#50. New Country. New Friends? Refugee Youth Experience of Resettlement in Aotearoa - Dr. Nuzha Saleem

Dr. Nuzha Saleem is a Teaching Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington. She discusses her research working with youth from migrant and refugee backgrounds. She has particularly focused her work around understanding the role of friendships in educational performance, identity and feelings of belonging for people from refugee backgrounds. Fellow Youth wellbeing researcher Niusha Aryan joins as co-host as we learn about Dr. Saleem's transition from neuroscience into social research, her key take aways from working and advocating with people from refugee backgrounds and the development of a game which is designed to encourage friendship and relationship building

Dr. Nuzha Saleem: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/cacr/about/people/students-and-alumni/nuzha-saleem

Chapters

• 0:00 Thank you for 50 Episodes :)
• 1:01 Introductions
• 3:06 Dr. Saleem Transitioning from Neuroscience to Working with Refugees
• 12:44 Research Focus on Refugee and Migrant Youth
• 21:50 Ethical Considerations in Refugee Research
• 24:43 Funding Challenges for Refugee Support
• 29:52 Support available and unavailable for refugees in New Zealand
• 41:05 Family Dynamics and Youth Responsibilities
• 46:09 Cultural Differences and Integration Challenges
• 56:27 Importance of Friendship in Refugee Youth Experiences
• 1:03:10 Feedback from the Game designed by Dr. Saleem
• 1:07:17 Personal Transformation Through Research
• 1:11:51 Key findings from Refugee Experience Research
• 1:15:03 Advice to anyone wanting to do a PhD
• 1:17:35 Dr. Nuzha Saleem's Future research plans

Transcript

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Welcome everybody to the Smooth Brain Society.

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I'm Sahir.

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And just before we started with episode 50, I wanted to give a little message to thank everybody.

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Thank all the people who've been listening to the podcast over the past two years.

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Also wanted to thank all the co-hosts who've been part of the 50 episodes so far

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and Jeremy and Alaap who've done all the artwork which I use and the logo on the

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back and things like that.

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patreon.com um all all the links to everything will be on our website

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smoothbrainsociety.com um and yeah thank you and enjoy the episode welcome

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everybody to the smooth brain society episode 50 it's been i've been doing this for

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two years now incredible um and my and we've got

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A really special guest today, Dr. Nuzha Saleem.

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She is a teaching fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

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Her research areas of interest include educational resilience,

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refugee and migrant background youth,

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identity and belonging.

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Also,

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in addition,

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she is an artist,

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a published author,

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and can often be seen on most of the diversity posts at Victoria University of Wellington.

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But yeah.

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Welcome to the show, Niza.

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Thank you.

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It's a pleasure to be here.

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I'm glad I'm finally on here.

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For those of you who don't know,

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Sahir has asked me a few times and I've always said no for a really long time and

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now he's finally got me,

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so.

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Yes.

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That's the real reason why I said special episode because I've been trying since

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about episode 10 to get Nuzha on and now it's 50.

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So it's been two years in the making.

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And as you know,

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The premise of the show is we have a co-host on and usually the way it goes is the

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co-host has no clue about the research work.

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But in this case, I actually do not know a lot about Nuzha's work, but my co-host today does.

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So Niusha Aryan is on as the co-host.

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She has a background of about eight to nine years in youth work and is currently

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doing a PhD as well as as part of the clinical psychology program at Victoria

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University of Wellington.

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Although at the moment, she just came back from surfing in Hawaii.

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doing neither.

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Her doctoral research explores the psychological well-being of migrant and refugee

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youth in New Zealand specifically.

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She wants to understand how these young people are doing when it comes to

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psychological well-being and what factors facilitate it.

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Is that about right, Niusha?

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Yeah, it's a good little snapshot.

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Awesome.

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See, I remember your work.

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Awesome.

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But yeah, thank you, Niusha, for coming on.

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Welcome, Nuzha.

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We'll start where we start with all our guests.

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And first question is,

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could you give us a little bit of a background into your life and how you decided

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to come in to doing a PhD and your research topic as well?

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Why the focus on refugee and migrant youth?

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um i'm really bad at um a question that's like a four-part question so don't answer

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parts of your question then just feel free to ask me again um yeah so i moved from

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the middle east um to go to otago in dunedin and um i did a double major in

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psychology and neuroscience

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Um,

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and then I did my honors and you get to that point in your life where you're like,

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well,

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what am I going to do now?

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Um, and I was kind of sure that I wanted to go into research, not a hundred percent.

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So I took a year off and I did some research assistant work in my supervisor's lab at that time.

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Um,

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and I was kind of getting more and more in touch with,

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I guess,

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cause of social media and that kind of stuff,

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learning more about the refugee crisis,

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um,

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especially after Syria and more people were crossing or making that Mediterranean crossing.

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And one of the pieces of, um,

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Um,

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information or world news that kind of like made it to my Instagram because my

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Instagram at the time was very curated to just like fun things,

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um,

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was the picture of the little boy washed up on the show in,

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um,

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Greece.

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And I think that really stayed with me.

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It was just one of those things I couldn't shake off.

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And, um, more specifically actually.

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was a picture i remember like a like an illustration of um all of these world

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leaders kind of like standing over i don't know i don't know if this was like a

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really famous picture at that time but it was like a picture that i saw of all

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these world leaders essentially standing over an illustration of his body washed up

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on the show and i think it was very much symbolic of

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The world refugee crisis in that it goes ignored a lot of the time by people in

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power and government officials and those kinds of things.

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And so I guess following that,

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I essentially had this decision to make around,

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I like research,

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I can carry on doing neuropsych or I can shift into something else.

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And I just decided to do this complete 180 shift.

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Um, personally on a personal level, I really needed to move out of Dunedin.

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It was just getting far too small for me.

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Um, and most of my friends were up here in Porniky anyway.

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So I just, I moved up here.

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Um, there was a, the CACR or the cross cultural, what does it stand for?

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Um, yeah, sorry.

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It'll come to me and I'll tell you.

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Um,

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It's a research center, essentially, that does cross-cultural work.

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And so I moved up here to be a part of the center and do that kind of work here.

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Does that answer your question?

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Did I answer all of your parts?

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Yeah, you answered every single part.

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That was very impressive, actually.

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Right.

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But then even within that,

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now that you've moved from,

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say,

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neuroscience work to cross-cultural work,

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even within that,

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you'd have to sort of pick topics or pick sort of what you want to look at or how

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you want to look at something.

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So how was that journey as well?

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Because I feel somebody who's been doing neuroscience, like you said, it's 180.

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So how was that process as well?

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How was that shift into...

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The first thing I want to say is that I quickly kind of realized that my research

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was not cross-cultural.

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So it's one of those like learnings that you take away, right?

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Like you think that you fit in somewhere and then you kind of look at the research

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that's being done within the center.

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And especially at that time, I think more so now my research would probably fit in.

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But at that time,

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it was very academically cross-cultural in the way that they were like looking

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between cultures at certain things.

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around, you know, Hofstede's cultural dimensions, like those kinds of pieces of work.

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And I was very much interested in not really looking between cultures,

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but looking at one specific group,

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which was young people from refugee backgrounds.

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So I didn't quite fit in with the CACR, but

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I guess you could call it like CACR adjacent.

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Like I was, I still had like a supervisor in there and I would go to a lot of the seminars and stuff.

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And in terms of switching out of neuroscience, I do remember it being like a genuine grieving process.

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Like there was a moment in my brain where I went,

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oh my God,

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I'm never going to be able to actually do or like work with

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like brains or like i was in neuropsychology so a lot of like sensation perception

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that kind of stuff um and i just remember going whoa i'm never going to be able to

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do this again and a friend of mine at that time said to me you know neuroscience

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exists like outside of academia right like you can still read books and stuff and i

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went oh yeah okay and and that was that was really just like the only part

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um of that decision that like that was that piece of information helped me kind of

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like switch into making this decision because um it was it was a really hard

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decision it was really hard for me to switch out of something that I loved towards

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something that I felt I needed to do um but yeah I guess in the end like the

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decision to switch into something that I felt I needed to do just

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matched better, aligned better with like a value system.

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And that was really important to me because that was,

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that was kind of a thing that I thought would see me through to like the end of the

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PhD anyway.

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So yeah, so that's kind of how I ended up making that decision.

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And it's quite funny actually,

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because I don't actually think I've read a single neuroscience book since I

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finished my neuroscience degree.

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I just never had the time.

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And then every time you do want to read something, you're just reading things that's like in your

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field because like anyone that's done a phd knows that you you wholly know nothing

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about anything um so you're just like oh i need to know all this information so

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you're just reading all this stuff that's in your field um and i haven't yeah i

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haven't picked up a single book in neuroscience which is quite sad i have a quick

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question just reflecting on that um what is it five years three years since i've

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finished my phd no since you started your phd

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Um,

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I took four years in total to do my PhD,

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but five and a half,

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if you include the one and a half years I was stuck overseas during COVID.

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Oh, that's right.

