Implications for research, theory and practice

Cultural and contextual variations in conceptualisation of risk and protective processes has implications on mobilisation of resilience around a child, particularly in multicultural settings. In these settings, there is a need to adapt a bottom up approach where an individual child identifies their own support networks based on the extent to which he/she perceives to be attached to a significant other(s), his/her cognitive appraisal of the support available from significant other(s), and the responses of other(s) in the provision of emotional support (Barrera, 1986). Levitt (2005) presents a social convey model which places children as participants and directors of their social convoy. This model refers to the multiple relationships and attachments in children’s lives that convey diverse support and material aid ranging from family members, friends and peers (ethnic and non-ethnic), teachers, religious and/or community leaders (ethnic and non-ethnic), and individuals considered as role models by the children themselves. Levitt’s notion of the convoy as one that functions optimally to afford the exchange of support in the form of affective support, self-affirmation and direct aid can accommodate ethnic differences in family and other social relationships, because the child gets to identify the person they perceive best placed to provide the support within their network. This child driven convoy overrides the assumptions that the researcher or service provider might have regarding available sources of support. An assumption

might be made for example that an African migrant child in Ireland may be referred to the newly created ethnic communities in Irish settings for support. Within-group self- defined ethnicities might act as a barrier to support available for that child. But if the child directs their social convoy, they will seek support where they perceive it to be available. For contemporary migrant children who are embedded in transnational cultures, transnational social networks might form part of a migrant child’s social convoy. However, in Levitt’s conceptualisation, the child is engaged in a two-way horizontal support, whereby the child gives and receives support from significant others. Reviewed resilience studies indicate that in non-Western cultures and resource-scarce environments, adultification is typical and resilience building by securing a powerful identity and sense of social efficacy among youth who take on these roles (Theron et al 2011). While Levitt’s model is useful in identification of a child’s social convoy, and can be useful as a guide in questionnaire development of a child’s social support, it does not go far enough in accommodating cultural differences in processes that impact on the resilience of the child.

Ungar (2008) posits that resilience mobilising or enhancing has to be culturally meaningful. He states that: “in the context of exposure to significant adversity, whether

psychological, environmental or both, resilience is both the capacity of individuals to navigate through their way to health-sustaining resources, including opportunities to experience feelings of well-being, and a condition of the individual’s family, community and culture to provide these health resources and experiences in a culturally meaningful way” (Ungar, 2008, p.225).

Once again, ‘it is not a case of one size fits all’. For example, building resilience in the context of this study requires incorporation of the African world view of a single reality

which seeks synthesis and the social thought and psychology that primes meaning of life, individuation and self-understanding primarily from an interconnected model (Nsamenang, 2007; Utsey et al., 2000). Ways in which African cultural values and practices shape individual and social processes discussed in the reviewed literature have to take into account conceptualisation of resilience building for the study population. In the context of the present study, effective functioning of African migrant children in Ireland is judged in respect to psychosocial well-being as meaningful to them. Ways in which the African world-view of collectivism or interconnectedness frames causal explanations of distress that encompass social and spiritual elements have to be taken into account. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), that gives global guidance on Mental Health in Emergency settings and the organisation of African Unity (OAU) have recognised and accepted institutionalisation of traditional medicine in African settings and developed action plans to institutionalise this health plan. It can be argued that the inclusiveness of traditional health care at a policy level in Africa is motivated to a great extent by the inaccessibility of biomedical health services by a majority of its population. While acknowledging that access to care in the west is bound to impact on traditional health-seeking practices of migrant families and children, studies of Africans who have settled in Western settings indicate that they continue to seek traditional healing services (Atherton, 1994; Waldheim, 2008); an implication of the complexity of culture in that it is dynamic yet stable. The acculturation literature indicates that socio- cultural forces in a migrant’s country of residence such as racial and cultural minority status and the exclusive mechanisms that flow from these positions are shaping the acculturation trajectories of migrant families and children towards biculturalism (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006; Schwartz et al., 2010; Steiner, 2009; Suárez-Orozco & Todorova, 2008). The transnational nature of present day migrants and availability of diasporic

networks in counties of residence facilitates migrant families and their children to draw on cultural resources, including health-sustaining practices. Transnational literature indicates migrant families’ engagement in organised activities of sending medicines home and receiving traditional medicine and/or traditional healers and/or spiritual healers in their country of residence in the West (Kane, 2010; Grillo and Mazzucato, 2008). Africans socialised in a world view that attributes distress to biological as well as to their social and cultural worlds are unlikely to change their world view, simply by living in settings where the mainstream view attributes distress to biological causes and/or the individual. Fostering resilience for the study population therefore entails paying attention to their cultural context, and in particular, ways in which it frames their well-being conceptualisation and consequent well-being practices. One way of doing this, is adapting the methodologies of the reviewed studies carried out in African settings which have developed cultural understandings of well-being (Betancourt et al., 2009; Bolton & Tang, 2002; Bolton & Tang, 2004). These are steps in the right direction of communities of service providers and researchers providing health services that are culturally meaningful (Ungar, 2008).