Navigating Childhood Adversity: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of Strategies, Influences, and Effects among Congolese & Burundian Migrant Youth

Abstract

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) have been reliably linked to a number of deleterious outcomes, with cascading effects through the life course. The children of migrants and refugees are particularly vulnerable to adversity, often living within xenophobic contexts and facing a multitude of economic and language pressures. Additionally, migrations into South Africa have frequently been initiated by traumatic experiences in migrants’ countries of origin. Yet despite multiple adversities, many of these children adapt, persevere, and find success. This interpretivist experiential study explored the influences, strategies, and effects related to childhood adversity among migrant children to South Africa. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis to explore common threads from an experiential critical stance. The constructed themes elucidated the environmental influences along multiple levels of the ecology, strategies that orientated, avoided, and made sense of difficulties, and a complex interplay of later effects. These were considered in light of Resilience and Post-traumatic Growth theories, as well as a decolonial psychological lens. Parallels and differences between xenophobia and racism were found and explored. Underlying discourses and collusions with these were interrogated. The study found resilient strategies were intimately connected to contextual influences, and had differential effects, with avoidant strategies likely impeding growth. Resolve, self-belief, and altruism were found to likely be ‘real’ effects, whereas gratitude was indicated to be a palliative coping strategy. The effects of xenophobia on participants was found to mimic those of systemic racism in multiple ways, though key differences remained. The study extends the existing literature on migrant youth in the South African context, and produces several possibilities for intervention that may foster resilience and growth.