‘It is a university where I felt welcome’: poems of asylum-seeking students’ sense of coherence in Australian higher education

ABSTRACT

Current social and political arrangements of higher education are inequitable for students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. In many countries, their access to university is limited and if they are accepted, their status as forced migrants puts them at multiple disadvantages. This inequity is in contrast with the universal aim of higher education institutions to serve all people and their societies. Utilising a voice centred relational method (VCRM) and the theoretical lens of Aaron Antonovsky’s salutogenesis, this article is a poetic presentation of the experiences of asylum-seeking students in Australian universities. We show that higher education can provide asylum-seeking students with the means for safety (making life manageable), belonging (making life comprehensible), and success (making life meaningful). Thus, we argue that higher education institutions have the potential to help facilitate students’ sense of coherence, which in salutogenetic terms refers to their ability to comprehend their own situation, and the capacity to use the resources available. However, asylum-seeking status poses barriers in achieving this, and this inequity should be addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum seekers
• sense of coherence
• voice-centred relational methods
• poems
• salutogenesis
• Australia

Introduction

The noble aims of higher education are to serve freedom and democracy, knowledge and innovation, and humankind and their environment (Brink, 2018; Mahon et al., 2019; Peters et al., 2010). These aims include that higher education should promote equity and widen participation, diversify student populations, and attract students from social groups typically in precarious situations or under-represented in higher education (Gale & Tranter, 2011; Lingard & Rizvi, 2009).

A key equity group that has missed out on higher education opportunities are people seeking asylum. Those from asylum-seeking and refugee backgrounds are, by definition, in a precarious situation: they have been forced to flee the countries they resided in, have a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ and are ‘unable to avail himself or herself [sic] of the protection of that country’ (UNHCR, 2011, p. 3). Higher education is one of the ways in which public services can be used to mitigate the impact of forced displacement and ensure that people coming to new countries through forced migration can use, adapt, and improve their qualifications, training, and previous experiences (Arar et al., 2020). Higher education, then, arguably benefits forced migrants and their host societies alike (Arar et al., 2020; Naidoo, 2015).

In Australia, the context of this study, federal government policies classify students from asylum-seeking backgrounds as international students, thus making the cost of university education prohibitive (Dunwoodie et al., 2020; Hartley et al., 2018). This inequity applies also to those who arrived in Australia as children and attended primary and secondary school in the same way as nationals (Hartley et al., 2018; Harvey & Leask, 2020; White, 2017). Some Australian universities are addressing these concerns by offering scholarships to people on temporary protection visas. Although a growing body of literature discusses this striking inequity (Hartley et al., 2018; Webb et al., 2021), there is a general lack of understanding regarding practices that are constraining or supportive of refugee and asylum-seeking students during their university studies (Naidoo, 2015). Longitudinal research with asylum-seeking students who get in, get through, and move beyond higher education is largely missing, as is research on the special needs typical of this group of higher education students (Baker et al., 2019). Our longitudinal study with 22 asylum-seeking students in seven Australian universities conducted from 2018 to 2020 complements the small body of Australian (Molla, 2022; Naidoo, 2015; White, 2017) and international (Arar et al., 2020) research by showing how higher education might (mis)recognise the strengths and needs of asylum-seeking students. Using this larger study as a background, this article zooms in on six interviews with two participants and presents their experiences as pronoun poems. In doing so, we draw on Antonovsky’s (1979) theory of salutogenesis and consider how higher education institutions can facilitate or impede a sense of coherence for asylum-seeking students. Compared to our other thematic analyses of these interviews, Antonovsky’s concept is helpful in understanding how these two participants assessed and understood the situation they were in, sought meaning to move in a desired direction in life, and found the capacity to do so – that is, comprehensibility, meaningfulness, and the manageability, to use Antonovsky’s own terms (Eriksson, 2016).

