43.3 Million Stories: Unheard Voices of Child Refugees

Deep Dive with Alice 🎙️💬

In this episode Alice discusses the issues of memories of children refugees. She is a student journalist with us on a placement organised by the Oxford University Career Services. This article was edited using the Hemingway Editor.

🎧 listen to Alice's backstory here - she discusses her motivation & research as well.

UNICEF estimates that there are currently 43.3 million child refugees. That’s 43.3 million different experiences, feelings, and memories. 

In a media saturated society that reports on world crises. The human experiences of these refugees can get lost in political events and statistics. The media risks generalising refugees’ experiences. The Western world often has a preconceived idea of how a refugees experience looks like. An image that often enshrined in Western culture memory. Often, readers assume a linear narrative of refugee experiences. One defined by conflict, violence, and destruction. Whilst this is often the case. We are reminded that the ‘refugee voice’ is as plural (Sigona 2014: 369) and many. It is attached to images, objects, senses. 

Furthermore, in children’s experiences there is a risk of "adultism". (Sociologist Perry-Hazan 2016). Which is the assumption that adults have power over children. That children and adult are affected the same by conflict, with children often inheriting the memories of their family. We need to move away from this “adultism” found in refugee children’s narratives. Where we are, assuming to know their needs without listening to the individuality and plurality of their experiences. Especially for children, their memories of conflict are unique to their experience of adolescence. Children and adolescents are by nature liminal. Living between life stages, as well as living in between conflict, in-transit and in their places of safety. How do their memories express this in-between feeling? And how do you manage to navigate constructing an identity for yourself between conflict and adolescence? 

In Kenneth Acha’s ‘7 Fundamental Human Needs’, understanding and identity are noted as essential to human need. In the context of these children’s post-conflict lives. Memory is key human need that often gets overlooked, as it encapsulates these two needs. Memory, processing and communicating those memories, can allow refugees to feel understood. Helping refugees to assert their identities in environments of post-conflict uncertainty.  Some people chose to forget.. But in some cases, people navigate their future lives through their memories. Specifically, children are more likely to hold onto memories as they are pivotal to the construction of their identity. 

There is an urgent impetus to further understand children’s experiences. Recent studies into the mental health of child refugees have shown that refugee children suffer from a variety of issues. Such as PTSD, insomnia and eating disorders. In response, a greater understanding is needed to move forward. Whilst humanitarian work towards children is targeted to health and education. Their mental health needs to also be prioritised. To understand these needs, we need to go back to experience and memories. 

Afghanistan 

Since 2008, Afghans have been the largest group of unaccompanied minors arriving in Europe (Eurostat 2021.. Arriving in countries such as Norway, Greece, Italy, and Turkey. Youths in Afghanistan have a complex relationship with their experiences as post-conflict refugees. They have grown up as refugees, with less experience of the actual conflict, which started in the 80s. As a result, their memories of conflict are more constructed by the experience of journeying. Being perceived as ‘a generation conceived and defined by mobility' (Abbasi 2019: 2). So, their experiences differ from the reports of war. But reveals a spectrum of emotions. For example, an account from an Afghan teenager Ghazwan who had settled in Norway. Stating that “it was not all bad. Sometimes it was good as well. Some days were very nice. You sit and talk, and people help you. But sometimes it was very difficult, and no one can do anything to help you. So, you just sit and cry or think.”. This account shows the contradictory nature of the experiences of child refugees. The mixture between happiness and sadness, ultimately ending in tones of despair. 

Similarly, Zaki talks about his experiences waiting for asylum. “While I was waiting for the [asylum] decision I became depressed. I felt like all the thoughts I carried with me on the journey came, from the whole way. When you are on the move, you don’t think about anything. You don’t think about how difficult it is, how scary it is. You just think. . .to arrive as fast as possible. But when you arrive, all those thoughts come. When you’ve nothing to do, you’re just sitting and waiting. I became very depressed, and I also developed difficulties sleeping. When you are in one place, you become scared right away.”. From this account, we see problems of insomnia and a self-diagnosis of depression. Often, these accounts show us how child refugees are concerned with their bodily experience. The experience of being hungry. Waiting for transport and food, sleeping difficulties and PTSD. 

Syria

Researchers have been looking into the memory of youth safety by conducting research. Asking children about their experiences. This can be seen in the study by Mehrunnisa Ahmad Ali and Gina Gibran. Whereby they documented children’s memories. Asking children to make autobiographies, describing the story of their life. The researchers emphasised that they could draw whatever they liked. The findings show that the children’s memories are scattered. With no narrative focus, put focused on key places and images. 

