Chapter 6 A New School and New Life Understanding the Experiences of Yazidi Families with Children

Trauma and Resettlement: What Is the Relationship?

Much is known about how trauma affects refugees in the short term. Robertson and her colleagues (2006) report that women who have larger families and who do not understand English or French upon arrival are among the group that takes the longest to integrate into their new societies. Bjørneseth and her colleagues (2019) find that newly arrived refugee women exhibit more significant and plentiful signs of trauma than their male counterparts immediately after their arrival in Greece. Women who head families with children experience the most trauma. The trauma experienced by refugee parents can also affect their relationship with their children. Sangalang, Jager, and Harachi (2017) conducted a longitudinal study on the effects of maternal traumatic distress on family functioning and child mental health outcomes among Southeast Asian refugee women and their adolescent children in the United States. Their findings suggest that refugee parents’ trauma can adversely affect the mental health of children even if they were not direct subjects of traumatic events. Parents’ mental disorders can affect their communication with their children during resettlement. Research by Wood and her colleagues (2020) finds that families experiencing traumatic events are significantly more likely to experience intimate partner violence later during their resettlement in Canada.

Migrating into a new environment can also cause trauma, especially when the new environment has a very different culture. Because they are at different life stages, refugee parents and their children adapt to the new culture differently (Westermeyer 1991). Children can learn faster than their parents, and this makes the “speed” at which integration occurs very different between them. The accelerated pace of the integration of children and teens can bring tension between refugee parents and children, as parents feel they are losing their parental authority and control, especially when they must depend on their children for interactions or interpretations with settlement agencies (Ahearn and Athey 1991). This can lead to parents using violent actions to reinstate authority over their children. Wood and her colleagues (2020) find that about 45 percent of Cambodian refugees in psychiatric clinics reported becoming angry with their children, mostly because of language barriers, which also sometimes hinder the resolution of any conflict. Another study conducted on thirty-six Arabic-speaking refugee families from Iraq finds that the children of traumatized refugee parents are less psychologically well-adjusted than their Danish peers, which may show a general impact of parental trauma on non-trauma-exposed children’s psychosocial adjustment (Dalgaard et al. 2016).

Previous research in Canada on other groups of refugees who have experienced war, trauma, rape, and loss shows that these events have a lasting impact on the ability of many people to learn the language, mainly because these traumatic experiences affect their memories (Beiser and Hou 2000). Low levels of education before their arrival also make it more challenging to learn a new language. Watt and Lake (2004) find that adult learners with no formal schooling have the most difficulty gaining a second language. PTSD, C-PTSD, anxiety, and depression interfere with language learning and cause memory loss, which increases with age, making language learning more difficult. For instance, Emdad, Söndergaard, and Theorell (2005) find that those with PTSD scored significantly lower on memory tests than those without PTSD. Evidence from several countries, including Canada, shows that those who experience depression and PTSD and who are functionally illiterate at arrival have lower language-learning outcomes and take long periods of time to gain a new language proficiency compared to someone who has a few years of prior education (Wilkinson et al. 2019).

Among the Yazidi women in northeastern Iraq, murder, torture, and sexual slavery are common occurrences (Porter 2018; Vijanann 2017). As a result, refugee women and girls who survive enslavement and genocide arrive in Canada with significant mental illnesses. Over 80 percent of them are diagnosed with poor mental health upon their initial arrival, and 65 percent of the Yazidi children and adolescents suffer from various psychological problems (Ibrahim et al. 2018; Yüksel et al. 2018; Hosseini and Seidi 2018; Abbott 2016). Early reports from settlement agencies in Canada reveal that the high rates of trauma the Yazidi have experienced make their resettlement and integration very difficult (Wilkinson et al. 2019).

Psychologists and other specialists who work with traumatized refugee populations have all observed that the level of trauma experienced by recently arrived refugees in Canada is significantly higher and more prominent than what they have seen among previously resettled refugee populations (Hoffman et al. 2018; Hodes 2019). Its effects are lifelong and damaging, and if left untreated, they might be passed along to the next generation (Bourque, van der Ven, and Malla 2011). It is not surprising, then, that the effect of refugee children’s and youths’ exposure to war and conflict on their psychological well-being is also common among the Yazidi. For instance, trauma and perceived social rejection are common among Yazidi women and girls who survived enslavement and genocide. It becomes difficult for such a group to integrate well in any host country because of the state of their mental health.

