(Re)countering multilingualism and refugee-background students in Australian compulsory education

Abstract

Compared with nations around the world, Australia has one of the highest rates of refugee resettlement per capita. Approximately 40 per cent of newly arrived refugees in Australia in 2018–19 were under the age of 18 and close to 90 per cent spoke a language other than English. Given that education is compulsory until the age of 16 in most states and territories of Australia, young people labelled as refugee-background students (RBSs) are tasked with navigating the English-only education system, in which their multilingualism is often viewed as a barrier; however, there are increasing calls for research to focus on the positive, affirmative practices of RBSs through a strengths-based approach in education, to counter a ‘damage-centred’ and deficit discourse. Thus, this article presents a systematic literature review of studies conducted in Australia with RBSs between 2010 and 2022. Specifically, this review explores the strengths-based multilingual practices of RBSs in compulsory education in Australia. Inspired by RefugeeCrit theory, we seek to highlight strengths-based examples of RBSs multilingual practices as examples of counter-narratives to the prevailing deficit discourse, while remaining attentive to issues of trauma, agency and multilingualism.