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Yeah.

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Um, so since that time, do you regret anything?

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Do you want to go back and do neuroscience or are you happy with where your academic trajectory has now?

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No, no, absolutely no regrets in having switched out.

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Yeah, no way.

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Um,

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I think especially because one of the things that really kept me doing my PhD was

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feeling like there was,

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you know,

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like that I really felt like strongly about the topic.

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And,

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you know,

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like with neuroscience,

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I was passionate about the topic,

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but I don't know that it was like values aligned.

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It felt like a fun project, you know, like something that you're really curious about.

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Like, cool, I'd love to do that, you know.

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Um, but it didn't.

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And I mean, you know, for a lot of people, that's a good enough reason to do it.

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That's a great reason to do it.

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You know, if you find something fun.

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Um, but I think looking back on like the last four years, I would have definitely needed something more.

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Like I would have definitely needed,

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um,

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something that felt like I could,

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and I don't know,

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it's probably going to sound like cheesy,

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but just like,

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like you could feel it in your heart kind of,

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you know,

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like the work felt important.

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Especially as you start working with the community,

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you're like,

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oh my God,

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I can't believe I thought I was going to do neuroscience,

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you know,

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and you feel like a sense of accountability towards doing that kind of work.

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So then it just felt like true to me.

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Yeah.

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That's nice.

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Going back to reading neuroscience books, you can listen to the podcast instead.

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It works just as well.

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This is true.

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I do listen to a lot of the shorts of the podcast.

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I love the little like the reels that you do on Instagram.

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But I'm not on Instagram anymore.

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So we'll see about that.

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We need to find a different way to get the reels to you.

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You're just constantly trying to get to me.

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From halfway around the world, isn't it?

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Yes.

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Okay.

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I want to ask you because we've skirted around it a little bit,

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but what was the actual topic of your research or the topic of your PhD mainly,

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but then you've done some research afterwards as well.

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So what was it focused on?

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So I'm not going to tell you the topic of my thesis because I wrote the topic of my

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thesis as the last thing I did before I submitted my thesis.

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And anyone who submitted the thesis knows the headspace you're in before you hit

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that like submit button.

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It is not a headspace where you want to type any more words.

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And just as you like type in massive discussion and they're like,

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now summarize this whole thing into 15 words.

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I was like, and then in my, it's actually quite funny.

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My examiner's feedback,

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one of my feedback was,

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this is a really amazing thesis,

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but can we please change the title?

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So I did end up changing the title.

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to something that is much more of like a mouthful.

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Um,

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but it is around,

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um,

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young people from refugee backgrounds and specifically here in Aotearoa and,

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um,

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what it is that they need to have like successful resettlement,

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um,

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and to thrive,

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um,

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in schools and within the education sector.

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So not just schools, but like university and that sort of stuff.

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So that's kind of broadly what I looked at.

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Did you have a follow-up question?

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I'm going to ask a follow-up question now.

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So when you say what...

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Oh, you looked at what they could do.

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So was your research more about outcome focused as in how certain things can be

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fixed or was it more about describing the problem or the issues faced or the

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barriers faced by people or refugee migrant youth?

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um so when i eventually switched into sorry i'm gonna have to give you a little bit

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of context to then tell you what it's about of course when i switched into um doing

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this mahi i you know obviously i had no background in it like i didn't have a

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political science background i didn't have a i didn't even do a single social

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psychology paper in undergrad

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So I had like zero knowledge.

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And so obviously like Googling a lot of this stuff to learn and then meeting people

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in the community and that kind of stuff.

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And I was very aware that there was like this discrepancy between what I was

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hearing from people in the community and what I was reading online.

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And so that was my first little bit of, oh, what's going on here.

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And primarily I think the difference was that

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A lot of the literature was pathologizing refugees.

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A lot of it was around like PTSD, trauma, like depression, anxiety, those kinds of things.

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And then here I was kind of like meeting these people from who have a refugee background,

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who've come here from situations that are that

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the way the literature describes, to be honest, was the exact same situation.

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You know,

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like there wasn't any difference in terms of like the description of what they were

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or had been through,

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but they were like in schools,

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they were doing really well.

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They were getting really good grades,

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not only just getting good grades,

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but like,

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you know,

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top of their class,

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straight A students.

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And obviously some of that had to do with the fact that like I was in a university environment.

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So those are the kinds of people I was meeting.

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But eventually once you meet friends of friends of friends of friends, and then you,

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going to schools and you're going to community events and stuff, you meet a whole array of people.

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And I am not a clinical psychologist.

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So I wasn't interested in like anxiety and depression and those things,

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um,

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anyway,

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but I was really interested in like what is happening here.

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And very early on, I think I felt this responsibility to tell the truth.

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And, um, I kind of wanted to change that narrative or, um,

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move away from kind of like a deficit-based narrative into a strengths-based one

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and tell like a more balanced story.

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I don't actually think that like those statistics are not true.

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I just think that the conversation has like disproportionately shifted into trauma

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and anxiety and depression and those kinds of things.

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like intention or attempt was to use my thesis as a way to like slowly kind of move

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that maybe a little bit more to the center.

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And so the,

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my first study was a quant study because we,

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to the best of my knowledge,

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we don't actually have any quantitative information about young people from refugee

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backgrounds here in New Zealand.

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And I kind of went, well, I need a starting point.

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Um,

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and when I started my thesis in like 2019,

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there was very little information out there about young people from refugee backgrounds,

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how they would have been in schools.

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Cause that's essentially what I was interested in.

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Um,

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and I found the youth 19 study,

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which was,

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uh,

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which is the largest adolescent like health study in New Zealand.

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And it was at that time, the only study I could find that had asked, um, people.

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did you come to New Zealand as a refugee?

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So it was able to like capture the cohort of people that I was interested in.

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And that's kind of where I started and you could select questions and that kind of stuff.

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So the first study was really just an exploratory study to give me something to

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kind of like go,

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okay,

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this is what overall we kind of know.

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And now I can kind of take this and then figure out what my next study is.

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Um,

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my second study was a call study,

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which,

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um,

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was really where I think the,

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like,

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um,

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you know,

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like the nitty gritty kind of stuff came out.

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Um, and I basically just went in there asking young people, um, what their educational experiences were.

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And the other thing I was really interested in was that I was interested in looking

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at it from like three different time points.

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So again,

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the way that young people from refugee backgrounds,

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or even just people with a former refugee background,

(00:19:32):
like adults,

(00:19:34):
generally get surveyed or sampled or whatever is once they're in a Western context

(00:19:38):
or a post resettlement context,

(00:19:40):
that's what we call it,

(00:19:40):
like,

(00:19:41):
just a context where you have gone from your native country,

(00:19:45):
you've moved to a transmigration point,

(00:19:48):
and then moved to a Western country is,

(00:19:52):
and I kind of

(00:19:53):
Generally, the literature will call that Western country post resettlement context.

(00:19:56):
And then everything else is pre resettlement.

(00:19:59):
And so I really just wanted to look at all three time points because I kind of went,

(00:20:06):
well,

(00:20:07):
it's really weird that someone would ask about your life at this specific place as

(00:20:11):
if like nothing else had kind of happened or like led up to that point.

(00:20:15):
Like that's not even true for any of us.

(00:20:17):
You know, like that's not true for someone that was like born and raised here.

(00:20:23):
who's in high school.

(00:20:24):
Like if you just ask a high schooler what's happening in high school without kind

(00:20:27):
of gauging what's happening in like middle school,

(00:20:29):
that's really weird.

(00:20:31):
And so I was, I really wanted to know like what had happened in their native countries for them to move.

(00:20:38):
And I also wanted to know like,

(00:20:39):
and this came up in interviews,

(00:20:41):
which was just an organic way that the interviews would happen,

(00:20:44):
I think.

(00:20:44):
But like, who are they as a student in their native countries?

(00:20:49):
You know, like we all got to have that experience without,

(00:20:52):
any disruption right to some extent and so there's like this like like who were you

(00:20:58):
as a young person when you were just being raised without any like pressures um of

(00:21:04):
like war conflict or whatever um and so I asked all those three time points and

(00:21:10):
then my last study um which knew she was a part of which was really great

(00:21:15):
Um,

(00:21:16):
was an application study and that was study was entirely because I felt obligated

(00:21:22):
to give something back to the community,

(00:21:25):
um,

(00:21:26):
and move away from kind of extractive research methods that,

(00:21:32):
um,

(00:21:33):
academic research is just so well known for.

(00:21:37):
Um, yeah.

(00:21:38):
And so I use a lot of like social psych theory, um, to develop a game

(00:21:44):
and then tested the game.

(00:21:45):
And so my third study was kind of a piloting of that game.

(00:21:51):
Within the field,

(00:21:51):
there's sometimes kind of ethical concerns around asking about pre-journey and

(00:21:57):
journey experiences.

(00:22:00):
So is that something you kind of thought about just in terms of how it can be used?

