Salvation from the Past

Friday, October 19, 2012 - 2:00pm

John’s first few days on the North American continent were spent getting to know his father once again. Megan was most surprised by the amount of traffic lights, while Sam was occupied with finding a job.

For these three refugees—and a handful of others fortunate enough to escape their war-torn homelands—a child.hood of trauma and oppression is a tie that will forever bind them together.
Their former lives, and their ability to adjust to a new society, are of great interest to counseling psychology doctoral student Arlette Joëlle Ngoubene-Atioky.

“A paucity of research on refugees exists on this subject,” says Ngoubene-Atioky, who hopes to develop a series of research-based measures that effectively evaluate how well refugees adapt to their new environments.  

To date, Ngoubene-Atioky has investigated the offerings and operations of 124 refugee agencies in both the northeast United States and the Vancouver, Canada, metropolitan area. She’s also interviewed a range of war refugees from places such as Sierra Leone, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo, seeking to learn more about their life experiences in their native lands and new homes.

“Refugees who experienced a higher-level nature of exposure to war reported more war-related experiences than other participating refugees,” Ngoubene-Atioky says. “High-level war-exposure refugees also shared their perspectives on their school performance and noted few friendships with their host country’s native residents.” 

Her early findings reveal that most refugee agencies offer an average of five types of resources to refugees: educational services, case management, basic needs assistance, employment assistance and social activities and outreach services. The rate at which they are accepted is a different matter and depends upon a refugee’s past.

“The need and expectation for academic excellence and professional success are indeed more discernible in high-level, war-exposed adolescent refugees than in lower-level adolescent war refugees. High-level war-exposure refugees may view such success as a form of salvation from their past experiences.”