The Flickering Flame of Refugee and Asylum Seeker Support: Burned Down, but Not Out

Abstract

Asylum seeker and refugee supporters work to provide services, legal advice, home visits; engage in advocacy; and protest the harsh immigration context that is associated with the Australian government. The passion supporters feel for the ‘cause’ burns bright, yet years and sometimes decades of support can take a personal toll. This article draws on ethnographic data collected between July 2019 and October 2020 in Adelaide, South Australia, with asylum seeker and refugee supporters. We argue that despite displaying many of the features classically associated with notions of burnout, supporters are more likely to ‘burn down’, rather than out. This is because the passion associated with the commitment to asylum seeker and refugee causes is hard to extinguish. We suggest that supporters suffer from ‘passion fatigue,’ yet through the mitigating practices of retreat and debriefing they can protect themselves from the worst forms of burnout and permanent disengagement.

Keywords:

• Refugee
• Asylum Seekers
• Supporter
• Burnout
• Passion
• Immigration
• Australia

Introduction

The woman sitting at the kitchen table of a small cottage in inner-city Adelaide was once a force of nature of the asylum seeker and refugee supporter community in South Australia. Supporters such as Anne tend to engage through non-government and community organisations, and may be formal employees, volunteers, or may engage independently, participating as advocates or activists without direct membership or affiliation with defined organisations or groups. Anne was a leader of sorts throughout the early 2000s, visiting the Woomera and Baxter detention centres, helping people seeking refuge to find housing, furnish and set up homes, and enrol their children in schools. She was tirelessly involved in political lobbying, spending hours in the offices of members of parliament advocating for change. Today, Anne has almost completely disengaged from support work. She reveals:

This is an issue that is part of my DNA, an issue I really care about  … I did it so intensely for 10 years, I had a holiday for four weeks after 10 years and felt guilty. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t be available, see no change, experience heartbreak, all that. When I was really involved, I did feel that I had such an important role and a purpose in life: it was clear to me, and it was clear to everybody else. That was a really good feeling. It felt really good, even though it was an uphill battle. I was driven, there was a goal; ‘this is what we are going to do’. I definitely feel relief from the pressure and the heartache and the constancy of it … But I always feel incredibly sad because it feels like we are where we were 20 years ago. I feel incredibly sad about the world, and I worry. What is the world going to be like in 20 years’ time? Not all the time, but if it is something that I feel is an incredible injustice, I will actually write. I will get up the next morning and write and email the politicians again. I still get really angry. I am still a supporter. I might not be a roaring fire but more a flickering flame. I am still here; I might just need a bit of puff.

Utilising ethnographic data collected between July 2019 and October 2020 in Adelaide, South Australia, this article explores asylum seeker and refugee supporter experiences and responses to commonly accepted and taken for granted understandings of ‘burnout’. The term burnout is often used to describe chronic stress, exhaustion, and emotional distancing experienced by help professionals as a result of contact with their clients (Malasch 1976). However, with chronic stress and exhaustion (and to a lesser extent, emotional distancing) becoming so commonplace in today’s world, this definition falls somewhat short in terms of its current usefulness (Neckel and Wagner 2017). Sighard Neckel and Greta Wagner recognise this and describe burnout as something beyond exhaustion or stagnation; they identify that burnout victims are ‘paralysed, passive, and emotionless; they no longer have any resources to contribute, let alone to put to effective use, because the competitive society forced them to use up their entire potential’ (296). Consequently, this article seeks to problematise the notion of burnout, understand its extent within the support sector, and question whether popular conceptualisations of the term fully capture its complexity. Regardless, burnout as a phenomenon is a serious concern and our analysis highlights that it significantly threatens the sustainability of asylum seeker and refugee support in South Australia.

Given such concerns, we seek to illuminate how supporters understand burnout and explore how they actively manage it. In doing so, we also examine the notion of compassion fatigue and propose passion fatigue as an allied concept. The root Latin meaning of ‘compassion’ is literally ‘suffering with’, suggesting the person who feels compassion for another sympathises with that person and their circumstances (Berlant 2014). We argue that such a definition fails to adequately capture the intensity of feeling and depth of emotion supporters feel for the cause of asylum seeker and refugee support, or the agency and effort that they expend in pursuit of positive outcomes for the people they actively support. We argue that supporters actually experience passion fatigue—the tiredness that results from their inability to emotionally disengage from the world of asylum seeker and refugee support. Further, that managing passion fatigue is a key challenge for supporters who intend to engage in support over the long term. Our analysis reveals there to be two important ways for supporters to rekindle their passion and manage ‘the burn’: through periods of retreat and opportunities for debriefing. We highlight how supporters sense when they need to retreat, which involves temporary, partial, or complete disengagement from the work. This allows them to manage burn-down, potential burnout, and passion fatigue. We show that a strong desire exists amongst supporters for appropriate avenues of debriefing that unfortunately are not currently available to them. We contend that supporters’ desire for debriefing opportunities with other like-minded and like-experienced individuals and groups is vital to supporter sustainability and longevity. Finally, we explore the impact that extreme burn-down has on supporters’ senses of self and identity. Ultimately, we critique the notion of burnout as too blunt, by suggesting that supporters, through the management strategies of retreat and debriefing, tend to burn down, rather than out.