(00:22:04):
um,

(00:22:04):
later on,

(00:22:05):
once you've collected that data,

(00:22:07):
how that data can be used to kind of affect,

(00:22:10):
um,

(00:22:11):
people's kind of immigration applications and so forth and a whole host of other things.

(00:22:15):
Is that something that you kind of thought about?

(00:22:17):
How did you navigate that?

(00:22:19):
How did you kind of mitigate that within your question?

(00:22:26):
Um, I, I remember getting my,

(00:22:34):
revisions back from the ethics committee and the thing that they were mostly

(00:22:39):
focused on was like re-traumatizing um the youth that i was going to speak to they

(00:22:47):
were not really concerned with how i was going to use that information mostly

(00:22:50):
because i think the ethics committee is relatively good at um keeping data

(00:22:56):
anonymized and that kind of stuff um so like even when i submitted my um

(00:23:03):
thesis to the library I could submit a redacted version so in that version I kind

(00:23:10):
of just like took up or any um I did not not even identifying information but like

(00:23:16):
in my original thesis I had obviously pseudonyms but I also had biographies um to

(00:23:24):
my participants to give the reader context I don't think

(00:23:30):
that someone just walking off the street should have access to that information.

(00:23:35):
So I took all that information out and,

(00:23:38):
um,

(00:23:40):
I do think it might like,

(00:23:41):
if you're a person just downloading my thesis of the library and reading it,

(00:23:44):
it might be a little bit difficult to follow.

(00:23:47):
Cause I kind of wrote a lot of it based on the fact that the reader had read that,

(00:23:50):
but again,

(00:23:51):
it came down to that,

(00:23:52):
right.

(00:23:52):
It came down to like, I don't want people to be able to access this information and

(00:23:57):
to put my participants in a situation where they might be able to be identified.

(00:24:03):
Um,

(00:24:04):
and just kind of constantly,

(00:24:05):
I guess,

(00:24:05):
like keeping it at the back of my mind,

(00:24:07):
um,

(00:24:08):
being really,

(00:24:08):
really clear over and over again with my participants about like where this

(00:24:12):
information is going to go.

(00:24:14):
And then also just like giving my participants,

(00:24:17):
um,

(00:24:19):
things like not just their transcripts,

(00:24:21):
but like parts of my thesis.

(00:24:24):
to read and like decide if they're okay with kind of that being out there in the world.

(00:24:30):
Yeah.

(00:24:31):
I think it's just like just being careful and being open with your participants and

(00:24:36):
like just transparency.

(00:24:37):
Yeah.

(00:24:38):
Does that answer your question?

(00:24:39):
Yeah.

(00:24:40):
Yeah.

(00:24:43):
you brought up a lot of different points, um, in your answer there.

(00:24:49):
And there were so many different topics, which I wanted to touch on.

(00:24:52):
The first,

(00:24:53):
the first one,

(00:24:53):
which I wanted to touch on was also links back to someone who had come on when we

(00:24:59):
had done a refugee special episode,

(00:25:00):
Kodrian Ishai.

(00:25:02):
I think you know him.

(00:25:04):
Um,

(00:25:05):
And he spoke a little bit about how trauma is often used.

(00:25:14):
He hates the idea that trauma is used,

(00:25:16):
but he says the trauma is often used as a key source for funding for anything

(00:25:22):
refugee related.

(00:25:23):
And...

(00:25:25):
Do you feel that as someone who is clearly focused on the more positive aspects,

(00:25:31):
do you feel that it is that case?

(00:25:33):
Do you think that it is a lot harder to sort of find funding or get money for like

(00:25:40):
sort of positive approaches or showcasing positive results and you need to kind of

(00:25:45):
highlight trauma and highlight PTSD and highlight those numbers in order to get

(00:25:50):
governments active or any funding resources active?

(00:25:56):
Um,

(00:25:58):
I think that has been the case,

(00:26:01):
um,

(00:26:02):
especially,

(00:26:03):
you know,

(00:26:04):
a lot of this work has been done in Australia,

(00:26:06):
like as in,

(00:26:07):
in terms of when I was doing my thesis,

(00:26:09):
just to be able to get some,

(00:26:11):
um,

(00:26:12):
anchoring,

(00:26:13):
I would use a lot of,

(00:26:14):
um,

(00:26:16):
research that had been done in Australia.

(00:26:17):
And I spoke to someone, uh, very early on in my thesis journey who spoke about this exact point of like,

(00:26:26):
the need for researchers and health professionals to highlight the,

(00:26:36):
you know,

(00:26:36):
mental health statistics and stuff to show or that the government only responds if

(00:26:44):
you portray a certain group as a health burden.

(00:26:48):
And

(00:26:51):
I do think that that is a way to get funding.

(00:26:57):
I don't think that that's the only way to get funding.

(00:27:01):
And I think for me,

(00:27:05):
I would much rather tell the truth and get funding than blow something out of proportion,

(00:27:11):
contributing ultimately to like a negative stereotype and get funding.

(00:27:17):
And

(00:27:20):
There are so many different ways,

(00:27:22):
like even with my study,

(00:27:23):
when though it was strengths based,

(00:27:25):
I often would ask them about the challenges that we're facing in education.

(00:27:29):
And I think one of the,

(00:27:30):
like,

(00:27:31):
one of the advantages that I had was because I went no,

(00:27:34):
like just hard pass to all the trauma stuff.

(00:27:36):
They got to kind of solely focus in education and it's not like it's all great.

(00:27:44):
Right.

(00:27:44):
So they do speak about challenges in education.

(00:27:48):
And I think there is a way that we can frame those challenges in a way that makes

(00:27:54):
it a governmental responsibility to respond to those challenges.

(00:28:03):
And so I think so much of it is also just around framing, right?

(00:28:10):
Like if you're gonna as a government decide that you're gonna respond

(00:28:16):
to a crisis that's happening and bring people over here,

(00:28:19):
then it is equally your responsibility to figure out how you're going to resettle

(00:28:23):
these people successfully.

(00:28:28):
And that's not just their health, but their education, their housing, all of those things.

(00:28:36):
And so I think you're right in the way that,

(00:28:40):
yes,

(00:28:40):
that's historically what's been done for a really long time.

(00:28:45):
And I think that everyone else now kind of coming up,

(00:28:50):
especially here,

(00:28:50):
because we have so much like great examples of how things have been done overseas,

(00:28:56):
really need to think about like what that means in the long term and then move away

(00:29:02):
from it.

(00:29:02):
Because ultimately,

(00:29:06):
at least for me,

(00:29:07):
because I don't come from a refugee background,

(00:29:08):
I think like against some of it is also positionality,

(00:29:11):
right?

(00:29:11):
Like it's fair for Qadrian to say that because he's from a refugee background.

(00:29:15):
But for me,

(00:29:15):
as someone who doesn't come from a refugee background,

(00:29:18):
I think how I contribute the narrative is really important.

(00:29:22):
And so I don't know that I want to tell half-truths to get a piece of funding.

(00:29:31):
And I also just kind of want to stay in my lane because,

(00:29:34):
like I said,

(00:29:36):
there are challenges in education that are real challenges that we can use

(00:29:43):
to get funding because it's not like it's great there, you know?

(00:29:49):
Yeah, yeah.

(00:29:52):
Yeah,

(00:29:52):
so,

(00:29:53):
I mean,

(00:29:54):
as you've been researching in this space,

(00:29:55):
working in this space,

(00:29:57):
I mean,

(00:29:57):
I know that you yourself have done some community work while you've been doing your PhD.

(00:30:02):
um however you found i guess some of your learnings around like what supports there

(00:30:07):
are for young people you know refugee youth that are coming to Aotearoa um are they

(00:30:13):
well supported um is this a priority for the government is there research in this

(00:30:18):
area like how have you kind of found the field to be and um yeah yeah what are some

(00:30:24):
kind of learnings of the last few years um so

(00:30:32):
What I understand about that is that when they get here,

(00:30:35):
they are all given a,

(00:30:39):
and Kodrian might have shared this around service provision,

(00:30:41):
a volunteer from the Red Cross who kind of supports them with like getting into

(00:30:46):
schools and stuff.

(00:30:48):
The first issue with that is that it's a volunteer position.

(00:30:52):
So if they kind of decide tomorrow that like they're too busy and they don't want

(00:30:56):
to do it,

(00:30:56):
then it takes a really long time again for a young person or a family really to be

(00:31:03):
paired up again with another volunteer.

(00:31:06):
And sometimes that results in things like they don't enroll in school as quickly as

(00:31:11):
they need to because they don't actually know where to go,

(00:31:13):
what schools are appropriate,

(00:31:14):
or even just the education system.

(00:31:16):
As a whole,

(00:31:18):
I would say that in speaking to a lot of the people,

(00:31:21):
the biggest gap was that for whatever reason,

(00:31:25):
they were not being informed of how the education system here worked.

(00:31:31):
Um, which when you speak to them seems like such an easy fix, right?

(00:31:36):
Like, like you, you sit them down at the first day and you go, this is what you need to do for this year.

