The Adjumani district in Northern Uganda is home to approximately 245,071 South Sudanese refugees. Eighty-six percent of refugees comprise women, children, and youth, and eighty percent of the households are female-headed (UNHCR, 2019). Since 2013, the Adjumani district has experienced a roughly fifty-five percent increase in the South Sudanese refugee population, negatively affecting refugee settlement and well-being. My ethnographic research in Adjumani indicates that some refugees live on 10 square meters of land and are unable to rent land; refugee management has drastically reduced food rationing; many youths have dropped out of school, leading to a rise in petty crime, alcohol, and substance abuse. In the absence of men due to war, women have become solely responsible for raising families. The effects of war and displacement on South Sudanese women in Adjumani district are profound. Women often feel anxious, fearful, depressed, and suicidal. Upon realizing the increased occurrence of mental health issues among South Sudanese refugee women in the Adjumani district in early 2013, refugee settlement leaders encouraged women to meet regularly in groups to compose songs, sing, and dance together. Singing and dancing are typical ways for South Sudanese women to work through trauma; one of my interlocutors referred to singing and dancing as “medicine.” Situated in critical refugee studies, which foreground refugee-based perspectives for understanding forced migration issues, I will analyze how Tanijamesi women’s group uses music and dance to work through trauma. My analysis is based on collaborative ethnographic research with the Tanijamesi women’s group during 2023-24.

This paper’s purpose is to share findings from a collaborative songwriting research project conducted in partnership with a Canadian refugee organization and an LGBTQI+ refugee young person who fled his country of origin due to identity persecution. This research is a part of a three-year, multi-sited, federally funded project with newcomer and refugee children and young people. Data will include excerpts from select online songwriting sessions, an analysis of the process of collaborative songwriting, song lyrics, and an excerpt from the recorded song. This research builds on the author’s use of collaborative songwriting methods (Author, in-press) as a part of research-informed theatre projects (Goldstein et al. forthcoming; Author & Goldstein, 2021; Goldstein et al. 2018), and with minoritized populations (Gruson-Wood et al., 2022; Hauge & Author, 2019; Author, 2022; Author & Goldstein, 2021). It also builds on the work of scholars who investigate musical methods with young people (Burnard et al. 2017; Campbell & Wiggins, 2013; Howell 2018; Pollock & Emberly 2019; Enge & Brynjulf Stige, 2021; Marsh, 2015, 2017; Young & Ilari, 2019; Zapata & Hargreaves, 2018) and other marginalized groups (de Quadros & Amrein, 2023; de Quadros & Evelyn, 2023; Harrison, Jacobsen & Sunderland, 2019; Yeoli et al., 2021). The significance of this research lies in exploring and documenting how collaborative songwriting mobilizes young people’s voices, allowing them to locate pathways for self-expression while underscoring the cultural and social forces—forced displacement, migration, and settlement challenges—that provided a foundation for these songs to be composed.

This paper addresses the challenges and opportunities of musical engagement as a means of empowerment for unaccompanied minor refugees and young asylum seekers in Lucerne, Switzerland. Situated within the framework of a four-year research project in applied ethnomusicology, the study focuses on recently arrived young people, predominantly from Afghanistan, and their use of musical practices to negotiate their new sociocultural landscapes. One of our central questions revolves around how musicking shapes young refugees’ experiences in their new environment and how these engagements may influence, challenge, or reinforce social imaginaries. Through six months of voluntary weekly “music listening sessions” in a transit center for minor refugees, insights were gained into their individual musical preferences and “musical literacies,” i.e., the musical knowledge they have already developed in their places of origin or on their journey to Switzerland. Within this temporal space, facilitated by music as “moments of choice and freedom” (Lewis 2015), participants engaged in musical dialog, occasionally selecting rap pieces, generally with preferences for artists from their own cultural backgrounds who rap in familiar languages. Based on the insights we gained from these sessions, a hip-hop workshop was organized, jointly led by a sociocultural expert and a hip-hop artist, along with support from the research team, who then critically analyzed the outcome. In alignment with the assertion that refugee empowerment is pivotal in the process of refugee integration this analysis aims to contribute to the discourse surrounding the interplay between empowerment objectives and musical involvement among youth and young adults.