborative initiatives,

The co-investigators of the teen refuge project are Stevan Weine, Ralph Cintron, Alma Klebic, and Norma Ware.

Summer 2004 Arts Camp for Teenage Refugees in Chicago:
Houses of Memories and Expectations (HOME)