‘I’m in a Dilemma of Coming Back, not Coming Back, What to Do, I’m a Bit Stuck’: Exploring the Wellbeing and Mental-health of Latin American Students in Sydney During COVID-19

ABSTRACT

There is a lack of data exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the wellbeing and mental health on Latin American students in Australia, whose experiences, besides anecdotal evidence from different mass media outlets and social media platforms, remain underrepresented in the significant and rigorous scholarly work that has emerged in 2020 and in 2021. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing and mental health of this sector of the student migrant population through 12 qualitative semi-structured interviews, which were analysed using theoretically informed frameworks to explore the meanings that Latin American students ascribe to their experiences in regard to wellbeing and mental health in the context of the COVID-19. Our findings show that students created their own coping mechanisms and social and familial support networks, as a way of compensating for the lack of access to mental health services. The main factors discouraging students to access counselling and/or psychological support are the consultation costs and provision of these services in English, rather than Spanish or Portuguese.

KEYWORDS:

• Latin American students in Australia
• Covid-19 and international students
• the pandemic
• wellbeing and mental health
• international student migration
• Latin American migration to Australia

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to all participants for sharing their stories and making this project possible. Also we would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of all the participants who gave their time to the interview process and Vek Lewis, who read earlier versions of this article and give us valuable feedback.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Names of participants in our study have been changed in order to preserve their anonymity.

2 Addi Road, weekly distributes emergency food hampers to hundreds of households that have been severely affected by the Covid-19 (Addison Road. 2020. Make a small donation to help feed someone affected by Covid-19 [Online]. Available: https://addiroad.org.au/ [Accessed 14 July 2020]., para 3). It is a not-for profit which was established in 1976 and is one of longest-running community organisations in Australia. During the pandemic, it became an assistance hub for many Latin American students who were unable to return to their countries of origin, and were not only struggling financially, but also seeking support and guidance during these challenging times (Morris et al. 2020. The experience of international students before and during COVID-19: housing, work, study and wellbeing. Sydney: Institute for Public Policy and Governance et al, para 25).

3 Due to the large number of Brazilian students, it was essential for this project to include the experience of a participant from Brazil, but the Portuguese language proficiency of FP is not high enough to conduct interviews in Brazilian Portuguese with the fluency that was possible in Spanish. The Brazilian student who took part in this study approached FP via email stating her willingness to share her story in Spanish for she had lived in Argentina for 8 years prior to coming to Australia, and considered both Argentina and Brazil her home countries. Limited funding prevented us form solving this issue because we could have hired an RA with the necessary skills, lived experience and language proficiency to compensate for this; unfortunately, we only secured funds for transcriptions and gift vouchers.