How do life stories of young people exposed to adversity (e.g., young refugees) differ from those of others? To understand the effects of adversity on specific features of young refugee’s narratives, we need to disentangle the effects of cultural uprooting and refugee experience from normative developmental effects. We will, therefore, (1) examine if young refugees show different features in the way they tell their stories in comparison to third-culture-kids, and a community sample; (2) test narrative features as drivers of well-being; and (3) identify differential effects of the writing exercises for young individuals from refugee, third-culture, and community backgrounds.

• prof. dr. Jaap Denissen
• prof. dr. Sander Thomaes
• dr. Liselotte den Boer
• Sasha Gukovskaia

Establishing a strong identity is a key task during adolescence. We know little about the development of identity in adolescent refugees. Three identity-relevant experiences may impact identity development of adolescent refugees; (1) possible exposure to (war-related) traumatic experiences, (2) a dissonance between value systems they are exposed to at home versus at school and with peers, and (3) (daily) stress and hardship that families from a refugee background experience, which can impact parenting behaviors. The current project combines a multi-method (quantitative and qualitative) longitudinal approach to examine what factors may shape adolescent adaptive and maladaptive identity development. 

• Saira Wahid MSc
• prof. dr. Sander Thomaes
• prof. dr. Susan Branje
• dr. Andrik Becht