Analytical frame, material, and methods

Sense of coherence in the lives of asylum-seeking students

The concept of salutogenesis (Antonovsky, 1979) originated from the simple yet crucial question of what makes people healthy and feel well. Although Antonovsky was a medical sociologist, he considered a good life to consist of more than physical health drawn from medical measurements. According to Antonovsky (1979), salutogenesis occurs not when people have low levels of physiological or psychological problems, but when people develop a sense of coherence in their lives, which he defined as ‘a … feeling of confidence that one’s internal and external environments are predictable and that there is a high probability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected’ (p. 10, italics in original). Antonovsky (1987) later identified the three key dimensions that constitute a sense of coherence:

1. Manageability: a sense that most things in life will work out well, and that you can access both internal and external resources to meet the demands put upon you.

2. Comprehensibility: understanding of events in your life and that the complexity of life fits with your general worldview; and

3. Meaningfulness: a belief that your life is rewarding and engaging and you are a valued participant within it.

In their review of the connections between education and salutogenesis, de Oliveira Olney and Kiss (2021) found that salutogenic models in education promoted sustainable relationships, transcultural competence, and assisted students and teachers to solve conflicts across cultures. Many of the reviewed studies utilise quantitative measures, which are common in salutogenesis research (Daniel & Ottemöller, 2022; Reimer, 2020). Yet, Daniel and Ottemöller (2022), in their review of articles on salutogenesis and migration, found it is the qualitative studies that ‘allow innovative use of salutogenesis in the study of refugees’ (p. 509). Asylum-seeking university students are faced with many structural inequities unique to this group (Naylor et al., 2021). Their lives are unpredictable due to their precarious visa situations (Stevenson & Baker, 2018) and they are likely to have prior education that is limited, of poor quality or just different from the expectations of the higher education country (Naidoo, 2015). Therefore, achieving a sense of coherence is important yet hard to achieve for asylum-seeking students. Schools and universities have the potential to be salutogenic spaces (Daniel & Ottemöller, 2022) and the analysis of our larger data (Dunwoodie et al., 2020; Reimer et al., 2019; Webb et al., 2021) indicates that this might be the case for our participants, too. So, this article aims to explore the salutogenic potential of higher education using pronoun poems, in order to understand how universities can facilitate a sense of coherence and, ultimately wellbeing, for asylum-seeking students in Australia.

Case study and the participants

The 22 participants were 18–35-year-old asylum seekers, all of whom had received scholarships to study in seven Australian universities. They participated in our longitudinal (2018–2020) qualitative study aiming to understand how asylum-seeking students navigate government and institutional policies and practices in the Australian higher education system. We conducted 54 qualitative, thematic interviews over a period of three years, that is, approximately once with each participant per year (more information about the participants and interviews, see Reimer et al., 2019).

In this article, we present a case study of two participants, Fatima (studied Nursing/Midwifery from 2016 to 2021), who arrived in Australia in 2013 with her family and remains on a temporary protection visa and Rezas (studied Arts/Law from 2016 to 2021) who also arrived in 2013 as an unaccompanied minor and who remains on a temporary protection visa. Rezas and Fatima were interviewed three times during their studies. In line with the case study design, our aim was to understand the concrete, context-dependent experiences of these participants via continued proximity to their studied reality and via continuous feedback from them (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Although selection derives from the analysis of the whole data, we did not choose two typical or average cases to offer a descriptive account of a problem or its frequency, as this would run a risk of assuming homogeneity within the group. Instead, we chose atypical cases which can clarify the deeper causes behind a problem and its consequences (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Fatima and Rezas are extreme cases of precarity since both are still on temporary protection visas. The rationale of this selection is that if the university experience can help those at the extreme ends of the problem to develop salutogenesis and a sense of coherence, it is likely to be effective with those in more typical and less precarious situations. The selection is also in line with the salutogenic focus to look at differences rather than similarities and to treat people as individuals with their own stories to tell.