(00:31:42):
The next year comes and goes, this is what you need to do for next year.

(00:31:45):
You know?

(00:31:46):
Um, and then.

(00:31:48):
terms of like the six weeks so when they get here they spend six weeks um at the

(00:31:53):
mangere resettlement center um and they do orientation there and even there they

(00:32:00):
just get so much information that it's just an information overload and they just

(00:32:04):
don't know what's appropriate for when right because they get like a six week

(00:32:08):
english intensive language training the parents get a workshop on how to raise

(00:32:12):
their kids um here

(00:32:15):
Uh,

(00:32:15):
some of them get like,

(00:32:17):
and then you get information about school,

(00:32:18):
you get information about housing,

(00:32:20):
you get just everything.

(00:32:21):
Right.

(00:32:22):
And it's, it's just a lot.

(00:32:23):
Like I do, I did a one day international orientation, student orientation.

(00:32:28):
And I was like, you know, like that's just one day.

(00:32:31):
This is like six weeks of information and learning a new language.

(00:32:35):
Um, cause I can imagine it's really hectic.

(00:32:38):
And then, then it's like, okay, well we, now we don't know.

(00:32:42):
what information we need to lean into as different situations arise, right?

(00:32:49):
And so with the people that I spoke to,

(00:32:52):
there was a lot around just not knowing how the education system worked.

(00:32:55):
So they all came from a very like classic education system.

(00:32:59):
And I think I use the word classic because it's the education system I came from.

(00:33:02):
where you just do like subjects and those subjects follow through all the way to the end of high school.

(00:33:09):
And you can pick and drop subjects as you move through grades, but you do a whole subject.

(00:33:13):
We didn't have like a credit system.

(00:33:16):
And so they didn't understand that they had to take a certain number of credits to get a certain grade.

(00:33:22):
And so like this one young person said that they did like all of it,

(00:33:26):
like everything that was offered that year,

(00:33:28):
they did.

(00:33:29):
And they only got to the end.

(00:33:30):
And then the teacher was like, why did you do all of this?

(00:33:32):
And they were like, well, what was I supposed to do?

(00:33:35):
And they were like, we only supposed to this number of credits for this.

(00:33:38):
And they were like, oh, well, nobody told me that, you know?

(00:33:41):
So like, there's this just like lack of understanding of how things work in general.

(00:33:48):
I do think that in terms of like post high school,

(00:33:52):
there's quite a few scholarships I've been seeing come up for people from refugee backgrounds,

(00:33:58):
which has been really cool.

(00:34:00):
But I think there's some sort of gap that exists between the young person and then

(00:34:04):
getting that information to the young person.

(00:34:07):
And so just within just like the actual help that the government affords to them,

(00:34:15):
you have to really be falling,

(00:34:19):
like not falling,

(00:34:20):
but like you have to be really struggling in school for a teacher to then access

(00:34:25):
funding from the Ministry of Education through a refugee student advisor.

(00:34:29):
So I think there are like six or seven across the country and then they get in

(00:34:33):
touch and then they provide whatever resources the teacher needs or whatever

(00:34:37):
resources the student needs.

(00:34:39):
But that's only under like special circumstances.

(00:34:43):
And so,

(00:34:44):
What's interesting about that is that it's great because in some ways,

(00:34:49):
you know,

(00:34:49):
you do have provision for the students that are not able to do super well within

(00:34:55):
the system as soon as they get here.

(00:34:57):
But the unfair or

(00:35:01):
I don't know if unfair is the right word,

(00:35:03):
but like the unfortunate thing is that you could have students that are just

(00:35:09):
struggling in other ways.

(00:35:10):
Like it's not just academics in school that kids are concerned about.

(00:35:15):
And so there are all these other ways that kids could be struggling that has no provision attached to it.

(00:35:23):
Yeah, and so there are like a whole bunch of kids that are probably like falling between the cracks.

(00:35:29):
And there are no services that they can then access.

(00:35:33):
Um,

(00:35:33):
and,

(00:35:34):
and,

(00:35:34):
you know,

(00:35:34):
like one of the questions I asked young people were like,

(00:35:37):
um,

(00:35:38):
what's,

(00:35:39):
um,

(00:35:41):
what's,

(00:35:41):
uh,

(00:35:41):
I think one of the questions I asked them was what's a question you would ask

(00:35:45):
someone if you were in my position.

(00:35:47):
Um, and they would always talk about provision.

(00:35:49):
Like, um, I, like I would ask about, um, what, um, access they had to scholarships.

(00:35:55):
I would ask about like what access they had to, um,

(00:35:59):
you know, tutors and doing homeworks, you know, like that kind of stuff.

(00:36:04):
That's like what they wanted to know about.

(00:36:06):
Yeah.

(00:36:08):
So there's a real need there for other services and like,

(00:36:12):
you know,

(00:36:12):
everything else,

(00:36:12):
like everything else I heard of,

(00:36:13):
like,

(00:36:14):
like homework clubs,

(00:36:15):
all of that was like community put together,

(00:36:18):
you know,

(00:36:18):
like someone in the community realized they didn't have it,

(00:36:20):
put it together by community members,

(00:36:22):
volunteers doing stuff here,

(00:36:24):
you know,

(00:36:25):
like someone just meeting someone,

(00:36:27):
realizing they needed a tutor.

(00:36:28):
Okay.

(00:36:28):
I'll do that.

(00:36:29):
Like,

(00:36:31):
Yeah, it was, it was, um, sad.

(00:36:35):
I suppose to see that there was so few services.

(00:36:40):
I just want,

(00:36:41):
I wanted to start with the,

(00:36:43):
the six weeks,

(00:36:43):
which you said orientation,

(00:36:44):
because that hit me in the sense that the international orientation is one or two

(00:36:49):
days and you get so much information,

(00:36:51):
you forget about it,

(00:36:53):
uh,

(00:36:53):
or there's no way you can remember it.

(00:36:55):
And then for someone who is essentially has been moved

(00:37:01):
across the world in six weeks you're getting everything that being told to you that

(00:37:07):
you need to do and then for the kids not knowing it's because probably the for

(00:37:11):
parents it probably wasn't a priority that the kids need to know this it's not that

(00:37:17):
all the kids have been told they might be I do not know how the services work but

(00:37:22):
that there's that level of understanding which can also go that level of care of

(00:37:25):
priority of there might be a sort of

(00:37:28):
what's it Maslow's hierarchy of needs kind of thing where,

(00:37:31):
okay,

(00:37:31):
first housing and food,

(00:37:32):
then we can worry about how many courses you take in school.

(00:37:38):
And yeah,

(00:37:39):
the,

(00:37:40):
and that in itself,

(00:37:42):
how that,

(00:37:43):
how it's such a simple thing,

(00:37:44):
which can potentially be fixed without much of an effort,

(00:37:47):
but it just needs to be paid attention to.

(00:37:50):
Yeah.

(00:37:51):
I think like if I was,

(00:37:53):
if I was to fix it,

(00:37:55):
the first thing I would do is give them information when they need,

(00:37:58):
information because the biggest disadvantage of that is the chucking of information, like all at once.

(00:38:08):
I will,

(00:38:08):
however,

(00:38:08):
say that the young people that I spoke to,

(00:38:11):
there's mixed feelings about this because the overarching message you get is that

(00:38:20):
it's awful and it's too much information.

(00:38:22):
But when you speak to the young people,

(00:38:25):
a lot of them said it was really nice because that's where they made their first friends.

(00:38:31):
and the other thing that I noticed about what they were saying it wasn't just

(00:38:37):
making friends it was the fact that they were making friends with people who they

(00:38:42):
saw had been in a similar situation to them and so there was some sort of bonding

(00:38:46):
in that and there was a real sadness with leaving that place because once you go

(00:38:52):
there and you're there for six weeks you then get resettled in a different part of

(00:38:56):
the country

(00:38:57):
So it's not always the case that you would then get resettled in the same place as

(00:39:02):
this friend that you had made,

(00:39:03):
right?

(00:39:04):
And a lot of the young people also said that it was the first time they were like,

(00:39:09):
beginning to get some sort of like formalized education and there was so much

(00:39:14):
excitement in that like oh we're going to school we can like pack a bag and you

(00:39:19):
know like head to school and we're there for x amount of time and even if it was

(00:39:23):
like two hours and they were just learning English it was just such an exciting

(00:39:27):
time for them um so I do think that like

(00:39:33):
Again, depending on what age you come here, I think that's a big factor.

(00:39:37):
You are either really excited because you're kind of sensing some level of safety

(00:39:42):
or you're making friends.

(00:39:45):
And so the information overload is probably something a lot of the adults feel

(00:39:52):
because they're responsible for these kids,

(00:39:55):
but also responsible for getting a job,

(00:39:58):
sending the kids to school,

(00:40:01):
making a home i suppose because they've been putting like you know social housing

(00:40:05):
that kind of stuff so the information overload definitely is for the adults and i

(00:40:12):
think the kids maybe like sense that anxiety and then especially because once they

(00:40:18):
get reallocated or resettled in whatever part of the country they then have to kind

(00:40:25):
of think about like

(00:40:26):
They obviously want to go to school.

