Examines factors affecting the successful adjustment to school of Vietnamese refugee youth living in Finland. Study participants were 175 13- to 18-year old boys and girls who answered questions about school adjustment, stress symptoms, self-esteem and sense of mastery, experiences of parental support, cultural identity, perceived discrimination, and proficiency in the majority language. Among the key findings were that: (1) refugee teens who had been in Finland longer had fewer stress symptoms, improved self-confidence and sense of mastery, and better proficiency in Finnish than did those who had arrived more recently; (2) perceived discrimination was correlated with lower self-esteem, more stress symptoms, and diminished sense of ethnic identity; (3) parental support promoted adolescents’ school adjustment by both alleviating the effects of school discrimination and enhancing adolescents’ ethnic identities; and (4) although refugee teenagers were generally better adjusted to school than were their host national peers, they still had a relatively lower sense of mastery and self-image. Study findings emphasize the critical role that language skills, perceived parental support, and a clear ethnic identity play in adolescent development.