The transcripts of the six interviews were first analysed by the researchers using the voice-centred relational method (VCRM), developed originally by Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan. In their research with adolescent girls, Brown and Gilligan (1991) proposed an analysis consisting of four rounds of listenings, each focusing on a different perspective. First focuses on ‘The story of who is speaking’, and any overarching themes or concepts within the participants’ narratives. This listening revealed how, in Rezas’ and Fatima’s minds, higher education could promote manageability (safety and security), comprehensibility (belonging) and meaningfulness (leading to a successful life). The next layer of analysis focuses on ‘In what body?’ and any instances of participants speaking about themselves. We then turned our attention to ‘Telling what story about relationships?’ and looked for references to other significant persons in the participants’ lives. Finally, the fourth layer listens to the stories of ‘In which societal and cultural framework?’. In this stage, we identified social, cultural, and political frameworks that participants contextualised their narratives in. Rounds two, three, and four deepened our understanding of the nuances and significance of the themes identified in the first round. In total, the analytical process leading to this article included 24 readings, that is, four readings of six interview transcripts.

From this analysis, we moved on to create pronoun poems (Macaulay, 2022; Macaulay & Deppeler, 2020a, 2020b), underscoring the pronouns participants mentioned and surrounding them with verbs and/or other important words they used to create stanzas. This was done by focusing on three layers of the voice used by participants to convey personal experiences: the use of the first-person voice, the use of the second-person voice, and finally, the use of quotes and/or mimicry. These pronoun poems seek to honour the relationality of people’s experiences, acknowledging that the voice is multilayered and exists in both harmony and dissonance within those multiple layers, as well as with others and socio-political structures. The focus on all pronouns at the above-mentioned layers, instead of the more commonly focused first-person pronoun I, captures how/why the voice is used at the individual and collective level (Macaulay, 2021). Moreover, pronoun poems allowed us to better understand participants’ sense of coherence as a relational phenomenon within their experiences of higher education as asylum-seeking students. See example below:

Fatima: I think my family – my family they’re the greatest support. And I can guarantee that without them I would never be able to do a bachelor’s degree as a single parent.

Pronoun poem:

I think

My family

My family

They’re the greatest support

I can guarantee

Without them

I would never be able to do a bachelor’s degree as a single parent.

After the initial analysis and poem-creation, we presented them to Fatima and Rezas for participatory analysis in individual meetings. Both gave permission for their words to be used in this way and offered clarifications and deeper insights. It is worth pointing out that due to the longitudinal and participatory research design, we had close relationships with many of our participants, including Fatima and Rezas. In addition to this research, we met them on several occasions including their participation in programs offered by a practice-based research centre where two of the authors work. Further, through our research within refugee communities we have interacted with Rezas and Fatima at a variety of formal and social events. The development of these relationships with Rezas, Fatima, and other participants catalysed trust within the researcher/participant relationship, which is an important component of researching with these communities.

We did not attempt to approach our research questions as objective outsiders or erase our own positionality from the process. Our pre-existing relationships impacted the way in which the poems were crafted, as well as how we worked with the participants. Thus, we cannot present generalisable findings. Instead, we can show how we generated data through poems, and discuss how this representation might offer some new insights into the experiences of two asylum-seeking students in Australian universities.

Findings

The overall study shows that there are existing practices in universities – and individuals within that system – that are crucial in supporting asylum-seeking background students socially, emotionally, and academically (Webb et al., 2021) and that some of these practices, such as creating family-like networks in universities, may be taken for granted and overlooked in research (Dunwoodie et al., 2020). In our interpretation, we now turn to Antonovsky’s (1979, 1987) theory of salutogenesis and consider how universities may facilitate or impede asylum-seeking students’ sense of coherence, that is, the experience of their lives as manageable, comprehensible, and meaningful.

Manageability: universities replace the safety that was lost

Safety and its implications, both within and outside of education, were important themes for both Rezas and Fatima. A sense of safety is critical for seeing life as manageable and being able to meet its demands. Lutine de Wal Pastoor (2015, p. 247), in an exploration of compulsory schooling, found that schools could be ‘salutogenic arenas’, seen to offer safety and predictability for unaccompanied young refugees in Norway. Asylum-seeking children and youth arrive in their new context and ‘stand at the borders of legal, practical and psychological safety’ (Kohli, 2011, p. 314), and schools or universities have an important role to create conditions for these (Mahon et al., 2019; Shelley et al., 2021). They connect students to educational institutions legally, giving them the formal right to study there. They also provide students with means to build new lives practically, giving them a promise of a secure future.