A study in 2017 on refugees arriving in Canada reflects some of the mental health conditions of parents with young children (Wilkinson and Ponka 2017). It notes how during resettlement, the burden of caring for traumatized family members and their children falls on those who have fewer mental health problems. Similarly, another study shows that taking sole responsibility for traumatized family members creates depression and delays the overall integration process among other members of the family (Bjørneseth, Smidt, and Stachowski 2019). Although it is a common belief that refugees have more physical and mental health issues given the precarious situations they face before entering the host societies, the “majority of mental health problems among the newcomer population occur after their arrival and because of the uncertainties in the settlement process” (Wilkinson and Ponka 2017, 90).

Methodology

The research for the present study was conducted among the recently resettled Yazidi refugee populations living in Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and London, the four cities where the largest populations of Yazidi resettled in Canada. A more detailed description of the methodology can be found in Wilkinson et al. (2019).

The Yazidi have been largely excluded from formal education in the countries in which they live. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2019), only 65 percent of Yazidi refugees are currently attending school. A majority of the Yazidi have not had the opportunity to attend or complete school in Iraq (IRCC 2017; Oliphant 2018). Given that school in Iraq is conducted in Arabic, a language most Yazidi do not commonly speak, it is not surprising that language and education levels are low among this population (Wilkinson et al. 2019). It is for these reasons that the researchers, in consultation with an advisory team of experts, decided against a survey and in favour of a more in-depth semi-structured interview.

The research team devised a draft interview guide that included the following themes: employment, childcare, wayfinding, housing, language, and the use of settlement services. Overlapping all these themes are the overarching issues of mental health and trauma. No aspect of the resettlement journey can be understood unless viewed through a trauma lens. Trauma is interwoven into all aspects of the integration process, so our discussion of challenges in finding a job, caring for children, wayfinding, and language/interpretation must be understood with this central concept in mind.

The advisory committee contributed to the development of the list of themes, the interview guide, and the analysis. The study was financially sponsored by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada–Prairie and Northern Territories Region (IRCC-PNT). IRCC-PNT was represented on the advisory committee and was joined by settlement organizations from across Canada and by members of the Yazidi community already living in Canada.1

Although we used an interview guide, the last part of the interviews consisted of discussion and topics as suggested by the participants. A question at the end allowed the Yazidi to add more information if they liked. We expected that some of the Yazidi might have wanted to share their experiences at this time. We were surprised when all the participants shared their stories of pre-arrival trauma unprompted. This gave the research team valuable information about how trauma affected their integration experiences and how this affected their families. The resulting final report (Wilkinson et al. 2019) has been used by the government and settlement organizations to reorganize existing practices and introduce new ones.

The information we collected was from parents or guardians. The Psychology/Sociology Research Ethics Board at the University of Manitoba reviewed the study recruitment and methodological protocols and granted permission for the team to conduct the study. All identified data was kept separate from the interview materials and kept on a password-protected, encrypted computer. We endeavoured to keep the identities of the Yazidi participants confidential, so there were places where we purposely did not provide certain demographic or geographic characteristics. We gave each participant a Yazidi name as a pseudonym.

All interviews were conducted in Kurmanji, the primary language spoken by the Yazidi. Given that most of the people we interviewed had been in Canada for six months or less and none knew English or French, our selection of Kurmanji as the language for the interviews was our only option. We were aware of the cultural and political sensitivities of the Yazidi community, so we were careful to hire an interpreter who was not involved with political organizations or did not have leadership aspirations in any of the four study centers. The research team was very fortunate to identify a settlement service worker who was Yazidi herself, was fluent in Kurmanji, and did not live in one of the four selected cities. This proved to be a wise decision, as our participants commented to us that they felt at ease speaking to her and would often refer to her as “teacher,” a term of respect.

In March 2018, our Kurmanji-speaking interpreter visited all four cities and conducted thirty-six interviews, representing thirty-six distinct family units. The families and participants were identified by the Refugee Assistance Program funded by settlement service providers in each city. We ensured that a settlement service organization worker was on site to provide additional assistance should the participant experience trauma. We are pleased to report that no participant had to end the interview, but we did offer additional settlement assistance, as most of the participants had questions about the settlement process.