Methodology

This paper draws on ethnographic data collected between July 2019 and October 2020 in Adelaide, South Australia. To date, there has been very limited anthropological research undertaken utilising ethnographic methods to examine supporter experiences in the Australian context, the work of Michelle Peterie (2018; 2019a; 2019b; 2022) being a notable exception. Fieldwork undertaken by the lead author, who is not from a refugee background, resulted in engagement with 44 asylum seeker and refugee supporters with an age range of 23–90 years. Participants were mainly White, middle-class Australians with privileges. They comprised a diverse range of concerned individuals who volunteer and work within community groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and other organisations, who seek to improve the physical, material, and emotional circumstances of people seeking refuge. They were driven predominantly by their strong cosmopolitan beliefs and values. In this instance the ethics clearance prevented the lead author from including people from refugee backgrounds in the study. Participants were initially recruited in three ways: by invitation through support organisations, via Facebook, and via direct invitation from the lead author. Informants were drawn from a range of organisations reflecting both formal and informal modes of employment and participation. Data were realised via a process of informed consent and utilisation of a range of qualitative methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews of one to two hours’ duration, and textual analysis (Walter 2019).¹ Questions probed supporters’ backgrounds, their motivations for engaging in support work, the experience of such work and its emotional affectivity, as well as their wellbeing and resilience in the face of years of deep involvement and personal investment in the field of support. Participants were not compensated for their time. To protect the anonymity of informants we have used pseudonyms and altered place names. The second author was not involved in data collection but was heavily involved in the subsequent analysis.

Charlotte Davies (2008) identifies the need to consider how research outcomes and findings are shaped by both the researcher(s) and their approach. In this respect, the research was conducted in line with activist anthropology, where the data obtained and knowledge acquired has academic value in its own right, but also meaningfully informs applied policy and practice outcomes of relevance to supporters’ work, wellbeing, and resilience (Field and Fox 2007). The lead author has over 10 years of refugee support, activism, and advocacy experience, and broad connections to organisations and individuals prominent within the support sector and within the informant cohort. However, she was not actively participating in the sector during the time of her fieldwork. Where informants were not previously acquainted with her, she shared with them the details of her supporter background and experience in the field, as well as her intentions and goals as an anthropological researcher during the process of building rapport and gaining informed consent.

Asylum Seekers, Refugees, and the Immigration Context

In order to locate the Australian immigration and asylum regime it is necessary to clarify the key terminology utilised. An asylum seeker is someone who has fled their country and sought protection as a refugee (AHRC 2015). A refugee is someone who no longer resides in their own country and is unable to return due to fear of persecution. It should not be assumed that because a person has not been recognised as a refugee, they are not in fact a refugee. States must determine that asylum seekers are not refugees before basic protections are denied (UNHCR 2011). For the purpose of this article, hereinafter we refer to both asylum seekers and refugees collectively as ‘refugees’.

Australia’s response to increasing levels of refugee arrivals has evolved since the early 1970s. Up to 1973, the vast majority of refugees came to Australia via official channels (RCOA 2020). It was not until boatloads of refugees began to arrive on Australian shores as a result of the Vietnam War, therein bypassing any official channels, that a collective media-induced moral panic concerning an ‘invasion’ of ‘boat people’ shifted the politics and policies concerning refugees in Australia (McKay, Thomas, and Warwick Blood 2011). Since then, with the support of an often-rabid media sector, the government has employed a variety of institutional, structural, legal, and policy measures designed to appease public anxiety concerning unanticipated refugee arrivals (Briskman 2008; Hage 2003). Both right and left-wing governments in Australia maintain an immigration and border protection system that is militarised, secretive, and inconsistent with internationally sanctioned refugee protections (Reid and Skuse 2018; Watson 2009). It is a system that affords little support to refugees, supports offshore detention, and seeks to create structural bureaucratic impediments to supporter engagement. In this respect, the system could be considered as one that is designed to exhaust supporters (Emejulu and Bassel 2020). It is also a system that creates gaps that supporters work to fill. People who receive(d) support from participants of this research are typically new arrivals or people in detention settings, in offshore and onshore locations and circumstances, who hold different visas and are at different stages in the process of seeking protection, or who may have been in South Australia for some time and periodically need help.