For many of the participants in this study, the dimensions of practical, legal, and psychological safety merged in their discussions of their university experiences. Fatima and Rezas told us how their universities had been able to create a welcoming climate, helping them to feel safe in the moment (psychological safety), while also giving them the formal permission to study and pursue a degree (practical and legal safety). A common theme in their narratives was what was missing before they came to Australia, and how it was found in Australia, as can be read in a poem created based on Fatima’s interviews, below:

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Fatima ‘My dad, he’s so educated’: We was in the boat Everyone was so panicking It’s so scary situation to be, especially with family and kids and women Everyone was so panicking What if we drown? They don’t know how to swim But for me, I was lucky My dad, he’s so educated He like everyone to support themselves When I was like four years old He took me to swimming lesson in my country

In the interviews used for this poem, Fatima uses the pronouns we, I, they, and he. Different groups of people are referred to as everyone, family, kids, and women. Her dad is named individually. In this poem, the different groups of people are panicking because they do not know how to swim. That is a clear example of life that is not manageable. On the other hand, Fatima herself is lucky because her father is educated, and therefore, he has taught Fatima to support herself. In this situation, the risk of losing control of one’s life is immediate and real, but more so for the less-clearly identified masses of people than for Fatima and her father. ‘What if we drown’ . ‘They don’t know how to swim’. ‘But for me, I was lucky’. These words imply that Fatima feels a sense of collective responsibility, whereby her own individual safety is contextualised within that of her community.

Safety highlights the manageability that was missing in Fatima’s past, and education’s role in helping to achieve that. Learning to swim is a metaphor for supporting oneself, and Fatima’s father had supported her to learn the skills that can save her. This is noteworthy, as Fatima explains that in her country of origin, it is not usual for women to swim. She sees some of her other choices also as atypical for a woman of her origin. Like learning to swim not to drown, Fatima has at a young age learnt to challenge expectations in order to save her life.¹ These choices, including leaving violent relationships and becoming independent, seemed reasonable and necessary for us researchers. But for Fatima, the choices felt at the same time as revolutionary, horrifying, and liberating. So, as Fatima confirmed, learning how to swim can be read as breaking gender stereotypes to manage one’s life and. ultimately, stay alive.

In most cases, university was not only about surviving and avoiding immediate, life-threatening risks in the present. The manageability provided by universities was also future-oriented: it helped to shift one’s thinking from feeling helpless due to their past, towards being hopeful for the future. In the following poem Rezas talks about his worry about his Hazara community, and how his studies help him get over the frustration of not being able to do anything about it:

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Rezas ‘My education’: When someone from my background is killed It hurts me It pushes me back I don’t talk to anyone I'm in my own space I think I convince myself Those things are out of my hand I can't do anything Let’s focus on what I can do My education

Compared to Fatima’s poem where she saw her father’s education being life-changing for her, Rezas talks about his own responsibility to focus on what he can do by himself and for himself by becoming educated. The interviews from which this poem draws on are filled with first person pronouns (I) and repeated references to himself. This might be understandable because Rezas has arrived in Australia as an unaccompanied minor and has been separated from his biological family since his early teens. Managing life has been his individual responsibility from very early on, which can be seen in his interview as a young adult.

The poem starts with Rezas’ distressed account of the collective responsibility he feels for his community. It has a negative impact on him to belong to a community that is in danger (‘When someone from my background is killed – It hurts me’), although he is safe in Australia. The tone changes significantly from the first lines (‘It hurts me … It pushes me back’) towards the last lines (‘Let’s focus on what I can do … My education’), indicating a shift in Rezas’ thinking, whereby here the feeling of helplessness and frustration is replaced with being hopeful about his opportunities to do something about the problem.