The process of translating the interview questions was conducted by a different Kurmanji speaker than the interviewer. The first version of the interview guide was then back translated by a third Kurmanji-speaking individual not connected with the project. This allowed us to check the consistency of the first translation. The transcripts were created first in Kurmanji, then translated to English. We took a sample of recorded interviews and had a second Kurmanji speaker listen to them and conduct a back translation—to ensure that the transcriptions were correct. We were extremely lucky to locate three Kurmanji-speaking individuals who were able to do this valuable translating work. Given the small population of more established Kurmanji speakers and the very high need for their services in the settlement organizations at that time, it was difficult for us to locate good translators.

Before detailing the findings, it is important to note the marital status of some of our participants. When we asked the women if they were married, all indicated that they were. However, it was clear throughout the interviews that most of their partners were not in Canada. When we asked about this, most of the women who indicated they were “married” actually did not know the whereabouts of their partners. We did not want to “pry,” but it became clear through the information they graciously shared with the team that their partners had “disappeared,” having been presumably kidnapped by Daesh. Since the women had heard nothing about the health and well-being of their partners and could not presume that they were dead, they described themselves as “married,” a condition that the research team could not question. As a result, most of the women indicating they were married were actually in Canada alone and were hoping they would hear positive news about their partners someday.

Findings

The consequence of refugee trauma on children after they have been resettled is a varied and intricate matter that involves several aspects of their lives. Refugee children can experience substantial psychological, emotional, and social impacts as a result of forced migration, exposure to violence, displacement from their homes, and the difficulties of adjusting to a new environment. The following section discusses some of the major findings from our study reflecting how trauma among refugee parents impacts the overall integration of their children within Canadian society. The integration process of Yazidi women was particularly challenging compared to other refugee groups as a result of a mix of factors, including inadequate education or lack thereof in Iraq, the severe trauma inflicted upon them by Daesh, and the uncertainty surrounding their partners and children left behind in Iraq.

Discussion

In this study, all refugee adults, children, and youth have experienced prolonged and continuous separation from their immediate families. They have experienced and witnessed torture and other forms of violence, including murder, malnutrition, physical assault, and rape prior to their arrival in Canada. These events make it more challenging for young refugees and their families to successfully integrate into their host countries. Our findings support research studies by Kaplan and colleagues (2016) and Akthar (2017) indicating that pre-flight conflict and war have a significant influence on the traumatic experiences of refugee children and youth. According to Akthar (2017), the effect of trauma can undermine an individual’s belief of how life unfolds, especially for children, as they are in the early stages of life.

According to our findings, trauma deeply affected the individuals’ ability to learn a new language and integrate into their new societies, as was mentioned by many mothers in our study. Learning a new language is difficult for those who have no or little formal schooling in their mother tongue (Cummins 2001; Merisuo-Storm 2007). Some of the Yazidi we interviewed had never attended school, while most others had education that ended prior to high school (IRCC 2017), which is typical of some refugees (Provencher et al. 2017). Learning a new language, especially when it involves an entirely new alphabet and language structure, can pose challenges, as languages can differ in components such as the sounds of letters and rules by which sentences are constructed (Farran, Bingham, and Matthews 2012). This was also evident from our study. We characterized the participants in our study as functionally illiterate. According to UNESCO (1978, 183), “A person is functionally illiterate who cannot engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective functioning of his group and community and also for enabling him to continue to use reading, writing, and calculation for his own and the community’s development.” Because the Iraqi government, followed by Daesh, made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the Yazidi to attend school, their education as a community greatly suffered before they came to Canada. The fact that they were denied an education has made learning a new language even more difficult.

The fact that mothers, but occasionally other adults and young people, were often ill upon and after their arrival also makes it difficult for families to recover and integrate into their new societies. Often, the caregiver must put aside their own health issues, language learning, and job training to prioritize the health of children and teens. Yet by putting aside their own health and language training, the suffering of the entire family is prolonged. Without English-language skills, the family may find it difficult to navigate the public transportation system, meaning missed appointments with medical professionals. It also means increased dependency upon the few fully trained Kurmanji/English translators who work for settlement service providers or who volunteer with the community. Some of these volunteers are overwhelmed by requests for help, and their own health suffers as well.