Defining Burnout

Burnout is a concept that has gained widespread traction and acceptance in predominantly Western cultures over time (Maslach and Schaufeli 2018). It formally originated from a psychological study in 1974 that looked at the decline in service and care provided by volunteer health and social workers and found that after one to three years they lost their motivation, enthusiasm, and extreme dedication for the work (Freudenberger 1974). Due to its roots, ‘burnout’ is historically a medicalised term used in relation to work and occupations (Neckel 2017). Indeed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) describes burnout as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ (World Health Organisation 2019). However, over time, it has also been recognised that people do not only burnout at work, and that burnout can mean vastly different things to different people. For some people burnout can even become a ‘badge of honour’ within a ‘culture of martyrdom’—a sign of a hard worker or a valiant effort, rather than a failing (Gorski, Lopresti-Goodman, and Rising 2019; Neckel 2017; Rodgers 2010). As a result, the term burnout has been appropriated and adopted across a multitude of settings and contexts. It has become a broad descriptor for the process towards, and the experience of, overwhelming chronic stress, physical and emotional fatigue, and exhaustion that can come from an imbalanced lifestyle where too much energy is expended in pursuit of a specific goal.

This popular notion of burnout is so overwhelmingly accepted that much of the recent research into this phenomenon in the anthropological sphere draws explicitly upon the emotional fatigue thesis (cf. Olding et al. 2021; Tantchou 2014). In the limited anthropological literature on this topic, the term ‘emotional exhaustion’ is used more commonly than burnout to describe similar phenomena where individuals may feel stressed, emotionally wrung out, and disengaged (Hill and Bradley 2010; Quimby 2021). But this term is not well defined and leaves little room for recognition of things like physical exhaustion or fatigue, spiritual depletion, general mental weariness, or other experiences (Neckel 2017; Schaufeli 2017). Burnout is largely under-explored in anthropology, which is surprising given the breadth of its progression into mainstream popular culture and everyday life.

Supporter Perceptions of Burnout

Support work can be incredibly demanding. Here, we refer to ‘support’ and ‘supporters’ as the most unifying term to identify a diverse participant cohort. Other commonly used terms such as ‘advocate’ and ‘activist’ were contested by research participants, with wide-ranging views about to whom and how the terms should apply. However, all participants agreed that their efforts were undertaken in support of people seeking refuge, hence the adoption of ‘supporters’.

Supporters, such as Anne, work to provide various kinds of assistance, be it ‘social, emotional, practical, lobbying and medical and legal support’ (Gosden 2006, 8). The work they do is undertaken with little formal training and relies on the supporters being able to provide or procure the resources needed by people seeking refuge. These include goods and money, but also resources and skills such as time, knowledge, emotional intelligence, cultural awareness, and many other intangible necessities to get the job done (Mann 2003; Mares and Newman 2007; Peterie 2019a; 2019b; Puvimanasinghe et al. 2015). Because the work requires such a diversity of resources and skills, this work is often (but not always) undertaken by retirees, who appear to be more able to meet such needs. Supporters provide friendship and social connections to the people they support, meaning their work is often personal rather than solely transactional in nature (Gosden 2006; Mares and Newman 2007; Peterie 2018; Tilbury 2007). The work can be overwhelming in terms of its physical, emotional, and psychological scope and investment. Encouragement and understanding from friends and loved ones can often be lacking. Additionally, the political terrain is often treacherous or overtly hostile, with bureaucracy and governmentality making it very difficult to achieve meaningful outcomes (Gosden 2006; Peterie 2019b). Participants understood that even in ‘good times’ when incremental small wins and moments of joy are achieved, the next piece of bad news, the next challenge, the next battle is just around the corner. Extreme burnout, akin to that defined by Neckel and Wagner (2017), is an ever-present, looming possibility for most people working in under-funded and under-supported charitable and voluntary work settings, ultimately because the needs frequently outstrip the capacity to meet them. Accordingly, many long-term supporters described themselves as on a pathway to burnout.