Rezas connects his own responsibility to change things with the fact that he has had the opportunity to become educated. His own safety is a result of his independent achievement of arriving in Australia as an unaccompanied minor, and he has achieved a manageable and secure life. His educational aspirations secure his future, but they also connect with his responsibility for his community. Rezas wants to become educated to be in control, self-sufficient, and useful for his community.

Higher education can help people to be in control of their lives, to meet the demands put on them by helping people to access both internal and external resources. Those external resources are also about creating a support network of people. Perhaps the most striking example of this is in the following poem where Fatima compares her university with an army:

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Fatima ‘The biggest army in a country’: I think university is the biggest army in a country I feel safe in it When I enter the university I feel I’m safe I have no comment about this election We’re all disappointed Unfortunately, we didn’t get what we was thinking I’m glad that at least I got university

Talking about the military in a positive sense was not common in the interviews we conducted for the larger study, perhaps since many of the participants had left countries which could not protect the safety of their residents, and where the military forces were more likely to be seen as causing danger, not security. But on the other hand, the study was conducted during a time when it could be argued that Australia’s own government could not protect all its residents, especially those from asylum-seeking backgrounds. Fatima notes that ‘we’re all disappointed … we didn’t get what we was thinking’, referring to the newly elected Federal Government in 2019, whose refugee and asylum-seeking policies were incongruent with Australia’s international legal obligations as signatories to the 1951 UNHCR Refugee Convention.² Fatima soon adds that she found comfort in her education. For her, university is a field of social practice where rules differ from those in society at large. Some of the discrimination of other spheres of life do not apply there, and university offers a place to challenge politics and speak freely. The protection is provided by the physical space of the institutions as well as the communities of people in them, which helped participants view their lives as manageable. This protection is exclusive, and Fatima feels lucky to have that (‘I’m glad that at least I got university’).

For Fatima and Rezas, access to higher education was enough to make them feel safe, protected, and somewhat confident about their future. Access is a minimum requirement for the feeling that a person can participate and belong, however, a deeper sense of belonging calls for some additional, less-clear requirements. This also fits with Antonovsky’s (1979, 1987) sense that viewing life as manageable is not enough; it also must be comprehensible and meaningful. Next, we move on to discussing what belonging in higher education meant for these participants and how it made life comprehensible.

Comprehensibility: universities connecting to a group and a place

Comprehensibility in education settings has been described as underpinned by relationships that ‘are consistent and constant’ where ‘students feel understood by others and have a sense that they belong’ (Reimer, 2020, p. 11). When close connections are lost due to forced migration, new connections might become more important (Kaukko & Wernesjö, 2017). Sometimes people have the formal right to belong to a group, for example in the case of university students who have enrolled in their institutions, but still feel that they lack some of the less specific conditions required for full belonging. These conditions may be economic, material, or political and may change depending on the context, and are often lacking in the precarious situation of asylum-seeking background students (Webb et al., 2021).

Comprehensibility and language skills are interconnected, and this connection works in two ways; if a person feels they are understood and their lives are comprehensible, they are more confident to communicate in a group. In turn, a person's emerging language skills are supported by the feeling that they can safely participate in a community (Heikamp et al., 2020). So, language supports belonging, and the feeling of belonging supports language, and both play a role in viewing life as comprehensible. Fatima and Rezas both speak English well, but it is not their first language. The interconnectedness of the confidence to speak, the perceptions of other people’s understanding, and ultimately, their own understanding of life is illustrated in Fatima’s following poem. Although not directly connected to Fatima’s experiences of higher education, the poem illustrates the overall stress over her life in Australia.

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Fatima ‘Why Australia’s like this?’: I know who I am I know who I am very well To explain myself to the community, to my manager, to my friend They have no idea about what is a bridging visa They have absolutely no idea why I don’t have my residency right now They have no idea why the government acts with us ‘What I did?’ I sometimes Asking myself this question ‘What happened to me?’ ‘Have I done something wrong?’ ‘Why that happened to me?’ ‘Why Australia’s like this?’ ‘Why they so difficult?’ In any other country, if you go They accept you As a refugee They will grant you their permanent residency You’ll be safe

