Pathways of wellbeing and (un)belonging: Understanding the experience of migrant youth in alternative care and recently out of care in Cape Town
Published by: SIHMA
Previous research identified the need to further understand the lives of migrant youth (including refugees and asylum seekers) who have left or were close to leaving alternative care institutions. Civil society, too, has identified this group as almost invisible in South African Government immigration and child protection policies, making the process of legalising their stay in South Africa very complex. This study set out to understand the experiences of young migrants leaving alternative care as they try to access documentation, how they live and strategise around legal insecurity and what impact this has on their sense of identity and emotional wellbeing.
Two groups of young people each participated in a two-day workshop. One group had left alternative care and were aged from 18-25, the other was about to leave alternative care and were aged from 16-18. The sample was purposive and focused on young people identified by three Child and Youth Care Centres in Cape Town as youth who were struggling to access documentation. Using a participatory art-based approach the research privileged the young people’s own experience, giving them choice to represent their world in the way they chose. Working with an artist and a wealth of art material they made art-books around the theme of ‘My belonging story’. The young people could then choose to share what they had made in a group discussion. This discussion was audio recorded, transcribed and then used as data for analysis. A thematic approach was used to analyse the data.
The themes that emerged allow an understanding of how both past experiences and present experiences impact on young people’s sense of identity and belonging and their emotional wellbeing. The experiences of abandonment and abuse that led to them being placed in alternative care had a huge impact on their sense of themselves and their ability to cope with growing into adulthood. Although they had found ways to cope with this vulnerability through finding good friends, playing sport, spending time with siblings, listening to music, reading and journaling the past had deeply affected their sense of ‘belonging’. Alongside their past experiences they also had to cope with being an outsider at school and in the community. They described how everyone they met asked ‘where are you from?’ confirming that they did not belong in South Africa. They were also frequently bullied at school both verbally and physically. This experience of being labelled an outsider left them “always searching, searching for where I belong”. Once they had been placed in alternative care they acknowledged that though they were safe and supported they, understandably, still wished they were part of a family. In relation to documentation all their narratives included stories of how they had left care at 18 without full legal documentation. For some, the care staff had taken action to access documents, but the process was so complex and so slow that they had turned 18 before any documents giving them legal status had come through. Others described how alternative care staff had neglected to help them access documentation before they turned 18, often only turning to the issue once the young people were due to leave care.
They described the practical impacts of not being documented. Their wishes to get a bursary, a driver’s license, a “good job”, for example, were all denied. The older group who had experience of attempting to overcome these difficulties expressed frustration, anger and even desperation at their inability to live a life like a normal “human being”. This was exacerbated by their experience of constant delay and the overt discrimination they encountered when trying to access documents at the Department of Home Affairs. The emotional impact of nondocumentation emerged as a dominant theme. They felt “invisible”, like a “ghost”, in a “darhole”, like an object – “a book that is just moved around”.
In describing their lived experience the young people who participated in this study provide us with a rich and textured narrative of young migrants leaving care. Alongside their ability to find ways to cope with their difficult reality they help us understand how vulnerable they are both practically and emotionally because they are invisible in law and policy, they have essentially been “lost in care”. Finally, the study highlights how important it is to add our voice to present civil society advocacy to address the legal status of migrant children taken into government care.
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