Supporters’ understandings of burnout are heavily influenced by the medicalised conceptualisation of burnout and its entailments. Supporters display a high degree of health literacy, describing their experiences through clinical terms they have come into contact with throughout their working and volunteering lives. They have learned about risks posed to them by ‘vicarious trauma’ or ‘secondary trauma’, signs of ‘burnout’, methods of ‘self-care’, and so on (Puvimanasinghe et al. 2015; Robinson 2014). They report feeling exhausted, depressed, overwhelmed, hopeless or helpless with low motivation to engage, which resonates with the work of Herbert Freudenberger (1974) and Christina Malasch (1976). Brian noted he can readily recognise when he is feeling burned out, saying:

Sometimes it’s a feeling: ‘Stuff this! Let’s give it all up! I was a fool to take this on in the first place. Stuff it  … You won’t be able to beat the federal government or things are never going to improve for these people’. And if that lasts more than a day or two, that’s burnout. I feel quite burned out mainly with an almost physical feeling of exhaustion that you are so tired that you just can’t do anything more. For the time being.

Brian’s descriptions share similarities with testimonies of other supporters. Mim explained that she knows she is on the road to burnout when:

Physically I start to [verbally] stutter. I get very short tempered. I think I was really close to it last time my sister came around and she brought her dog, this gorgeous cattle dog, and the dog knocked over a glass of wine with her waggy tail and I just lost it. I would lose my temper. I cry. I want to run away and jump in a hole and pull it in over me … I know then that I need to take time out.

Though these supporters describe many characteristics of medicalised conceptions of burnout, they almost always qualified their experiences of burnout or near-burnout with a suggestion that, for them, it is a temporary state. In the literature, it is suggested that ‘no one expects a spent match to catch fire again’ (Neckel 2017, 22). However, supporters appear to defy expectation, often burning down to the point that they actually say they are spent, only to reignite the next time they come across compelling need.

Passion Fatigue

The kind of dogged determination experienced by supporters that sustains their involvement over periods of many years, and sometimes even decades, can result in what some may be tempted to characterise as ‘compassion fatigue’, though we argue it is actually ‘passion fatigue.’ Compassion fatigue is a term used to describe ‘suffering’ that is felt by a person when they sympathise with others and their circumstances (Berlant 2014). Susan Sontag (2004) argues compassion is an emotion that needs to be translated into action, and failure to ‘do’ something to support the subject or object of compassion leads to boredom, cynicism, or apathy. Compassion fatigue, which describes these undesirable outcomes, has been explored extensively as a social phenomenon (cf. Berlant 2014; Moeller 1999; Sontag 2004; Wuthnow 2012). It is a term often used to describe disengagement from moral and humanitarian challenges on account of a weariness, or growing callousness, as a result of over-saturation of information or requests for action (Berlant 2014). Whilst supporters describe strong distress at the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees, most in this study stop short of equating their emotions to a literal sympathy with those they support. Some supporters indeed described themselves as suffering from compassion fatigue, aligning their experiences with this popularised notion. But compassion fatigue suggests a callous disengagement from the activities and emotions of caring (Berlant 2014). Though supporters are often weary with the actions of the government, ongoing public opposition, and perceived apathy to the plight of people seeking refuge, they are far from disengaged from the cause at its core.

We posit supporters often suffer from passion fatigue, rather than compassion fatigue; that is, supporters often remain devoted to support, despite feeling burned down and depleted. The term aptly describes the tiredness resulting from an inability to stop caring or to fully disengage from the world of support, and all its entailments. Boredom, apathy, or callous lack of care has no place in passion fatigue, though cynicism at the prospect of real change is present among supporters. Supporters experiencing passion fatigue report that whilst their involvement may evolve over time in response to exhaustion or burning down, they feel a fundamental compulsion to carry on. This type of passion that compels people to engage has also been documented elsewhere in the support world (cf. Coombs 2004; Gosden 2006). Dorothy, the co-coordinator of a community support organisation, highlights this, saying:

It is exhausting but you have to transform yourself and keep going. I keep going back to core: it’s meaningful, interesting, stimulating, and helping. Worthwhile. I would want someone to do it for me. You keep going through it in your mind. I’m seeking a meaningful life and work. People rely on us, and we do a good job. The only thing that matters is doing the best we can for them. We have to keep going.

Another supporter, Steph, explained she had experienced burnout throughout almost three decades of involvement. Despite this, she indicates that it is her passion that keeps her going. She said:

When I did face burnout, I did pull back. Perhaps I was lucky because I still had my resilience. I hadn’t lost my sense of purpose; I was just exhausted. It was that sort of thing. I took a break, and I got over it … if you completely lose that sense of justice and never can come back to it, that’s a huge tragedy. If I really feel passionate about something, I will fight to the end of it.

