Living Between Two Worlds: What Bhutanese Refugee Adolescents Teach Us About Belonging
Refugee young people are often discussed in terms of settlement, integration and vulnerability, yet their everyday experiences of belonging are far more complex. This post explores how Bhutanese refugee adolescents in Australia negotiate belonging across school, family and community life. It challenges linear ideas of “settlement” by showing belonging as an ongoing, relational process. It highlights their agency as cultural brokers navigating intergenerational expectations, hybrid identities and everyday exclusions. In this post, Dr Nabaraj Mudwari shows how refugee youth experience living between cultures as a source of resilience, creativity and strength and asks institutions, especially schools, to recognise and value this complexity.
When Bhutanese refugee adolescents arrive in Australia, they are often described using the language of “settlement” and “integration.” These words suggest a linear journey of arrival, adjustment, belonging. But for the young people I spoke with, belonging was never a destination, but was something negotiated daily, across schools, families, friendships and futures.
Growing up between cultures, languages and expectations, these adolescents were not simply adapting to Australian life. They were actively creating what postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha calls a “third space” - an in‑between space where identities are blended, reworked and made meaningful. Listening closely to their stories reveals not vulnerability alone, but agency, resilience and creativity.
School as a site of belonging - and exclusion
For many refugee-background young people, school is the first place where they encounter Australian society in a sustained way. It can offer opportunity, safety and connection. But it can also be a place of quiet exclusion.
Several young people described moments where small, everyday experiences made them feel “different”: being laughed at for the food they brought from home, struggling to understand classroom expectations, or feeling unsure where they belonged socially. One young woman recalled crying after classmates mocked the smell of her lunch. Another stopped bringing food altogether to avoid attention.
Such experiences shape whether a school feels like a place of belonging or merely a place one must endure.
At the same time, many adolescents described school staff - particularly English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers - as pivotal sources of care and advocacy. EAL classrooms became safe spaces where students felt understood, encouraged and supported beyond academics. Teachers helped with bus passes, explained Centrelink forms, advocated during conflicts with other staff, and offered support through relationships and everyday acts of recognition, all of which helped to build a sense of belonging.
As one student put it, “My teacher gave me courage. He said, ‘Go for it - you can.’”
Navigating family expectations across generations
The world of school was not always in harmony with home for these young people. Many adolescents described the delicate work of mediating between family expectations shaped by displacement, survival and hope, and the realities of Australian schooling and youth culture. Parents wanted academic success, stability and security. Young people, meanwhile, were learning new norms around gender equality, independence and self-expression.
For girls, this tension was particularly strong. Several spoke about having greater domestic responsibilities than their brothers, while simultaneously being exposed at school to ideas of gender equity. One young woman explained how she sat down with her parents to talk about how “things are different here,” framing equality not as rejection of culture, but as adaptation.
These conversations are examples of young people acting as cultural brokers - translating not just language, but values, expectations and futures. Belonging within families, like belonging at school, required negotiation rather than compliance.
Becoming something new—without letting go
When asked how they described themselves, few adolescents used a single identity. Instead, they spoke of being Bhutanese, Nepali and Australian - sometimes all at once.
One young man laughed as he explained that he celebrated traditional festivals, spoke Nepali at home, loved AFL and enjoyed sausage sizzles. “That’s who I am now,” he said. “It’s not one or the other.”
Language played a powerful role in this hybridity. Many young people moved fluidly between English and Nepali, often mixing the two, especially on social media. This code-switching was not confusion; it was expression. A way of claiming multiple worlds without having to choose between them.
Cultural practices mattered too. Wearing traditional dress at festivals, participating in dance programs, or playing soccer - especially for girls - became ways of building confidence and visibility. Sport, in particular, emerged as a space where gender norms could be gently challenged and new identities rehearsed.
What belonging really asks of us
The stories of these Bhutanese refugee adolescents challenge deficit-based narratives that frame refugee young people primarily through trauma or disadvantage. They ask us to see young people as meaning-makers, cultural mediators and active contributors to social life.
Belonging does not happen through one-off cultural events such as Harmony Day, or through assuming that “everyone fits in eventually.” It requires institutions - especially schools - to recognise complexity, listen carefully, and create spaces where hybrid identities are not just tolerated but valued.
Acknowledgement:
This blog is based on PhD research with adolescent Bhutanese refugees aged 14–18 in Tasmania, Australia. I acknowledge the participants for generously sharing their everyday experiences, my supervisors for their scholarly guidance throughout the research, and the University of Tasmania for providing the scholarship that supported the completion of this study.
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