I'm Terrified to Go to School: Refugee Youths' Perceptions of Mass School Shootings and School Violence

Background and Purpose: Mass school shootings and overall school violence have caused increased fear among students and the general public. Moreover, the total harm caused by school shootings is under-estimated, noting that the reactions and responses to shootings can have indirect adverse mental health outcomes for children. While schools typically function as supportive environments that supports refugee youths’ integration, newcomers are less familiar with the pervasive school violence upon resettling to the United States, negatively impacting their mental health. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory in conjunction with work on complex trauma, this study considers the environmental and experiential factors contributing to refugee youths’ perceptions of safety in the U.S. school environment. With the surge and visibility of school shootings, this study examines how they experience and perceive mass school shootings and school safety.

Methods: This study employs a phenomenological approach to examine refugee students’ experiences and exposure to mass shootings through the media and school violence at an urban high school. This specific approach allowed me to focus on how participants make sense of similar phenomenon in a given context. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 refugee students who resettled to a Midwest City. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim to ensure accuracy and coded using NVivo. Data analysis consisted of several stages, such as reviewing transcripts to gain insight into the students’ narratives. From these powerful students’ voices, I organized the participants’ thoughts, ideas, and feelings into recurring themes. These themes identified aspects and conceptions of school violence that mattered to the participants and conveyed the meaning of school violence to the participants.

Results: Refugee students acknowledged that while schools are critical to their academic success, they feel unsafe due to the possibility of being a victim of a mass shooting. Refugee students shared their general perceptions of school shootings, citing fear and anxiety with attending U.S.-based schools. Refugee students also described how, after fleeing war and political unrest in their countries of origin, they felt a mixture of fear, hopelessness, and shock when they confronted school-based violence in America. Finally, refugee students described how the fear of being a potential target in a school shooting negatively impacted their desire to be engaged in school-related activities.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings suggest that pre-migration experiences of violence do not desensitize refugee youth to the violence and threats of violence they experience in U.S. schools. Newly resettled refugee students and their families lack historical context and exposure to America’s broader gun violence epidemic, making it difficult to adapt to U.S. schools. Therefore, refugee students should have access to school social workers to help them process initial and ongoing fears associated with exposure to gun violence and to offer media literacy to refugee students and their families. School staff could also offer context on the use and possible effectiveness of active shooter drills and other school-based practices.