The testimonies of Dorothy and Steph reflect those of many other participants. Participation can wax and wane as supporters navigate the needs of people they support and their own capacity to give. Many supporters describe being some way down a path towards burnout or having come through ‘burnout’ and out the other side, as though they burned down but not completely out. It is their passion that burns them down but also prevents them from becoming paralysed, passive, and emotionless, akin to burnout as per Neckel and Wagner (2017) or fatigued as described by Sontag (2004) and Berlant (2014). South Australian supporters may be weary but, overall, they most certainly are not apathetic, bored, or simply able to walk away.

Passion fatigue also should not be misunderstood as merely the tiredness that results from the constant fight against governmentality, bureaucracy, policy, and an oppositional public; tiredness can also arise from highly rewarding and emotionally exhilarating relationships with people seeking refuge. Though supporters endure many personal and professional challenges through the course of their work, it is incorrect to assume that experiences in the support world only have their basis in compassion (‘suffering with’). Supporters also regularly highlighted the amazing and uplifting experiences they have had with refugees, asylum seekers, and each other. They describe attending births; weddings; sharing important ‘firsts’, like children’s first days at Australian schools and families’ first days at the beach; sharing in and experiencing new foods, dance, and songs from other cultures; seeing people overcome immense struggle to begin to not only survive but thrive in new homes, jobs, and lives. These experiences could not be characterised as suffering. Both are reported by supporters as examples of common side effects of their visits with people seeking refuge. We return to Anne, whose story opened the chapter, as she reflected on her experiences prior to burning ‘down’. She said,

Refugee support is at the extreme end of making a difference. Something intoxicating, being at the coalface is magnetic. I think it is because there are extremes. Despair is deep, but joy is also magnified. I went to a wedding of a refugee man marrying an Australian girl. Her family is conservative, his family are Muslim Iranians, and it was joyous. The extreme emotions are intoxicating, comparable to birth of a grandchild because it is so extraordinary.

It is often assumed positive experiences must only have positive effects; however, even highly rewarding experiences in support can result in fatigue. Positive experiences have been described as conducive to ‘vicarious resilience’ (as opposed to ‘vicarious trauma’), suggesting they buoy supporters’ resilience and continuing involvement (Puvimanasinghe et al. 2015). Testimonies from participants certainly support this, suggesting that having the occasional ‘win’ is vitally important for their sense of achievement. But in the longer term, demands for social interaction from refugees and asylum seekers, keeping up with cultural expectations, dealing with very intense emotions, and the bittersweet reflection upon even very joyous moments can all contribute to passion fatigue.

In the field of support, passion can thus be understood as an enabler, and passion fatigue as a hazard. Passion can drive supporters to do great things, but they must regulate their passion. Managing passion fatigue is, therefore, one of the biggest challenges faced by supporters.

Rekindling Passion: Retreat and Debriefing

For many, engaging in support, particularly over the medium to longer term, is a process of burning down followed by a rekindling of the passion that initially contributed to their involvement. Supporters reported a wide array of personal activities and practices that they engaged in to revive their passion and prevent total burnout. These included exercise, mindfulness practice, gardening, art, craft, music, reading, and spending time with loved ones, though these activities are also often sidelined by pressing support demands (Corrigan 1994). Others reported maladaptive activities such as turning to alcohol to wind down in the face of stress. Outside of personal activities and practices, two dominant strategies emerged as significant ‘protective’ processes for managing potential burnout: practices of retreat and debriefing.

The notion of retreat as a positive and constructive response to stress, exhaustion, or burnout is well-established. Indeed, a whole industry exists to notionally refresh and rejuvenate people by way of wellness retreats, day-spas, meditation classes, and the like. Glossy brochures and therapists suggest that by retreating for a period from what stresses us, we will emerge renewed: once again ready to face the world and its challenges. However, retreat is not simply a clever marketing tool designed to relieve us of money. Retreat is a strategy utilised by mental health professionals and some employers to actively try to prevent burnout (Dahlgren et al. 2020; Salyers et al. 2011). In some cultural spaces, planned and structured periods of retreat are particularly commonplace and considered necessary for healthy work practice, such as in intense medical settings and within religious pastoral care settings (Altounji et al. 2013; Chandler 2009). Here, retreat should not be confused with distancing or disengagement.