(00:40:28):
Maybe it's not a priority for their parents.

(00:40:30):
Like I had everything between it took me two months to get into school or like half

(00:40:34):
a year to get in school to we got put in social housing.

(00:40:39):
The next day I went to school.

(00:40:42):
So there's such a big difference between the way kids are getting into school or

(00:40:47):
the timeframe of when kids are getting to school.

(00:40:50):
And I think it's a combination of the priority that parents have

(00:40:54):
And the lack of like someone going like a volunteer that's like,

(00:40:58):
okay,

(00:40:59):
here's what we're going to do in the week.

(00:41:02):
Yeah.

(00:41:02):
Like the week following resettlement.

(00:41:04):
Yeah.

(00:41:05):
Did young people speak about any of,

(00:41:08):
you know,

(00:41:09):
kind of know that often with refugee youth,

(00:41:11):
they pick up things and learn things a lot faster than their parents.

(00:41:14):
They'll pick up the language,

(00:41:16):
they'll learn the systems and yeah,

(00:41:20):
and it can take the parents a while to,

(00:41:22):
to do that stuff.

(00:41:23):
And also they're doing a million other things.

(00:41:25):
And so the young people end up kind of taking on a bit more responsibility.

(00:41:29):
Did your young people kind of speak to that a little bit?

(00:41:32):
I don't actually know.

(00:41:33):
I actually don't know what the age of your participants were.

(00:41:37):
And I feel like I should know this because I've read your thesis.

(00:41:41):
You're like, you're probably like the only person who's actually read parts of my thesis.

(00:41:45):
So it's fine that you don't know.

(00:41:51):
I had such a mixed group.

(00:41:53):
So I had between 18 and 19 and 24.

(00:42:01):
But it was also like after I had done all of my interviews,

(00:42:05):
it also became significant to me that I had a group of young people that had been

(00:42:10):
in New Zealand for like less than 10 years.

(00:42:14):
And then a group of young people who had come here much, much younger.

(00:42:17):
So had been in New Zealand for much longer.

(00:42:20):
And so it really depended.

(00:42:22):
on like who they were,

(00:42:25):
but in general,

(00:42:27):
across the board,

(00:42:29):
all the young people picked up language quicker than their parents because they all

(00:42:32):
started going to school.

(00:42:34):
And then once they started picking up language,

(00:42:37):
there was definitely that like swift,

(00:42:39):
swift transition into the young person becoming the adult,

(00:42:45):
helping their parents like navigate a lot of like form filling and correspondence

(00:42:50):
with their teachers and

(00:42:52):
um taking their parents to doctors offices and those kinds of things um which is

(00:42:58):
which absolutely was like a big part of like one of my one of the three themes in

(00:43:02):
my entire thesis was family dynamics um because it was a big part of um what they

(00:43:09):
would talk about um but again i think you know like even like when you think about

(00:43:16):
what the literature says about that a lot of the time the literature speaks about

(00:43:19):
it as um

(00:43:22):
a burden that the young people feel that the parents put on their young people, on their kids.

(00:43:29):
And I just, that was, I don't know.

(00:43:33):
I don't know.

(00:43:33):
Like I would love to sit and listen to the other people's recordings about this

(00:43:36):
because like over and over again,

(00:43:38):
what I could hear was that the kids were also just so happy to support their parents.

(00:43:43):
You know, like that was such a wholesome narrative around that.

(00:43:49):
And like this idea of like,

(00:43:52):
We want to do well so that we can help our parents.

(00:43:55):
We want to do well so that we can send money back home to people that we left behind was a big thing.

(00:44:02):
We want to do well so that we can support the community that supported us when we got here.

(00:44:08):
So part of what they have done or what they continue to do, they see as a way of giving back.

(00:44:19):
to their parents.

(00:44:20):
Yeah.

(00:44:21):
Um,

(00:44:21):
so I don't know that like,

(00:44:23):
and I mean,

(00:44:23):
you know,

(00:44:23):
they,

(00:44:24):
they,

(00:44:24):
and it's the way they speak about it as well.

(00:44:26):
They'll talk about it.

(00:44:27):
Like, yeah, like it really prevented me from like making friends or like hanging out.

(00:44:32):
Cause I had to be at home to do this,

(00:44:33):
but you know,

(00:44:34):
like I was,

(00:44:35):
I was so happy to help,

(00:44:36):
you know,

(00:44:37):
like things like that.

(00:44:37):
They'll say it in one breath.

(00:44:39):
And so it's kind of hard to like read a paragraph of script and go,

(00:44:43):
I'm just going to ignore this and just focus on the top bit.

(00:44:46):
It just seems like such a disservice.

(00:44:50):
But, yeah, that's kind of what I got.

(00:44:52):
I got one of my sub-themes was education is a luxury that must be paid forward.

(00:45:00):
Yeah.

(00:45:00):
Show us how important that nuance is, right?

(00:45:02):
Yeah.

(00:45:02):
Yeah.

(00:45:07):
Yeah,

(00:45:07):
because I feel as someone who is not in that space,

(00:45:10):
the top headline is what you'd most likely associate with.

(00:45:14):
Be like, oh, kids are probably more burdened, don't really get to make friends, so and so.

(00:45:19):
But like you said, if you look at the nuance, it's a lot different.

(00:45:24):
It doesn't paint the same picture.

(00:45:26):
I mean, it's called stuff in the literature like familial acculturative gap.

(00:45:30):
That's what it's called.

(00:45:31):
It's the gap that you have with your family from having come to a culture that's different and the

(00:45:36):
uptake of that culture um is different to the uptake of the culture for your family

(00:45:42):
and then all of the challenges that come as a result of this uptake being difficult

(00:45:47):
different like communication you know styles parenting styles all that kind of

(00:45:52):
stuff and there's absolutely nothing about like you know the kids feeling

(00:45:59):
like it's a pleasure almost some in hindsight you know for them to have been able

(00:46:04):
to do that for their parents yeah I don't know can I ask then why they were the

(00:46:10):
differences between where between the different refugee backgrounds so where

(00:46:16):
migrants came from were there any differences there did does that play a role like

(00:46:21):
between

(00:46:22):
So between countries,

(00:46:24):
for example,

(00:46:26):
just for context,

(00:46:28):
one of my friends works in Germany and she said there's a big difference between

(00:46:34):
Ukrainian versus Syrian refugees,

(00:46:36):
not just in how they were treated,

(00:46:37):
that's one thing,

(00:46:38):
but also,

(00:46:39):
of course,

(00:46:40):
uptake for some was way easier than others.

(00:46:44):
Did you see- Uptake of what?

(00:46:45):
Like being able to,

(00:46:48):
what do you say,

(00:46:50):
be able to fit within culture,

(00:46:51):
picking up language and so on was easier for some than others or volunteers of

(00:46:58):
being more willing to help or more willing to help one type of refugee over others.

(00:47:03):
Yeah.

(00:47:06):
Yeah, I didn't want to say it, but sure.

(00:47:09):
You know.

(00:47:11):
But I think my thing was more about just whether the country they came from had an

(00:47:18):
influence on how well they were able to go through the process.

(00:47:25):
Some communities are a lot more established as a community in Wellington.

(00:47:33):
Um,

(00:47:34):
and so they have more community services that mean that there,

(00:47:40):
there was specific young people just had a lot more support when they got here.

(00:47:44):
So for example, in, um, Wellington, the Somali community is quite established.

(00:47:50):
Um,

(00:47:51):
and so those who had come from,

(00:47:53):
um,

(00:47:55):
like an,

(00:47:56):
uh,

(00:47:56):
and the wave of Somali refugees happened years and years ago.

(00:48:00):
And so if they had a more established community,

(00:48:05):
then they just seem to like fit in a lot better because they just were connected

(00:48:12):
into the community a lot better.

(00:48:15):
And I think I suspect that with Syrian refugees,

(00:48:20):
the Syrian refugees happen like all at once and quickly and big.

(00:48:25):
And so in terms of the country being able to respond,

(00:48:29):
we here in New Zealand have this,

(00:48:34):
because we're not so close to the epicenter of the refugee crisis,

(00:48:38):
a lot of the way that refugees come to New Zealand is through UNHCR referrals and

(00:48:44):
the government going,

(00:48:44):
yeah,

(00:48:45):
we'll take that person,

(00:48:45):
that person,

(00:48:46):
that person,

(00:48:46):
that person,

(00:48:47):
and that person.

(00:48:48):
We don't have like waves of refugees traveling across land or sea to get here.

(00:48:54):
and um you would think that that means we have better um services to support them

(00:49:03):
but we don't um and so i think maybe that's where some of this like oh we don't

(00:49:09):
know what to do with the syrian refugees comes from the fact that the country was

(00:49:14):
just not prepared because they don't put a lot of funding into

(00:49:20):
or at least I don't think put enough funding into that level of preparation.