It is not easy to adjust to a new life post-resettlement (Kirova 2019). As with the participants in this study, for refugee families with children of school age, the difficulties of resettlement might be magnified, since many of them have suffered trauma prior to migrating, such as “mass violence, living in extreme poverty, spending extended periods of time in refugee camps, etc.” (1). No matter what direction a family chooses to take in their resettlement, the educational and psychological results of the children are profoundly affected by the parents’ and caregivers’ own pre-migration experiences (Kirova 2019; Chettleburgh 2008; Loewen 2003) and post-migration conditions. In addition to the effects of parental trauma on the children, the cognitive effects of complex trauma experienced by the refugee children themselves may have a significant impact on their academic performance (Tweedie et al. 2017). Adolescents who have spent their whole lives in continual danger and had their attention, energy, and resources focused only on survival may have trouble focusing their thoughts. Adolescents who have complex trauma may be hypersensitive to noises, touch, and light as a consequence of their over-responses to sensory stimuli as they developed when they were young. Children who have fled persecution may show the physiological consequences of tremendous stress when confronted with what is considered normal stress in a Canadian school, even sometimes “shutting down” completely (Tweedie et al. 2017; Downey 2008). In some Canadian classrooms, there are teachers who recognize their lack of trauma-informed teaching practices and refuse to accept a “deficit” perspective, either of refugee children as students or of themselves as educators. Unfortunately, trauma-informed educational practices are difficult to access, as they are not normally part of many educators’ training (Stewart et al. 2019). Compulsory trauma-informed training should be part of pre-service teacher education programs.

Robertson and her colleagues (2006) find that families with more children take longer to fully integrate into Canadian society. Our study cannot confirm or deny this. Intuitively, however, it is easier to manage the integration, schooling, and language learning of a smaller rather than a larger number of family members. Extreme trauma experiences and the absence of missing family members further exacerbate the integration conditions of children and youth. While our research was not able to quantify the effects of trauma on any aspect of integration, we observed, based on our years of experience working with other refugee groups, that the extreme conditions experienced by Yazidi refugees appear to make it more difficult for them to integrate in a healthy, timely fashion. The fact that extreme trauma is experienced by mothers supports the findings of Bjørneseth and her colleagues (2019), who show that the burden of caring in the aftermath generally falls upon mothers. In the case of Yazidi refugees in Canada, however, not all these caregivers are female, so we would temper this observation with one that indicates that the burden of care tends to fall upon the caregiver who is most resilient to previous trauma. But the burden of care often means that the caregiver is the last person in the family to receive valuable integration and language training. In short, efforts to help newly arrived refugee families integrate should pay some attention to providing support to caregivers.

Often, the translation needs of trauma survivors are immediate, as in the incident where the mother was wrongly informed about the cancer diagnosis of her child. When they have to rely on other Yazidi members of the community for translation assistance, who themselves may have poor English-language skills, the results of inaccurate translations can be disastrous and induce additional stress. In addition to the availability of the interpreter, the person doing the translation must have the appropriate credentials for the job. This means having more than just a background in translation. Experience working in the refugee resettlement sector is key to understanding the context in which the families live and how they ask for assistance. In the case of the family with a child with Down’s syndrome, having a settlement worker who understood that this family needed additional health and homecare support as well as additional financial considerations was important. Involving a team of educators, psychologists, and physicians in developing an individual learning plan for a child with special needs is key to that child’s success in school. Trauma-informed practices require an understanding of how previous trauma can affect this family’s integration experience. In summary, translation and interpretation must be paired with a specialized knowledge of human development as well as the role of resettlement services; otherwise, misunderstandings are more likely to occur.

Interpreters were needed in various environments but were not the only support necessary. Some caregivers could not attend school meetings because they were ill, they could not speak English or find a translator, or their family required additional social support. In short, the availability of interpreters was not the only problem. There needed to be a whole family support system available that could assist these families in multiple ways. Schools and other educational institutions must play a role in supporting refugee families so that the children in severely traumatized refugee families can thrive in various school contexts.