Retreat can be understood as a temporary and deliberate action undertaken by supporters to preserve themselves in the face of physical, spiritual, and emotional fatigue. Though supporters rarely engage in organisationally planned, structured, or formalised ‘wellness type’ retreats in relation to their work, they do occasionally engage in mostly self-imposed periods of retreat that allow them to manage burn-down, potential burnout, and passion fatigue. When supporters do actively engage in retreat, it provides space for them to recover their motivation, realign with their moral code, and find the energy to remain engaged in support, even if in a more limited way. Thomas Csordas (2005) argues that our ‘selves’ are constituted by what our bodies feel and not simply what they do. Supporters recognise and often describe that they experience and sense symptoms of burnout and fatigue in embodied ways. They then manage embodied symptoms of burnout and fatigue by engaging in periods of retreat to preserve the self and their longevity in support. For example, Monica said:

I stop doing too much visiting. There is a family who want me to visit and have given me an invitation quite a while ago. I used to visit that family quite often, but I haven’t. I pull back. I feel like I cannot go unless I have got good energy to give. I feel like I need to look after myself.

For Monica, visiting is an activity that burns her down more than other activities that she engages in, such as organising community supporter meetings and fundraising activities, so this is the activity she temporarily retreats from. Monica indicated that when she is feeling physically, emotionally, and spiritually ready, she will once again visit the refugee family to which she refers.

Another supporter, Luke, indicated that for him, burnout is experienced through his body, both physically and mentally, and this is how he senses he needs to retreat for a period. He said:

There have been a few times where I have said to my wife, ‘if I don’t go away for a few days, it is not going to be pretty’. And yeah, that is when I sense I am on the way to burnout. I’d get physical signs of anxiety, like almost mini panic attacks or that kind of thing. Other times, I think it is more like … I can’t actually work out a path forward from here and … an exhaustion that goes along with that … if I don’t shut myself away from everything for a few days, I am not going to be able to come to any sensible decisions out of that. I need to get distance to work through things … So, there are definitely times when I just have to try and limit my engagement.

This ‘shrinking back’ or retreat for a period in response to symptoms of burnout is partially in response to discomfort, but also represents a proactive choice to arrest and prevent the discomfort from proliferating, as discussed by Elaine Scarry (1985) and Csordas (2005). Luke retreats as a means to gain perspective on important decisions or as a preventative measure against his tendency to tackle too many things at once. Retreat is an important tool that assists Luke to make sensible decisions, particularly when determining how much work to take on.

Retreat, though very effective, is often a strategy of last resort, utilised only when a supporter is so burned down, they recognise that their overall involvement in support is threatened by their continuation. Though it often occurs at the eleventh hour, when there is a risk they may burnout to the extent described by Neckel and Wagner (2017), supporters tend to sense when they must retreat in order to prevent burnout and temporarily temper their passion for support so they can carry on in the longer term. This is not to suggest that complete burnout amongst supporters does not happen. However, among this participant cohort, even when supporters describe themselves as burned out, they often indicated they still maintain ongoing, low-level engagement with the support world. Supporters’ recognition of embodied experiences of ‘burn’ and ‘fatigue’ assists them to manage effects of support on their senses of self, identities, and capacity to endure (Csordas 2005; Strathern and Stewart 2011). During periods of retreat, supporters typically find new or alternative ways to connect with social issues (such as through online work or creative efforts) that allow for continuation of passion and identity expression in a way commensurate with their emotional, mental, or material capacity at that time. This allows for escalation and de-escalation of involvement, without completely abandoning the cause or their sense of self and identity as it relates to that cause.

Aside from retreat, a further burnout mitigation strategy lies with supporters being able to find avenues to share their experiences with others in the sector. Supporters suggested that there is not just the desire but also a thirst for opportunities and avenues for ‘debriefing’ about their experiences in support. This thirst is documented elsewhere in the literature (cf. Mahdavi et al. 2023; Ogunsiji et al. 2018). Not unlike ‘burnout’, the notion of ‘debriefing’ has its roots in psychology and formally refers to ‘a structured intervention designed to promote emotional processing of traumatic events through the ventilation and normalisation of reactions and preparation for future experiences’ (Kenardy 1998, 4). However, over time, workplaces, particularly those involved in social work or settings with a high-risk of trauma such as in medical, law enforcement, and military settings, have adopted and adapted debriefing techniques, practices, or services as part of employee wellness programs and the like (Mahdavi et al. 2023; Ogunsiji et al. 2018; Plaggemars 2000). This has led to a variety of understandings and experiences about what ‘debriefing’ is. Though some supporter understandings of debriefing reflect more formalised processes, others use the term debriefing to describe informal ‘talking with like-minded and like-experienced others’. They seek to discuss their experiences with people who really understand the work they do.

