Paper short abstract:

'Empowering Study for Refugee Background Students' was established to gather information about experiences of students from refugee backgrounds (RBS) and to work with participants to establish support systems, to provide research training, and to contribute to scholarship on refugees.

Paper long abstract:

'Empowering Study for Refugee Background Students' was established to gather information about experiences of students from refugee backgrounds (RBS) and to work with participants establishing support systems. The project team now includes volunteers from the university staff, anthropology students, members of Global Remix (a club formed by students from refugee backgrounds). It cooperates with refugee-founded organisations, government agencies, and ethnic groups.

Outcomes span several areas: academic and social experience for RBS; ethnographic, research and service learning for student volunteers; community programmes supporting transition into tertiary education; university and government policy; and scholarship. To exemplify scholarly outcomes we discuss the fundamental re-thinking of 'community' stimulated by evolving practices of 'refugee' 'communities' which include people with different ethnic, religious, political, and class identities. In what conditions do people unify across divides from the past? When, why and how do they synthesize new communities? What new divisions arise in the newly created communities?