Conclusion

The Yazidi arriving in Canada represent a new type of refugee: sadly, one that will become more common as world conflicts arise more abruptly and war tactics become more brutalizing. They were resettled in Canada very quickly—some in a matter of weeks after their release from Daesh captivity. The “speed” at which they were brought to Canada and the brutal kidnapping and torture they faced have meant that mental health professionals, settlement service providers, and others who care for this population have witnessed acute trauma in ways that have not been experienced by many previously arriving refugees. Given the tactics of war and terrorism predominant in the twenty-first century, we are likely to witness more and more extremely traumatized refugee families.

So how can service providers such as settlement workers, school personnel, refugee support groups, and Canadian society at large better prepare for future emergency arrivals? In addition to providing more support to the families’ primary caregivers, we can provide more one-on-one assistance in order to meet their settlement needs, including the educational needs of highly traumatized refugees and of children among refugee families, hence the need for education cultural brokers available in schools where there are traumatized refugees. This means substantial planning and investment prior to their arrival. Right now, there is a shortage of settlement service workers and qualified translators and interpreters. One of the reasons is that they are underpaid and work for community organizations that must rely on year-to-year funding, so there is little job security. While IRCC has increased its funding of agencies from three to five years, settlement organizations remain financially precarious and unstable. These are unattractive features for those future workers with the skills needed to become successful settlement workers and education brokers, especially introducing the latter in areas that do not have this type of assistance for children and youth. Counselling and support services, including guidance counsellors, should be culturally sensitive and knowledgeable about the experiences of refugee children, adolescents, and their families to better provide individualized support. The Settlement Worker in Schools (SWIS) program offers assistance to refugee and immigrant newcomer kids, as well as their parents and families, with the purpose of facilitating their integration into society, but not all schools have SWIS, hence the need to fund more such support services in schools. The current availability of professional training, which has recently emerged, should be supported by increased and continuous funding in this crucial area.

Obviously, there are gaps in addressing mental health issues within the larger Canadian health care system. These gaps are primarily discussed regarding mental health and all Canadians, but the problems with servicing refugees, particularly young refugees, are more difficult to address. Certainly, there is a need for mental health practitioners to speak the language of refugees or train interpreters from a cultural perspective to assist practitioners in working with refugees. Having training on refugee trauma may also assist some of the mental health workers in the work they do. Like settlement service providers, there are not enough experts for assistance, so refugee families wait a long time after their arrival before they become eligible to receive services. In addition, there is also a need for staff in schools trained on the best trauma-informed practices and how to handle issues relating to traumatized refugee children in schools.

The time between becoming eligible for services and actually receiving services is also a problem. It is often an “expectation” that the refugee families immediately enroll in a language class or meet with a teacher upon their arrival in Canada. For many traumatized families, that is not possible. Yet there is a clock ticking: refugees are only eligible for most services for three years after arrival. For many Yazidi, three years is not long enough considering that they must deal with their health problems before they can embark on language learning or finding a job. For extremely traumatized refugees, it may take many months before they are healthy enough to learn a new language.

The number of refugees worldwide is growing. In 2015, 19.5 million refugees were looking for a safe place to live. By 2020, that number was 26.4 million (UNHCR 2019). The refugee population is also young; 60 percent of refugees arrive in their new host countries on or before their twenty-ninth birthdays. This means that educational institutions will become a major site for the integration and resettlement of a large number of newcomer families. Given the extreme tactics used by militias and terrorists, we can only expect that the levels of trauma experienced by young refugees and their families arriving in the future will be severe and widespread. This means that the Yazidi are the first of many who will be arriving in Canada under more challenging circumstances, and these investments are worthwhile from a future planning and human rights perspective. In mid-2021, the Liberal government announced that it would be accepting the resettlement of at least twenty thousand Afghan nationals to Canada as part of their emergency evacuation after the Taliban takeover of the country (IRCC 2021). Like the Yazidi, they too will have very little time between their initial displacement and their resettlement in Canada. There is reason to expect that these emergency-type evacuations will continue into the twenty-first century, which means that large numbers of future refugees to Canada will be arriving with acute trauma needs that the settlement community and Canadian society must acknowledge and treat.

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