Supporters indicated that when they have had the opportunity to discuss their experiences, be it formally or informally, it has been incredibly beneficial to mitigate against burnout. For some this means connecting with others in face-to-face settings, or online or via messaging applications. Supporter, Mim, indicated she has been fortunate in having some opportunities to debrief with others, noting:

For me, what works is human contact. I don’t like meetings, although I call them often. I do go to meetings because they are important … What works for me is friendships with people with similar passions and goals. It is so good to socialise with people, not necessarily to plan or to be doing, but just being together. That is really important to be with like-minded people just to be together.

Another supporter, Freya, says being able to debrief with others assists her to manage her anger at Australia’s immigration regime, policies, and actions. She says:

I talk with my friends because politically we are very engaged, and we follow everything, and we try to find good news sources and so on. We just outrage together … I think it helps to get it out. So, I swing between engaged and disengaged.

Research by Teresa Puvimanasinghe et al. (2015) suggests that the commitment and work satisfaction of supporters is strengthened when they can share their experiences with each other. However, Mim, Freya, and other supporters indicate opportunities for debriefing like these are infrequent; it is often difficult to organise amongst people’s hectic schedules and in the context of competing needs.

Though almost all participants identified that opportunities for debriefing (whether formally or informally) would assist them greatly to protect against and mitigate burnout, many indicated they either did not currently have opportunities for debriefing, or opportunities available to them were not appropriate. There can be many reasons for this, some of which are highlighted in the following testimonies. Helen revealed some of the most traumatic parts of her support work were when she really needed to talk to someone but felt she had no one appropriate to debrief with. She noted one occasion where she tried to talk to a friend who was not mentally or emotionally equipped to hear what she had to say:

Recently I was having a bit of a down day, and I was visiting a friend who doesn’t go anywhere near doing support work because she had been a social worker, was burnt out, and is a very sensitive soul. But I was having a down day, I was having lunch with her, and I just kept talking … you know, it was this dismal story. None of it was the horrific things, but it was things that I was really worried about and scared about …  and angry with the government about. But I cannot do that to people. It is not alright … she doesn’t need all that terribleness. I feel like I need to apologise to her for doing it. But it means that I can’t tell that much. It is isolating.

Another supporter, Daniel, echoed Helen’s sense of isolation. He described how he felt like he was an annoyance to those around him or they were not interested or didn’t really understand when he tried to talk to them:

I’m really wracking my brain to think of someone who was either a person of influence or superior who has actually asked about how I’m going in this kind of work. I don’t think people see this as important work. It is just these annoying people over here doing this [laughs]. Some fellow supporters would sometimes ask ‘how are you going?’ because they get it. But no one in those other areas of my life except for my wife would ask. My supervisor didn’t really ask me, my friends … my core friendship base, this just wasn’t their thing. I think it would have been good to have someone to debrief with … [The work] felt very ad-hoc, a lot of the time. Reactive. But to have a core group of people that you would always be meeting with, not to plan stuff but just ‘hey, how are you going?’ … That would be great, to constantly come back together and support one another.

Daniel’s and Helen’s testimonies indicate that during their support journeys, opportunities for debriefing with others were largely absent, but they felt this would have assisted. These testimonies echo those of many participants who lamented the failure of the support community as a whole to build stronger connections between organisations and individuals. This was most often attributed to lack of time or energy left over for ‘nice to have’ get-togethers. It was felt that these types of connections were luxuries that always gave way to more urgent needs. The perceived absence of connection here is particularly problematic and supporters can very easily find themselves dealing with extremely challenging circumstances alone, increasing the risk of burnout.

Furthermore, supporters working for organisations either reported there were no opportunities for them to debrief at work, or available avenues for them through formal services such as Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) were not appropriate for their needs. Cindy noted:

My role right now is pretty isolating. I am the only person working on a particular project, working with the cohort [of refugees] at the end of the line. I am typically the only one doing this kind of work. It is very hard to have hope for somebody when you know there is no hope. That element of the work is incredibly difficult compared to other types of work that I have done. I am not in a team of people. I often have communication with people at STTARs [Survivors of Torture and Trauma Assistance and Rehabilitation Service] and they hear really difficult stories and are dealing with people who have significant mental health issues. I have heard them say multiple times, ‘we have a team, and we go back, and we each debrief with each other and you come away feeling a lot better’. I think, ‘Gee I don’t have that’. In my previous workplaces that was something I always had.

Cindy also revealed that she used the EAP program in her previous workplace and did not find it useful. She elaborated:

I think what I wanted more out if it was the opportunity to have ongoing conversation, where it seemed that it was giving you resources: ‘Away you go and do your homework’. That was just another pressure. They don’t have any idea about what I do. And I don’t want to explain it.