In this poem, Fatima attempts to comprehend her life as a legally accepted resident in Australia. The act of seeking asylum is legal in all countries that are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol. However, the Australian Government’s policies state that those who have arrived by boat to seek asylum after July 2013, including Fatima and Rezas, will never be permanently re-settled (Parliament of Australia, 2017) and consequently, will never be equal to local higher education students. The comprehensibility of Fatima’s life is very much dependent on her visa, which felt punitive. Fatima asks: ‘Why Australia’s like this?’ and we assume many others in Australia and internationally have asked the same question. Fatima’s questions show how this experience detracts from her sense of life as comprehensible. Fatima talks about her own experiences in a collective second-person voice (‘They accept you … They will grant you permanent residency … You’ll be safe’), perhaps making it feel less personal, placing the responsibility of accepting or providing safety on others (they). Alternatively, the use of this collective second-person voice may also imply that Fatima speaks about this experience not just to illustrate her own experiences, but also that of her collective community of those seeking asylum in Australia.

In Rezas’ poem below, belonging goes deeper than merely being legally accepted in one’s country. Compared to Fatima, Rezas reflects on his current situation more optimistically. For him, belonging is about feeling similar to others and feeling welcomed. Speaking of his experiences at his university, Rezas indicates:

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Rezas ‘I felt welcome’: I think it’s perfect I never felt that I don’t belong here I never felt that I’m different It is a university where I felt welcome Sitting with other students I feel like a very normal Australian Sometimes I forget that I’m a refugee

Rezas talks about feeling like a very ‘normal’ Australian. When discussing the meaning of this poem with Rezas we asked what he meant by ‘normal Australian’. Rezas explained that although inequities exist in Australian society, within the university he feels that those inequities are reduced and that all students are equal regardless of their backgrounds. Current Australian society is multicultural with 29.7% of the population born overseas (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020). However, due to a history of racialised immigration policies (e.g., the infamous Immigration Restriction Act 1901, colloquially known as the ‘White Australia Policy’), and the country’s past and present colonial history, cultural norms and socio-political power dynamics in Australia are underpinned by a persistent white Anglo Celtic legacy (Macaulay & Deppeler, 2020b). It is interesting to note that feeling like a ‘normal Australian’ seems to only be possible if Rezas’ status as a refugee is ignored (‘Sometimes I forget I am a refugee’), which raises the question if the notion of normality or Australianness can co-exist with a sense of belonging with some other community and coming from an asylum-seeking background. Can Rezas ever stop being seen as a refugee by those around him, and would he like to? Is life comprehensible if full belonging is not possible? These poems or our analysis discussion with Rezas do not answer the questions raised; perhaps they cannot be answered. Yet the poem points to the tension of an identity being constructed and highlights the ‘stories that people tell themselves about who they are, [and] who they are not’ (Yuval-Davis, 2010, p. 266). This tension also reveals a struggle for comprehensibility, and points to ways institutions may better support this struggle. According to Antonovsky (1979, p. 1987), though, a sense of coherence is not achieved with only manageability and comprehension; life must also be seen as meaningful.

Meaningfulness: ‘To sit with other students and feel good about myself’

For life to be seen as meaningful, it must also be rewarding and connect with a strong sense of purpose. In many ways, Fatima and Rezas are not unlike any other students: They have chosen to apply to higher education because they are motivated by the will to succeed in life. Educational achievements are linked to envisioned material achievements and the possibility to get a good job. These participants’ positions as individuals seeking asylum does not make them less worthy as students, just like their university affiliation does not make their need for asylum less severe.