(00:49:25):
And then all of those extra things is actually done by the community.

(00:49:29):
So like homework clubs is done by the community.

(00:49:33):
Mentorship is done by the community.

(00:49:36):
So the Syrian refugees just didn't have that set up for them.

(00:49:42):
And so a lot of that need to respond was

(00:49:47):
all of the government services, which was like kind of the bare minimum.

(00:49:53):
At least here, that's kind of what I think happened.

(00:49:59):
Was that your question?

(00:50:02):
Yeah, mostly.

(00:50:04):
I think that gives a good idea of probably...

(00:50:09):
Because I was thinking more like something which happened in their own countries

(00:50:14):
might influence...

(00:50:17):
their the way they are their ability to sort of I don't like the word assimilate

(00:50:25):
but I guess that's the most appropriate or like be able to integrate I would have

(00:50:35):
thought something like that so for example I don't really like the word integrate

(00:50:38):
either but usually you have a better way

(00:50:42):
I was going to say, what do you think?

(00:50:44):
I mean, just because you used that specific example of Ukrainian refugees and Syrian refugees.

(00:50:49):
Of what, sorry?

(00:50:50):
I'm just saying,

(00:50:51):
Sahir,

(00:50:51):
since you used that really specific example of Ukrainian refugees and Syrian refugees,

(00:50:59):
I mean,

(00:51:00):
what do you think,

(00:51:01):
Nuz,

(00:51:01):
in terms of

(00:51:03):
Culturally, Ukrainian refugees might be a little bit more aligned with German culture.

(00:51:09):
And then in terms of racism and how people are perceived within the country and how

(00:51:15):
they're received and the supports they're given.

(00:51:19):
Yeah.

(00:51:20):
It wasn't just that.

(00:51:21):
So racism was one aspect.

(00:51:22):
But the other aspect which I was thinking was, for example, people who had degrees in Ukraine,

(00:51:29):
were able to sort of work while a Syrian degree or actually one of my friends from Colombia,

(00:51:36):
a Colombian degree did not hold weight in New Zealand and therefore they could not work.

(00:51:44):
One of my friends,

(00:51:45):
again,

(00:51:46):
refugee from former Yugoslavia,

(00:51:48):
his parents formerly,

(00:51:49):
they could not work here although one was a doctor and then they did something else

(00:51:54):
but that clearly hampers their ability to integrate,

(00:51:56):
right?

(00:51:57):
So I was wondering whether

(00:51:58):
in the people you met, did that also affect their kids?

(00:52:03):
Because, yeah.

(00:52:05):
None of the young people spoke about,

(00:52:07):
at least the best of my knowledge,

(00:52:10):
none of the young people spoke about this degree conversion thing,

(00:52:13):
but it absolutely is an issue that we have here.

(00:52:16):
The fact that the process of converting your degree is not just really,

(00:52:22):
really slow,

(00:52:24):
but it's also really,

(00:52:25):
really expensive.

(00:52:27):
So like I know,

(00:52:28):
for example,

(00:52:29):
that to sit the dental exams here in New Zealand as someone who's coming from

(00:52:36):
overseas as a dentist,

(00:52:37):
it costs $7,000.

(00:52:38):
And if you have, yeah, like that's heaps of money.

(00:52:46):
And where do you get that money once you've kind of like put your kid in school?

(00:52:51):
Um, it's, it's like an impossible ask.

(00:52:54):
And also there are things around, like, if you fail it a certain number of times, you can't do it again.

(00:52:59):
Um, if you fail it, you don't get the money back.

(00:53:01):
You have to then reset it.

(00:53:03):
And then there are like three exams, I think that you have to do to be able to get it.

(00:53:07):
Um, so there absolutely is that like, um,

(00:53:13):
you know,

(00:53:14):
lack of understanding that these people are coming with like really great skills

(00:53:18):
and the fact that we're not creating a system that allows those skills to be

(00:53:22):
translated into something that's usable here or to the standard that we have here.

(00:53:29):
And then they can carry on working in the sector because the truth is we also know

(00:53:33):
that New Zealand really needs nurses and doctors and dentists and psychologists.

(00:53:38):
Right.

(00:53:38):
And a lot of our current workforce is going over to Australia.

(00:53:42):
So wouldn't it be great if we could figure out how to convert these people's

(00:53:46):
degrees so that when they come here,

(00:53:48):
they can like convert it,

(00:53:50):
start working.

(00:53:52):
I also think that it's like a big

(00:53:55):
It's another reason why that familial acculturating gap exists.

(00:53:59):
Because the thing is,

(00:53:59):
the young people pick up language,

(00:54:01):
not because they're forced to learn it in school,

(00:54:04):
but because they are going to school and they're being surrounded by people who

(00:54:08):
speak English.

(00:54:09):
Right.

(00:54:09):
And then the parents end up being in jobs where it's more people like them.

(00:54:16):
So like Syrian parents.

(00:54:17):
Somali,

(00:54:18):
Ethiopian,

(00:54:19):
whatever,

(00:54:20):
whatever country they come from,

(00:54:22):
where those people within their own ethnic groups are pulling them into these jobs

(00:54:29):
through contacts and stuff.

(00:54:31):
And they are in the workforce.

(00:54:32):
And so they carry on speaking their own language.

(00:54:35):
Right.

(00:54:36):
But like,

(00:54:36):
if you recognize their degrees,

(00:54:38):
they would probably pick up English a lot quicker,

(00:54:41):
like heaps of teachers that come from overseas.

(00:54:44):
You know, and like that's another one, like doing a teaching degree or going into teaching college.

(00:54:49):
The part that gets me,

(00:54:50):
though,

(00:54:50):
every time,

(00:54:51):
the part that like actually pisses me off is the fact that New Zealand thinks their

(00:54:56):
degrees are just like the most amazing high class.

(00:54:59):
Like, have you met an Indian doctor?

(00:55:02):
Like, come on.

(00:55:04):
It's crazy to me that they think that their standard is so high that these people somehow cannot make it.

(00:55:12):
You know, like partly it's the language, right?

(00:55:14):
Like they've done their entire lives in one language,

(00:55:17):
done their entire professions in one language,

(00:55:18):
and now they come here.

(00:55:19):
But again,

(00:55:19):
it's like,

(00:55:21):
it's weird to me that like,

(00:55:23):
you don't want to grasp onto that workforce,

(00:55:28):
like pull that workforce in,

(00:55:30):
get them into jobs that they actually genuine,

(00:55:31):
like so many traities,

(00:55:34):
you know,

(00:55:34):
like carpenters and builders and plumbers,

(00:55:38):
like

(00:55:39):
I just don't,

(00:55:40):
I,

(00:55:41):
for the life of me,

(00:55:42):
have not been able to understand why the government does not want to get onto this ASAP.

(00:55:50):
It's funny, right?

(00:55:51):
The doctors thing is funny.

(00:55:52):
Like you said,

(00:55:52):
the Indian doctors,

(00:55:53):
I'm pretty sure the symptoms for heart attack are the same in all over the world.

(00:55:58):
Like, I don't think your blood cell ratios change everywhere.

(00:56:01):
I think the same... Well, I was about to say the same diseases don't exist everywhere.

(00:56:08):
Well, because they don't.

(00:56:09):
Certain diseases come from certain places.

(00:56:10):
But...

(00:56:12):
But the thing of like diagnosis, you would have learned the same things.

(00:56:16):
It's about just getting the language sorted.

(00:56:19):
Yeah.

(00:56:20):
Yeah.

(00:56:22):
Once I have an answer for that, we can do another podcast.

(00:56:25):
But I have no answers for you.

(00:56:28):
Well, hopefully that's sooner rather than later.

(00:56:30):
Yeah.

(00:56:33):
I wanted to ask about your third study because it's been on my mind since you said you designed a game.

(00:56:38):
And Nusha was part of it.

(00:56:39):
So then both of you can talk about it and tell me what was this game?

(00:56:43):
What was the purpose of it?

(00:56:46):
Yeah.

(00:56:47):
So one of the biggest things about my findings that we haven't actually spoken

(00:56:51):
about was that I kind of went in being like,

(00:56:55):
tell me about school.

(00:56:56):
And they kept telling me about their friends.

(00:56:59):
That was just over and over again.

(00:57:01):
just about friendship friendship friendship friendship um i think by like my sixth

(00:57:06):
participant i was like i'm asking the wrong questions um this is kind of ridiculous

(00:57:12):
i've just focused on the wrong things which is also hilarious because i initially

(00:57:16):
was like i'm not going to do pdsd and i'm going to do education and i was like

(00:57:21):
still wrong because it's so much further you know like

(00:57:24):
what they really care about is making friends in school, especially in high school.

(00:57:28):
In the kids' defense, I don't remember anything from high school, but I remember my friends.

(00:57:33):
So I think if you asked me.

(00:57:36):
Yeah, like that's the thing, right?

(00:57:37):
Like sometimes when you're an academic, you're like, I'm going to look at the literature.

