Agborchi, Annemarie Louise (2024) Navigating Identity, Resistance, and Belonging: Exploring the Voices of South Sudanese Australian Adolescents in Educational Contexts. PhD thesis, Victoria University.

Abstract

Within Australian education contexts, South Sudanese Australian adolescents, who are mostly recently arrived refugees or children of refugee parents, frequently experience discrimination, racism, and ‘Othering’, often fuelled by racial profiling and stereotypical portraits by the media and politicians. This negatively impacts the adolescents’ mental health, future aspirations, feelings of belonging, and school performance and promotes feelings of social exclusion. These issues have persisted since South Sudanese refugees first arrived in Australia in the early 2000s. This uses a new lens - the lived experiences of South Sudanese Australian adolescents – to address these under-researched issues in the context of educational equity and inclusion, despite the growing presence of South Sudanese Australians in multicultural educational settings in Australia. This research explores the lived experiences and Funds of Identity (FoI) of South Sudanese Australian adolescents and their utilisation of their experiences to provide counter-narratives to focus on their assets and improve their educational outcomes. The research participants (youth, community and school representatives) provided recommendations for educational stakeholders and advocated for culturally responsive structures and processes that transform the learning environments and outcomes and improve equity, inclusion and social justice for South Sudanese Australian adolescents. The young participants articulated a strong connection to South Sudan, even though several students had never been there. They revealed the complexities of navigating dual identities — balancing the expectations of South Sudanese cultural norms, particularly regarding gender roles, with their experiences of growing up in Australia. The adolescents expressed pride in their cultural heritage and used counter-narratives to resist deficit perspectives and negative societal stereotyping. Based on the analyses, two new FoI sub-categories were suggested. Firstly, normative and expectational FoI, which is defined as the internalised and externally imposed norms and expectations. These can refer to cultural traditions, gender roles, and social behaviours that are deemed acceptable or desirable within a specific community. Secondly, resistant FoI, which refers to a critical consciousness that challenges and critiques cultural norms, gender roles, stereotypical representations and deficit perspectives. The findings contribute to the paucity of studies that explore the funds of the identity of South Sudanese Australian adolescents and extend the understanding of their identity development by addressing the tensions between cultural preservation and assimilation. Practical recommendations are also provided for educational stakeholders to foster more inclusive practices, such as employing culturally responsive teaching strategies, amplifying student voices, and engaging with counter-narratives that challenge stereotypes and deficit-based assumptions.

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