This shows the importance of objects and places in a refugee child’s memory. Children are more likely to attach meaning to tangible objects. Ahmed, 12, recalls where his key ring came from. “This key ring belonged to my Dad; I inherited it from him a long time ago”. His dad died of a heart attack at the beginning of the war in Syria. “I barely have any memories of my Dad but…my favourite memory is the time he brought us to the river for a picnic. If I want to remember him, I take out his key ring and look at it.”. Here we see, in the absence of memory, materials can serve to carry memory for children. Often people will also talk about the belongings that they have lost along the way. Robbed, or displaced. The memory of these objects still haunting them as a memory of the life that has been taken from them. Specifically, it provides an insight into how children use items to cope with grief. 

Using these memories to understand children’s needs 

By individualising these accounts by memory. Humanitarian provisions for refugee children can be more specified to their needs. For example, children’s memories often mention bodily experience, such as hunger. Greater attention needs to be given to these accounts. They can help in research about eating disorders in youths. To tackle these issues, it is important to identify and understand where they came from. 

Research has shown that eating disorders are prevalent in many refugees, especially children. Who have grown up with food insecurity. Many have developed body dysmorphia as a result. This disrupts the image of eating disorders as a female issue. Whilst the media is often saturated with images of starving children. Less attention is given to post-conflict traumas. These basic experiences of hunger and fatigue are often dominant emotions in these accounts. Further echoed in the account of Afghan refugee Abbas who says that ‘Often, I was very hungry and very tired. I will never forget that’. Specialists advocate for the integration of understanding of experience in understanding these medical issues. With Mitchell stating “Relational approaches to understanding and treating EDs/DE. In refugee and immigrant populations would be beneficial as they highlight individual experiences. Helps to contextualize them. And, promote treatment within an attuned and mutually created therapeutic relationship.” 

Also, in terms of medical diagnosis later in these children’s lives. Greater understanding of their experiences can lead to more accurately given diagnosis. For example, criticising the labelling PTSD of refugees as mentally illness (Sharpe, 1998). Arguing that trauma ‘should is as a normal reaction to catastrophic situations’. (Pacione et al., 2013: 341). Not to suggest trauma should be normalised nor diagnosed. But it should at least be contextualised, to see what it is symptomatic of. Medical aid is based on an assumption of need, and need should come from the individual. To meet these human needs, we need to try and gain a full understanding of experience. Memories are a way in which experience and need can be determined. 

The ethics of remembering 

‘Can there be such a thing as too much memory’? asks Miller (2006: 320). Refugee children face many vulnerabilities. Due to their age and their experiences. Talking about their experiences can sometimes be more harmful than good. Triggering mental health issues. After war, when memory is both a wound and an evocation. Forgetting can be an analgesic, anaesthetic, or an act of suppression. A balance needs to be struck, between three aspects of memory. Remembering, remembering to forget, and forgetting to remember. This creates both practical and ethical issues for journalists and researchers. As people may simply not want to talk as forgetting is preferable for them. In some of these children’s cases, they simply cannot remember. 

Also, whilst all the studies I have referenced here have been ethically approved. There is a risk that the memories of refugees are used as capital in journalistic pursuits. Yet, I would suggest that if refugees are willing to talk their memories can be invaluable. Helping to inform the humanitarian responses required to meet their needs. 

The benefits to remembering 

Memory can be a positive thing for a child refugee, as a way in which they understand the world around them. For example, in camps in Northern Greece, children’s memories are being commemorated using Yazidi music. These children used the music to connect with their now displaced community. When asked about the meaning of the song he was playing, one boy said it was about friends. It is like, there are five friends and two died’. About the other three, he said, ‘I don’t know what happens to them but they die, everyone goes, one to Germany, one to America’. The question about why people sing these songs was answered by another young man who said, ‘Like of the war? Because they don’t have happy times in their lives, just sad’. Here we see how memories are being processed by these children, using community and music. It reveals the human need to belong and to grieve.

Conclusion 

Memory is key to human experience; it reminds us that refugees have a past, present and future, like us all. In a post-conflict context, it has a dual purpose. Helping journalists uncovering and voicing unique experience. But it can also help refugees in moving forward in their lives, and inform the medical help they receive. Particularly, in children, memories are key to their construction of their identity. These children’s memories cannot be erased, as they risk becoming a lost generation. Their memories reveal that they have dreams. Aspirations beyond those that we may assume. As shown in the examples of interviews of children who have fled conflicts. Practically, these memories not only paint a fuller picture of refugee experience. But they can help humanitarian responses to post-conflict communities.  

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