Former Unaccompanied Refugee Minors: Stories of Life in Resettlement.

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the lives of former unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) through an inductive exploration of their individual life stories, utilizing principles of grounded theory and case study methods to identify and examine their experiences and outcomes in resettlement, as well as emergent theoretical principles and practice implications regarding this population. Individual interviews of approximately 2 hours were conducted with 20 young adult refugees who had emancipated from an Unaccompanied Refugee Minor foster care program within the last six years. Interviews were largely unstructured, allowing former URMs to explore, from their own perspectives, the most salient experiences and influences in their lives since the time of their arrival in the U.S. Participants were 18 males and 2 females from five countries of origin, ranging in age from 20 to 27. The major findings of the study include the identification and description of common experiences among former URMs from the time of their resettlement through early adulthood, as well as the factors they deem most influential in shaping their lives. The study also investigated key aspects of former URMs’ experiences and outcomes that distinguish them as a unique group with challenges, strengths, and goals unlike other refugee or foster care populations. In addition, the study identified specific factors in the lives of subgroups of former URMs which may further differentiate their resettlement experiences. A conceptual model is proposed which includes risk and protective factors in the pre-flight, displacement, and resettlement phases of URMs’ lives and their influence on URMs’ current functioning in multiple life domains. Results of the study are analyzed in light of prior literature with refugee and foster care populations, and implications for refugee service providers, including URM programs, are presented.