ABSTRACT
Literature on youthful refugees addresses two distinct issues. First, scholars ask whether and how the refugee experience affects young people (sometimes, but not always, in comparison to other age groups). These scholars tend to focus on the trauma of the refugee experience. The work has tremendous potential for innovation because it represents the first foray into a new empirical realm. On the other hand, perhaps for the same reason, the literature in this area also tends to be under-theorized. The second issue concerning youthful refugees is their post-refugee resettlement
experience in a new country. This emphasis is part of the growing attention to youthful migrants and the children of migrants generally. Scholars have come to appreciate that ‘acculturation’ is a multi-generational process, and this makes the study of young people particularly important. Post-refugee resettlement research is better theorized than the effect of the refugee experience because it evolved as a way to test extensions of, and challenges to, older migration theories. In this chapter, after discussing the history of refugees, I will elaborate on the work
being conducted in each of these lines of inquiry, with a particular focus on Somali refugees and occasional references to other groups. The chapter concludes with a discussion of likely future trends in research on refugee youth.