(00:57:41):
When like,

(00:57:41):
if someone just off the street had been like,

(00:57:43):
yo,

(00:57:44):
Nerza,

(00:57:44):
what do you think matters the most in high school?

(00:57:46):
I'd be like, oh, my friends were great.

(00:57:48):
you know like you just instinctively just know sometimes the answer and then you're

(00:57:54):
like well why is the literature telling me yeah I know I know three things right I

(00:57:59):
got friends I know mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and I heard of this

(00:58:02):
thing called Pythagoras theorem that's about it oh Pythagoras theorem yeah that was

(00:58:10):
a good one I still don't know what the

(00:58:13):
The two sides equals the other side?

(00:58:15):
No.

(00:58:15):
Square.

(00:58:17):
So the sum of the square.

(00:58:19):
I remember quadratic equations.

(00:58:22):
God.

(00:58:24):
Anyway.

(00:58:26):
Sorry, what were you saying?

(00:58:29):
So you were telling about you had found friendship.

(00:58:33):
Yeah.

(00:58:34):
Yeah.

(00:58:34):
And so one of the themes in my studies is

(00:58:40):
was around young people struggling to make friends.

(00:58:46):
The nuance to this story is that often people say that the reason why young people

(00:58:52):
struggle to make friends because of the language.

(00:58:55):
But,

(00:58:55):
um,

(00:58:56):
a lot of them had already told me the story about like how they,

(00:59:00):
um,

(00:59:00):
made friends with other people who didn't know the language in the first six weeks

(00:59:05):
in orientation.

(00:59:07):
So I was going, well, why, why can we make friends with these people?

(00:59:09):
But they can't make friends with, um, anyone else.

(00:59:13):
And then the friend groups they make at ESOL,

(00:59:15):
which is,

(00:59:16):
um,

(00:59:18):
the service that's offered in schools across the country for

(00:59:22):
very poorly funded, but for young people to learn English, is again where they make friends, right?

(00:59:28):
Because they're like, oh, we both don't know English.

(00:59:31):
But it doesn't necessarily mean that both of those young people speak the same language, right?

(00:59:35):
So it's like a Syrian person making friends with someone from Ethiopia and they become best friends.

(00:59:40):
And they just sign or talk somehow.

(00:59:44):
So I was really curious about that because I was going,

(00:59:46):
well,

(00:59:47):
why are they not able to do that with Pakiha?

(00:59:50):
And that was kind of where the pain point was that they wanted to be friends with

(00:59:56):
Pakeha and they were not able to.

(00:59:59):
And so it never seemed enough that they had friends from their own ethnic group or

(01:00:06):
like other people from refugee backgrounds.

(01:00:09):
They wanted to make friends with Pakeha.

(01:00:11):
And so,

(01:00:12):
and that had a lot to do with like,

(01:00:14):
and I mean,

(01:00:15):
Noosh knows a lot of this research as well,

(01:00:16):
because we talk about this a lot around like belonging and how in order to feel

(01:00:21):
like they belong to Aotearoa,

(01:00:24):
they feel that they need to make friends or have some sort of relationship with Pakeha.

(01:00:30):
And so I kind of got interested in like intergroup friendships.

(01:00:35):
And that kind of led me into the intergroup contact hypothesis, which is like social psychology 101.

(01:00:50):
But of course, I had never heard of it because I had never done social psychology.

(01:00:53):
So I was like,

(01:00:54):
telling my supervisor like,

(01:00:55):
Mark,

(01:00:56):
oh my God,

(01:00:56):
you know,

(01:00:57):
like when,

(01:00:57):
and he was like,

(01:00:58):
that's intergroup contact hypothesis.

(01:01:01):
And I was like, what is it?

(01:01:03):
So that was kind of embarrassing.

(01:01:05):
But I quickly learned that it was intergroup contact hypothesis,

(01:01:08):
which is essentially that if you bring two people from two different backgrounds

(01:01:13):
together and you make them have a meaningful conversation,

(01:01:18):
prejudice is likely to decrease between the one person and the other.

(01:01:23):
And that can happen like both through like,

(01:01:27):
you know,

(01:01:27):
like even if you like hear about a story about people from your group and another

(01:01:33):
group having an interaction like that just by association or the fact that you see

(01:01:39):
yourself in this other person,

(01:01:40):
you go,

(01:01:40):
oh,

(01:01:41):
maybe they're not so bad.

(01:01:41):
Like, you know what I mean?

(01:01:44):
Like a direct and an indirect kind of effect where like where we go,

(01:01:48):
for example,

(01:01:49):
like maybe Sahar,

(01:01:50):
you make friends with someone from

(01:01:52):
Venezuela and I have a real prejudice against people from Venezuela.

(01:01:57):
Um, what's the bet that someone in 10 years is going to cut that bit out in this podcast and use it.

(01:02:03):
Oh, well.

(01:02:05):
And I hate to Venezuelans.

(01:02:06):
Oh, well, damn it.

(01:02:08):
Um, and I go, well, I saw her and I are Brown.

(01:02:12):
And so I saw her is like made friends with that person from Venezuela.

(01:02:16):
Maybe they're not so bad.

(01:02:19):
Um, and so.

(01:02:21):
I was more interested in kind of the deep, engaging conversation that you could have.

(01:02:28):
And the entire game is basically based on the intergroup contact hypothesis around

(01:02:32):
young people kind of exchanging stories.

(01:02:36):
And it's a game because there are rounds, there are tokens, all that kind of stuff.

(01:02:41):
I'm not going to tell you how the game works because I have every intention of

(01:02:44):
making this into a legitimate game.

(01:02:46):
Okay, go.

(01:02:47):
Patent pending.

(01:02:48):
But yes, that is like the basis of the game.

(01:02:52):
Nice.

(01:02:53):
Yeah, don't give up more.

(01:02:55):
You need to make money.

(01:02:57):
Yes.

(01:03:00):
Academia is underfunded.

(01:03:02):
This podcast is not funded.

(01:03:03):
So please sign up to the Patreon.

(01:03:05):
Nice plug in here.

(01:03:08):
What was some of the feedback that you got from the young people when you piloted this game with them?

(01:03:18):
Are you asking this like deliberately because you were there and you know the feedback?

(01:03:22):
Yes, of course.

(01:03:26):
So I'm brown through and through, which means that I forget compliments.

(01:03:30):
And I remember all the negatives.

(01:03:35):
Let me try to remember.

(01:03:37):
Okay, so as in general, they definitely enjoyed playing the game.

(01:03:45):
They felt

(01:03:47):
closer to the people that they played the game with and you should like help me

(01:03:52):
remember here because I,

(01:03:53):
I'm like struggling right now.

(01:03:56):
Um,

(01:03:57):
there was a lot of conversation around like,

(01:04:00):
do we want it to be in like a physical format or do we want it to be like on an app?

(01:04:07):
Um, but mostly they said they enjoyed it.

(01:04:12):
Right.

(01:04:13):
That's what.

(01:04:16):
What I was going to say was my memory of it was getting up from the table that they

(01:04:22):
were all sitting at and a lot of them not wanting to leave.

(01:04:26):
And a lot of them being like, wow, like this made me actually just feel so much closer to everybody here.

(01:04:31):
This was really fun.

(01:04:33):
I'd really like love to be able to do this in school.

(01:04:35):
I'd love to be able to do this again.

(01:04:38):
That's what I remember.

(01:04:40):
Yeah, there was definitely a lot of positive feedback and I think like

(01:04:44):
You know, you go in and you come out and you're like, oh, okay, there's a better ways to like record it.

(01:04:48):
But like what I,

(01:04:49):
what I,

(01:04:50):
when you say that,

(01:04:51):
what I remember is a lot of them exchanging social media handles.

(01:04:56):
And that was really important for me to see,

(01:04:58):
because there's a lot of stuff around like longevity of the relationship in the

(01:05:03):
intergroup contact hypothesis.

(01:05:05):
So like maybe decreases prejudice now, but then what does that mean in the longterm?

(01:05:12):
And so like,

(01:05:12):
obviously,

(01:05:13):
I don't know the extent to how much these people were communicating with each other

(01:05:16):
once they left the room.

(01:05:17):
But the fact that they were interested in,

(01:05:20):
you know,

(01:05:20):
like adding people or adding each other on Instagram.

(01:05:23):
And then I also remember that like there was a ball or something that day.

(01:05:28):
And there was like communication around like, are you going?

(01:05:31):
Are you going?

(01:05:33):
You know, like just the classic stuff that you would do with friends anyway.

(01:05:37):
And so I do remember that.

(01:05:38):
And I also do remember struggling to get them out of the room.

(01:05:42):
Like I was done.

(01:05:45):
Like it was like four hours on a weekend.

(01:05:48):
I was like, okay, you know, like how?

(01:05:51):
Yeah.

(01:05:51):
I mean, I loved having them there.

(01:05:52):
It was great.

(01:05:53):
Like I enjoyed it.

