Gimme Shelter : the stories of the young New Zealanders from a refugee background

Abstract

Gimme Shelter is a project which seeks to better understand some of the highly complex circumstances that influence the existence of young people with refugee background who have settled in New Zealand. The project takes as its starting point the notion that there is not one single category of people known as 'refugees' and that displaced people from many different cultures (more than 30 of them) and many different language groups and religions face specific challenges in adjusting to life in New Zealand today. By asking young people with refugee background themselves how they have experienced life before and after arriving in New Zealand, and how they anticipate their lives will unfold into the future the project hopes to add multiple layers of understanding about the complexity of this current global problem.