Raising her voice: Working with refugees

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It’s hard to navigate being a teenager – and even harder when juggling multiple identities and cultural expectations. At Ordinary Differences, we specialise in gender-related issues. For this project, our goal was to explore the psychological and social challenges Congolese teenage girls face when attempting to integrate into their host country – in this case, South Africa.

In 2021, we followed a group of refugee teenagers, aged 13 to 17, over a period of three months, using digital ethnography in order to hear and see through their eyes their experiences – of juggling multiple identities, expectations and pressures, all while navigating adolescence.

When you look at the media, the representation of female refugees is often the same – they are depicted as passive victims of their circumstances. Their voices aren’t heard, and the diversity of their experiences is not being brought to life. We wanted to address this lack of agency and showcase a totally different (and unexpected) side that shatters stereotypical representations of female refugees. Specifically, teenage girl refugees.

What we ...