Yet, their will to succeed was also driven by motivations, a sense of a higher purpose, that could be seen as unique. The participants wanted to succeed because others in their families did not have the chance. Some wanted to aim high to help others and pay back what they have been given. As can be seen in Fatima’s poem below, they also had a firm belief that once their worries, fears, and insecurities weaken, they can succeed:

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Fatima ‘What I want for my future’: I became more confident I know I know what I’m doing now I know what I really wanted now I don’t have that fear anymore I was a little bit lost last year; it was my first year ‘How I will go?’ ‘Can I pass my exam?’ I was a little bit lost Now I’m 100% sure what I want for my future For myself

In this poem, Fatima repeats the words ‘I know’. She is the main person, unlike in poems where the focus is on her educated father, or on others who grant her (you) the right to stay. She knows she can pass her exams; she knows what she wants for her future. Fatima’s personal history with domestic violence and family-related pressure makes her confidence significant. This is a kind of success that she feels has been life-changing for her. It is not a result of higher education, but her chance to study is linked with the way she has challenged the gendered expectations and transformed her life. Through her actions, she is creating meaning.

Rezas, in turn, highlights his success as connected to his sense of purpose:

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Rezas ‘Sitting with the lawyers and doctors of tomorrow’: I think I've truly enjoyed every minute of it It has always made me happy, truly happy from inside To sit all other students and feel good about myself I'm sitting with students The lawyers of tomorrow The doctors of tomorrow My life has changed Sitting with them it means a lot to me

The fact that Rezas is sitting with the doctors and lawyers of tomorrow means that he is one. He is ‘sitting’, indicating a more stable position than just being with them. When meeting with a researcher, Rezas joined via Zoom from his new place of work where he is a graduate lawyer. Both Rezas and the researcher reflected on the significance of this, as Rezas is now a ‘lawyer of today’. Within Rezas’ poem, the university community is highlighted as being able to provide a network of family-like relations, professionals, and peers who add to the support from one’s previously existing networks. We read this poem as a marker of a new form of everyday belonging, feeling good and truly happy from inside because of the position Rezas has earned through his education. As such, this belonging is intrinsically linked to his conceptualisation of present and future success; and his ability to realise his sense of purpose.

Discussion

If higher education institutions aim to serve all people, the first step they need to take is to ensure equal access for all, despite people’s background or visa status. Equal access to higher education is as much a human right (UNESCO, 2022) as a beneficial policy for the countries which universities serve. The prevailing global skills shortages (see Kofler & Gruber, 2022) mean countries need educated people, and like Fatima and Rezas, many asylum-seeking students are motivated to succeed and positively contribute socially and economically to their receiving country (Dunwoodie et al., 2020). However, access to university is politicised via a range of means that discriminate against asylum seekers in Australia and elsewhere (Arar et al., 2020; Morrice et al., 2017; Naidoo, 2015).

Hidden, yet significant ‘politics of belonging’ to university shape people’s opportunities and their sense of identity (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 197). Fatima and Rezas recognised that their asylum-seeking identity is linked to the opportunity that their scholarships offered them. Scholarships made their lives manageable, but their temporary nature made their futures unpredictable. Yet subsequently, they both had clear goals to be successful during their studies, as well as in their post-study careers, and held themselves to a high level of academic accountability. Fatima’s and Rezas’ high aspirations indicated a level of control within the construction of their narratives when in reality they had limited control over other aspects of their lives (e.g., their visa status, family situations abroad, etc.). Further, these aspirations were linked to a future self as possessing economic and social stability, both individually and collectively. Therefore, manageability manifested itself as an aspiration relative to the control and opportunity that university spaces offer, as well as finding spaces to belong and achieve despite punitive and restrictive measures at the policy levels.

Fatima and Rezas wished to use their talents and capacities to, first of all, grow webs of belonging for their own benefit, building bridges with ‘the lawyers of tomorrow … [and] the doctors of tomorrow’, but also reach beyond individual gain and to give back to their communities and society more broadly. It has been previously identified that university students from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds possess a sense of duty and obligation to give back to their communities (Weng & Lee, 2016). To be educationally successful can be a powerful form of social and economic control within the refugee experience, whereby that success can be leveraged to further amplify one’s voice, to use that voice to advocate for others, and to benefit one’s wider society.

