Bulletin

Issue: November/December 2007

News

Probing the experiences of Refugee men

The Australian Government needs to take greater responsibility for helping refugees integrate, according to a La Trobe University researcher who has just received a $420,000 grant to investigate the health and resettlement experiences of refugee men.

Dr Ignacio Correa-Velez, Deputy Director of the University’s Refugee Health Research Centre, says the recent debate sparked by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews’ comments that Sudanese refugees are struggling to integrate, has ignored the Australian community’s role in assisting them to fit in and has highlighted the need for more research into the area.

‘Many of the responses to his (Mr Andrews) comments were “show us the evidence of this”. It’s very difficult when you are making assumptions on a few anecdotal cases,’ Dr Correa-Velez says.

‘Every community over the past 50 years that has arrived here has faced challenges as well. There’s no empirical evidence that the African community is facing more challenges than other communities. And, if that is happening, it is a responsibility of the services that are in place to help them to integrate into Australian society and to be more responsive to their needs.’ Dr Correa-Velez, himself a migrant, says he was attracted to Australia because of its tradition of a ‘fair go’, and that it was a just and peaceful country. However, he says attitudes towards refugees over the past few years have hardened, and he feared Australia succumbing to the ‘compassion fatigue’ that was taking hold in Europe.

‘I think over the last few years there has been confusion within the general public. There are different categories of migrants, there are skilled migrants, business migrants, independent migrants – those in the refugee and humanitarian program are migrants not by choice but by need.’

Coming from often horrific backgrounds of war and displacement and having lost years of their lives when living in refugee camps with no access to health services, employment and education means these migrants often have great needs but also greater hopes for making a good life in Australia, he says.

‘They arrive here with issues that we need to respond to and we need to help.’

Dr Correa-Velez says the debate has proved the urgent need for research in the area. He was ‘pleased and relieved’ to get the news that, after three attempts with a variety of funding bodies, his research project Talking the walk: A longitudinal study of refugee men’s health and resettlement, had received a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant.

His research will follow the experiences of 242 recently-arrived refugee men in Queensland over two years, looking at issues including how social and cultural issues impact on their health; barriers to employment; and the key factors that help or hinder them in building social networks within their ethnic community and the wider Australian community. Based on the government’s refugee intake, half of the participants will be Sudanese, with other African nations, the Middle East and Burma also represented.

The focus on men is deliberate, he says, as there is a dearth of research on men internationally because research targeted at women and child refugees is more likely to gain support.

‘There is a lack of research not only on their physical and mental health but also areas of employment, education and family issues. We know, for example, that there are a lot of changes in gender roles and difficulties in getting recognition for their skills.’

Dr Correa-Velez hopes that his research will lead to improved services and support for refugee men and their communities, both in Australia and overseas, and provide a much-needed outlet to express their experiences and perspectives to the wider community to reduce stereotyping, discrimination and racism.

Dr Correa-Velez, who was awarded a four-year NHMRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2006, has extended the La Trobe partnership to Queensland, where he is carrying out his research with the Queensland Program of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma (QPASTT) in Brisbane. His fellow researchers, Professor Sandy Gifford, Dr Adrian Barnett, and Ms Donata Rossi, are based at La Trobe University, the University of Queensland and QPASTT respectively.