Educational Resilience among Refugee Children and Youth and their Cultural Preparedness Implications for Career and Livelihood Counsellors

This paper explores the educational resilience of refugee children and youth in one country, Greece, and its implications for career and livelihood planning. First, we attempt to understand their educational resilience by examining responses to a child and youth resilience measure. Twenty-five participants provided the data, among whom fifteen were unaccompanied and separated children and ten accompanied children. Two tests of correlation – Welch’s two-sample t-test and Fisher’s exact test – were used to compare differences in the response data between the two groups. Next, we applied the construct of cultural preparedness to more closely examine the reported experiences of the unaccompanied and separated group to better understand their orientations to career and livelihood planning. We propose that there are potential linkages between the educational resilience of refugee children and youth and their cultural preparedness for career and livelihood planning, and suggest that these links have implications for guidance and counselling. Specifically, our analyses suggest the need for sensitivity training for service providers in destination countries to address implicit discrimination and cultural bias, and steps that could create supportive learning environments for not only better educational outcomes for refugee children and youth, but also their future career development.