Seen through Antonovsky’s (1979, 1987) lens, higher education provided some means for: safety (making life manageable), belonging (making life comprehensible) and success (making life meaningful). Thus, higher education institutions have the potential to help facilitate asylum-seeking students’ sense of coherence. Yet it was not described in such unidimensional or unidirectional ways. People in fragile situations seek safety in their lives, and this is not limited to asylum seekers. While it is not the primary function of universities to offer students a sense of safety, safety increases their chances to get through their education (Shelley et al., 2021). Although the immediate threats had decreased in Fatima’s and Rezas’ lives, their situation as university students brought new kinds of challenges. High levels of academic accountability can place asylum-seeking scholarship students under significant personal, familial, and institutional pressure (Webb et al., 2021) and while this is also the case for Rezas and Fatima, the pressure to be successful has constructed their identity narratives regarding ‘who and how they would like to/should be’ (Yuval-Davis, 2010, p. 266). Furthermore, this pressure can be compounded for these students by the need to navigate the development of university literacies (i.e., the ‘know-how’ of university systems), and working hard (Webb et al., 2019). As such, it is incumbent on universities to develop a nuanced understanding of the educational experiences of asylum-seeking background students, as well as the importance of their goals and aspirations, to best facilitate the belonging and educational success – and a sense of coherence – of these students.

In this article, we have explored two atypical or extreme cases with the aim to explore how universities can be salutogenic places for students who are in the most vulnerable situation in Australian universities. Other findings published from this study draw on the thematic analysis and discuss the experiences of asylum-seeking students in Australia more broadly (Dunwoodie et al., 2020; Reimer et al., 2019; Webb et al., 2021) but here, we wanted to see how a VCRM approach could offer an understanding of the relational voices of two participants at the extreme ends of the problem. Our analysis shows how their voices interact with the self, others, and institutional systems of universities in Australia. By listening carefully, we could merge the tenets of qualitative research with the craft and rules of poetry to understand what Rezas and Fatima need to feel that their lives are manageable, comprehensible and meaningful, and how higher education could support them in this process. We hope that this poetic representation evokes new meanings, highlights a different set of issues not addressed in our previous work, and most importantly, sheds light on something that would otherwise be left in the dark, that is, the salutogenic potential of higher education for the lives of those in the most precarious situation in Australian universities.

Unlike in most research using VCRM, we did not limit our focus to the first-person pronoun I. This methodological choice gave room for the relational collective voices of Fatima and Rezas, indicating the importance of family and community in Australia. Our past studies did not lead us to understand participants’ experiences through a sense of coherence lens. It was only after multiple readings of the voices of these participants, and with paying attention to how their voices interact with their university experiences, that we started to realise that the experiences within higher education settings have the potential to develop within people a sense of coherence.

Considering the universal aims of higher education (Brink, 2018; Mahon et al., 2019; Peters et al., 2010), we can conclude that better acknowledging the needs of students in fragile situations is a step in the right direction. At present, the historical, social, and political arrangements in higher education put students from asylum-seeking backgrounds in a disadvantaged position and the needed steps to solving this are at the same time political, practical, as well as ideological. The needed political steps are granting equal access to refugee and asylum-seeking students. The practical steps are to ensure that after entering, they have the possibility to build a sense of safety, feel settled, and succeed. Philosophically or ideologically, we need to reconsider the purpose of higher education in contributing to a ‘knowledge society’ and consider whose knowledge or educational needs are seen as valuable (Stein et al., 2019). We argue the benefit of higher education should not be out of reach for those who have been forced to leave their countries and build their lives anew. They are in a disadvantaged position due to their situation as forced migrants, but as our poems suggest, this can change through access to education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australasian Spotlight on Equity – Recognition of Impact grant from National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) and Equity Practitioners in Higher Education Australasia (EPHEA).

Notes

1 Fatima is now a fully qualified Lifeguard and is employed part-time at a swimming pool.

2 In June 2022, when Fatima and a researcher discussed the meaning of her poems, a new Federal Government had just been voted in. This new government brings promise regarding a change to Australia’s policies on asylum-seeking visas. Fatima and the researcher noted that this was an interesting development when reflecting on her above poem. Fatima was cautiously optimistic about the new government. When referring to potential changes to asylum-seeking visa policy, she stated ‘fingers crossed. We’ll see. We can only hope’.