Being able to debrief with people who really understand the challenges and pressures of support work was a common line of discussion throughout the fieldwork interviews. Often, supporters indicated that formalised debriefing and support services such as EAP providers or other counselling-type services failed to meet their needs because they did not have sufficient understanding of the realities of support work. This is not to say EAP services are not useful, but it highlights the desire and need for avenues of peer-based debriefing that are grounded in peer-to-peer and shared experience (Loudoun et al. 2020). Supporters reported that accessing formalised services could result in their feelings of burnout or fatigue being exacerbated, and they felt services did not really assist them in meaningful ways. Luke said:

How do you even debrief with someone, because no-one gets it? I have had a couple of attempts at seeing a therapist and having conversations with people who are therapists and I just get 15 minutes into explaining all the different things and they are like, ‘of course you’re fucked up’ [laughs].

Several supporters suggested there is a need for debriefing services and spaces that are staffed and run by fellow supporters. Dorothy explained,

The only people who really know how hard it is and what we are doing is us. It is almost impossible to explain, but we know the load and the never-ending, bottomless, exhausting pit that it can be. We are the only ones that know, so we are the only ones we can debrief with. I mean, you can go home from work and tell your partner you had a tough day, but they don’t know why it is that tough and the cumulative build-up of exhaustion in this kind of work—only someone else who is at the coalface can understand that completely.

It is clear from this testimony that there is a thirst for appropriate avenues of debriefing amongst the supporter cohort, but there is a substantial void in this space. Supporters seek peer-to-peer debriefing opportunities with other like-minded and like-experienced individuals and groups, rather than from third-party professional providers or persons who do not understand the intricacies of what they do. However, there are significant obstacles to be overcome: supporters are often time-poor due to the nature and demands of the work, and spending time with each other can take away from time to do the work, which will always take precedence. Nonetheless, desire for debriefing within this cohort is strong and they believe it to be key for preventing burnout.

While debriefing offers a route to greater resilience and sustainability of the support sector, a few participants within the cohort did suggest they had reached a point of significant disengagement. After a decade of commitment to support, Jane explained her decision to go beyond retreat and to more or less entirely disengage. She said:

I just had to withdraw. I feel like I am not banging my head against that wall anymore. I am not ringing up politicians, I am not writing letters. I am not expecting anything. I feel bad for them [refugees], but I can’t do anything. I’m spent … My frustration is with the system, my frustration is with this brick wall. How many letters we have written, how many phone calls we have made, how many petitions we have signed? I still have faith in humankind, and I hope that other people will carry on the banner … I still pick up a pen and write an email but that is about the extent of it. I think I feel sadder, and I feel less optimistic.

For supporters like Jane, burn-down can cause them to participate less and less, to the point where the flickering flame of passion that drove them to the cause in the first place is not enough to spark further engagement.

Conclusion

This article has examined experiences of burnout amongst asylum seeker and refugee supporters. Burnout potentially renders supporters ‘paralysed, passive, and emotionless’ and poses a significant risk to the sustainability of the sector (Neckel and Wagner 2017, 296). While our analysis highlights that whilst supporters draw on popular and medicalised uses of the term ‘burnout’ to talk about their various experiences, they describe these in ways that suggest a more nuanced term is required. One that identifies gradations of ‘burn’ and contends the possibility that supporters burn ‘down’ rather than ‘out’. While supporters do grow weary, they find it difficult to stop caring and completely disengage from the work. Many supporters were found to be adept at managing passion fatigue, with many being highly attuned to their emotional, psychological, and physical capacities to continue providing assistance, recognising physical and psychological signs of burnout, and self-managing through discrete periods of retreat so they can ultimately return to carry on with the work. During periods of emotional turmoil and stress, supporters were also found to highly value peer-to-peer debriefing opportunities and recognise such opportunities may mitigate against the risks of burnout. However, for many, such opportunities happen far too infrequently. Nonetheless, despite the considerable emotional and personal toll that supporters feel when ‘burning down,’ including feelings of grief, sadness, and loss over their altered mode of engagement, our analysis has shown that perhaps the term is too blunt to capture the subtlety of the frustration, exhaustion, and emotional depletion that occurs as part of being a supporter. We contend that burn-down is a process; it is a journey and it can be described. Importantly, we have shown that burn-down does not inevitably lead to burnout. Indeed, the data presented in this paper attest to an instinctual self-preservation and a burning passion for a cause that is seldom fully extinguished.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship [grant number: RTP Scholarship].

Notes

1 The research was conducted in line with ethics clearance number H-2018-209, approved by The University of Adelaide’s Human Research Ethics Committee.