The Game of Migration: Educating Professionals About the Migration Experiences of Refugee Youth Through an Experiential Activity

• Published in: Alberta Counsellor 2013-01, Vol.32 (2), p.13
• Main Authors: Brar, Novjyot, Lauridsen, Erica, Yohani, Sophie C
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Access to Health Care; Adolescents; Association (Psychology); Children & youth; Counseling; Counselor education; Cultural Pluralism; Depression (Psychology); Educational Experience; Educational Opportunities; Emotional Adjustment; Ethnicity; Games; Land Settlement; Literature Reviews; Mental Health; Migration; Modeling (Psychology); Peer Relationship; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; Psychotherapy; Racial Identification; Refugees; Resilience (Psychology); Resistance (Psychology); Self Actualization; Social Integration; Trauma
• ISSN: 0382-5167

In this article, we describe an interactive, experiential activity called The Game of Migration, which originated as an assignment in a graduate-level cross-cultural counselling course taught by Farah Merali at the U of A in the winter term of 2009. We (Novjyot and Erica) designed the game to highlight the migration journey and the mental health concerns of refugee youth. We selected this population because the literature on intervention strategies used with refugee youth is limited (Lustig et al 2004), and because the number of professionals working with this population in the fields of mental health, health care and education is growing rapidly in Alberta. Moreover, current assessment practices and intervention strategies often do not take into consideration the cultural backgrounds of these youth or the traumatic experiences they faced before and after their arrival in Canada. Thus, the game serves as a means of educating professionals about the experiences of refugee youth while increasing their cultural competence, allowing them to more effectively and appropriately serve the needs of this population. Collectively, this trauma has an enormous impact on children and youth. For example, Allwood, Bell-Dolan and Husain (2002) found that direct exposure to both violent trauma and nonviolent trauma (such as hunger) affected children's emotional and cognitive adjustment. In particular, war-related trauma increases the risk of children and youth developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Allwood, Bell-Dolan and Husain 2002; Attanayake et al 2009). Other psychological difficulties found at this stage include "somatic complaints, sleep problems, conduct disorder, social withdrawal, attention problems, generalized fear, overdependency, restlessness and irritability, as well as difficulties in peer relationships" ([Ehntholt, KA] and Yule 2006, 1199). Beyond this, refugee youth also struggle with social integration at school. Discrimination is a recurring theme. In several studies, refugee youth have reported discrimination from their teachers (Baffoe 2006; Ellis et al 2008; Hek 2005; Khanlou, Koh and Mill 2008). Research suggests that perceived discrimination and the resulting stress have a particular impact on identity formation. For example, Khanlou, Koh and Mill found that refugee youth will conceal their ethnic identity to avoid discrimination. Moreover, when these students are discriminated against based on their ethnicity, they may experience a traum