A test of general strain theory with Somali refugee youth: a consideration of police, teacher, and family strains

This three-paper dissertation tests whether General Strain Theory (GST) can be helpful in explaining the relationship between strains experienced by refugee youth and youth’s anti-social behaviors such as delinquency and radicalization to violence and what factors mediate the relationship between strain and crime. Additionally, it uses mixed methods combining community meaning-making with quantitative research methods to provide multiple lenses to the issue of youth and negative outcomes. The first chapter presents the context in which Somali refugee youth experiences should be examined as well as relevant literature. The second chapter examines if GST can help us understand the experiences of Somali youth and delinquencies. It examines if three strains (procedural injustice, teacher punishment, and family conflict) are significantly related to crimes against people among this population and if this relationship is mediated by mental health symptoms and marginalization. The results show that both procedural justice and teacher punishment were able to predict crimes against people but the relationship between procedural injustice and crimes against people was fully mediated by mental health symptoms and by marginalization while the relationship between teacher mistreatment and crime remained significant even when mental health symptoms and marginalization were added to the equation. Surprisingly, while the family conflict was highly correlated with both marginalization and mental health symptoms, it was not significantly related to crimes against people. The third chapter applies GST to radicalization to violence among Somali youth. It examines whether three strains (procedural injustice, teacher punishment, and family conflict) predict youth radicalization to violence and whether this relationship is mediated by individual-level factors such as mental health, marginalization and gang attitudes. The analysis shows that only procedural injustice is significantly related to radicalization to violence and that both marginalization and gang attitudes fully mediated the relationship while mental health partially mediated it. The final chapter uses Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to examine community meaning making around youth radicalization. Qualitative interview results show that community members were able to identify important structural, cultural and individual level factors that led to youth radicalization and that many of the factors that they identified such as police and teacher mistreatment and gang presence where similar to the findings in the quantitative research

Promoting positive development among refugee adolescents

Of the estimated 35.3 million refugees around the world (UNHCR, Figures at a Glance, 2022), approximately 50% are children under the age of 18. Refugee adolescents represent a unique group as they navigate developmental tasks in an unstable and often threatening environment or in resettlement contexts in which they often face marginalization. In addition to physiological, social, and psychological changes that mark adolescence, refugee youth often face traumatic experiences, acculturative stress, discrimination, and a lack of basic resources. In this consensus statement, we examine research on refugee adolescents' developmental tasks, acculturative tasks, and psychological adjustment using Suárez-Orozco and colleague's integrative risk and resilience model for immigrant-origin children and youth proposed by Suárez-Orozco et al. Finally, we discuss recommendations-moving from proximal to more distal contexts