Abstract:

The negative impact of everyday racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia on the mental and physical health of people of foreign origin have long been documented. However, there is a lack of research on the racial microaggressions experienced by students in higher education, including Belgium (Berry & Sabatier, 2010; Quintero, 2013; Unia, 2018; Albandea, 2020). When young people from immigrant backgrounds experience racial discrimination, they are less likely to integrate into the host society, they may avoid interpersonal contacts with nationals and withdraw into their community of origin (Berry et al., 2006; Orban, 2015). Higher education institutions are increasingly multicultural places. Various types of racism can therefore also occur in the university environment.

Our study focuses on the experiences of racial microaggressions suffered by students from immigrant backgrounds who have joined a community students association within their university in French-speaking Belgium. This comprehensive study was based on a qualitative approach. We sought to understand how everyday racism was felt by the students during their academic path, considering their identification with their original and host cultures, and to determine whether joining an association was a strategy for dealing with racism. We used three instruments to collect data: the Mental Health Continuum - Short Form (Keyes, 2002) to assess the students' state of emotional, social, and psychological well-being, the Vancouver Index of Acculturation (Ryder et al., 2000; Bergeron, 2013) to assess their orientations toward mainstream and heritage traditions, and the semi-structured interviews to better understand the participants' perceptions and experiences.

We interviewed 15 students. Overall, they showed balanced orientations toward host and origin cultures, with a slight preference for heritage traditions for most subjects (average score of 59.80/70; 51.20/70 for the mainstream dimension). They all present a satisfactory level of well-being (average score of 48.27/70): “flourishing” for 7 students and “moderate” for the others. The psychological dimension appears to be the most satisfied (average score: 23.20/30), more so than the emotional (10.20/15) and the social dimensions (14.40/25). These results can be related to the students' testimonies. Indeed, they reported being victims of “subtle” types of racism or microaggressions (microinsults, microassaults and microinvalidations) that contribute to an environment of hostility, and lead racialised students to feel socially isolated or even excluded. Among the strategies they use to deal with these harmful consequences, the taking part in students association activities seems to meet a need for social support and community solidarity. Our paper will provide more details about these results and the links between well-being, acculturation, and experiences of racism.

Keywords:

University students from immigrant backgrounds, Racial microaggressions, Acculturation, Well-being, Students associations.