(01:05:54):
um but i definitely at some point we had to be like okay guys like now we've

(01:05:59):
reached the end and they had eaten their pizza and everything and i was like were

(01:06:03):
you really yeah no it was it was good feedback yeah thank you for reminding me i

(01:06:10):
remember one of the young people i think also said that they didn't have any

(01:06:14):
opportunities in their life to be with such a like that particular kind of diverse

(01:06:20):
group of because i think in your um i don't remember i don't

(01:06:25):
I don't know if you did this on purpose,

(01:06:27):
but did you like specifically recruit quite a diverse set of participants from different?

(01:06:32):
Yeah.

(01:06:32):
I think they really valued that and they said they didn't have other opportunities

(01:06:36):
in their life to have those kinds of really deep,

(01:06:38):
open conversations.

(01:06:40):
And I remember there was a lot of learning,

(01:06:42):
like a lot of the kids kind of were like,

(01:06:44):
wow,

(01:06:44):
I didn't...

(01:06:45):
Actually,

(01:06:46):
a lot of the whiter kids,

(01:06:48):
I will say,

(01:06:49):
was kind of like,

(01:06:50):
oh,

(01:06:50):
I didn't know,

(01:06:50):
you know,

(01:06:51):
about these experiences.

(01:06:52):
I didn't know that, you know, about any of this stuff.

(01:06:55):
So it was kind of cool to watch that unfold and those important conversations we had.

(01:07:01):
That was it.

(01:07:03):
Yeah.

(01:07:06):
That's exciting.

(01:07:06):
I look forward to playing this game when it releases, goes worldwide.

(01:07:13):
You guys are just making me more excited to actually get it out there in the world

(01:07:16):
because I have to do it.

(01:07:18):
Do it.

(01:07:18):
Do it.

(01:07:20):
Because it's been about an hour, we'll start sort of wrapping up.

(01:07:25):
So I've got a couple more questions.

(01:07:26):
You said so much about...

(01:07:29):
Over the past 15,

(01:07:29):
20 minutes,

(01:07:30):
we spoke about how much your participants changed and how they enjoyed your interviews,

(01:07:35):
your games,

(01:07:36):
being part of the project.

(01:07:38):
But the question is, how did it change you?

(01:07:42):
So has your work changed you as a person?

(01:07:45):
You know, I actually got this question asked in my defense.

(01:07:48):
One of my examiners actually asked me about this question in my defense.

(01:07:50):
And I was like, absolutely changed me.

(01:07:56):
I think it would have...

(01:07:58):
Like I was fully expecting that it would, especially because I did a lot of the research in my late 20s.

(01:08:07):
And like your 20s is kind of where lots of things are changing for you anyway.

(01:08:15):
This is the one question that I actually took notes for.

(01:08:18):
or like actually thought about.

(01:08:21):
I think the ways that it changed me was I feel very strongly about how you do research,

(01:08:32):
or how people who work with communities do research,

(01:08:37):
or how I believe research should be done.

(01:08:39):
And I use the word should deliberately.

(01:08:43):
Because of the difference that I see between the literature

(01:08:47):
and the difference I see with actually working with communities.

(01:08:51):
So a couple of those things for me is that I don't believe that you can be a

(01:08:56):
migration researcher without also being in advocacy.

(01:09:03):
I think the two go hand in hand.

(01:09:05):
I feel like if we are going to go into communities

(01:09:11):
and extract this knowledge and information from them,

(01:09:16):
then it absolutely is our responsibility that we're conveying that information to

(01:09:22):
whether it is government or other researchers or any other way that it can be done

(01:09:31):
in order to benefit the community.

(01:09:36):
So I think those two things go hand in hand.

(01:09:39):
The other thing that I feel strongly about is application.

(01:09:45):
I think academia tends to be quite divorced from converting what we know into

(01:09:54):
resources that can be accessed by the community.

(01:09:58):
So primarily, and we know this, right, primarily the way that we are encouraged to get our resources

(01:10:07):
information out there through journals and i know like i mean that's kind of why

(01:10:10):
you have the podcast right like science communication is really big for you and and

(01:10:15):
i think like for me it's also about taking all of this information that we have and

(01:10:20):
making it into something right like i went into the community and i found out that

(01:10:25):
they were struggling to make friends then doesn't it it feels silly to me to go oh

(01:10:29):
well sorry they're struggling to make friends okay now i'm like move moving on to

(01:10:32):
the next thing that they're struggling with instead of going like well what can i

(01:10:36):
do about that

(01:10:37):
And I, I partially, I think the reason why it exists is because it's not incentivized.

(01:10:43):
Um,

(01:10:43):
and we also tend to be quite like in a vacuum and we don't like work with people

(01:10:49):
like in gamification or in tech,

(01:10:53):
or,

(01:10:53):
you know,

(01:10:53):
there's like a real,

(01:10:55):
um,

(01:10:56):
gap there in like who we collaborate with.

(01:10:58):
Like when we think about collaborators, we think of people like me and Nush are collaborators, right?

(01:11:03):
Nush does the same stuff.

(01:11:04):
And in terms of expertise, we essentially have similar expertise.

(01:11:09):
Nush probably has more of like a clean expertise than I do, but we have a similar expertise, right?

(01:11:14):
So then in terms of like,

(01:11:15):
who do we collaborate with,

(01:11:16):
like cross-disciplinary stuff,

(01:11:19):
I feel strongly about.

(01:11:21):
And so when I think about like how it changed me, I...

(01:11:25):
I think responsibility.

(01:11:27):
I think it's really, it's been really hard for me to go, okay, that was my PhD.

(01:11:31):
Now I've packed it up.

(01:11:31):
It's gone.

(01:11:34):
I feel that like I've taken all of this information and it is my responsibility to

(01:11:39):
do something with that information.

(01:11:42):
Yeah.

(01:11:45):
Oh, that's very nice.

(01:11:48):
Nusha, any questions from you?

(01:11:51):
So within your, in your research, what were some of the kind of main findings?

(01:11:55):
Like what are some of the big core important things for, we said on like for refugees?

(01:12:03):
Like I said, the friendship was probably the biggest takeaway.

(01:12:13):
Quantitatively,

(01:12:14):
I found that they were doing okay in like schools,

(01:12:18):
like they felt connected to their school.

(01:12:21):
They were feeling cared for in their schools.

(01:12:26):
But I wouldn't put a lot of weight on that quantitative information because the

(01:12:30):
survey in and of itself,

(01:12:33):
the weight was like given to students and

(01:12:37):
you know,

(01:12:37):
like the dynamics around how young people feel about doing or answering questions

(01:12:42):
around like staff and authoritarian figures and that kind of stuff.

(01:12:48):
And the primary finding from that first study was that they were experiencing more

(01:12:58):
like lower wellbeing or depressive symptoms.

(01:13:02):
Um,

(01:13:02):
and that could be partially explained through like poor quality friendships and

(01:13:07):
familial relationships.

(01:13:08):
So like less support from family and friends,

(01:13:10):
which was why I kind of then went on to do that second study around like asking

(01:13:14):
around the challenges of,

(01:13:15):
uh,

(01:13:16):
of those things.

(01:13:17):
Um,

(01:13:18):
the three big themes,

(01:13:20):
if I was to like summarize,

(01:13:21):
the last thing was what I told you,

(01:13:23):
the friendship one.

(01:13:24):
middle one was around like family dynamics and we kind of touched on that as well

(01:13:28):
which was like that um complete story of like yes it's it's difficult to exist in

(01:13:33):
the familial acculturated gap but there's all of this other stuff that they love

(01:13:39):
and love being a part of their families love giving back to their families those

(01:13:43):
kinds of things um and the first thing was really around like all of that

(01:13:46):
pre-resettlement education um

(01:13:50):
you know,

(01:13:51):
what kind of education they experienced,

(01:13:54):
the lack of provision when they got here,

(01:13:57):
how it was like for a lot of them,

(01:13:59):
it was like a single teacher who took an interest in them and then gave them all of

(01:14:04):
this access to these resources or who they knew in schools that they could then

(01:14:08):
reach out to.

(01:14:09):
So again, a lot of that, like the capital that exists within those like social bonds.

(01:14:19):
And again, around like how they felt so deeply responsible to pay it forward.

(01:14:27):
You know,

(01:14:27):
like a lot of these students were in high school and they were already like

(01:14:31):
mentoring someone in their community because they had just,

(01:14:34):
you know,

(01:14:34):
figured out the system and that kind of stuff.

(01:14:37):
So those were probably like the key.

(01:14:40):
findings i suppose yeah nice that's a nice short which i can use check that up on

(01:14:48):
youtube no one will listen to the podcast which is great now they'll come and

(01:14:53):
listen to the whole thing then they want to understand okay what did each theme

(01:14:56):
mean and they'll come through but thank you so much nizza that was really good not

(01:15:02):
as scary no i wanna i want to though if that's okay answer your question about um

(01:15:10):
What I learned from the process, the, did you mean PhD process?

(01:15:15):
Sure.

(01:15:15):
Go on.

(01:15:16):
Tell me, tell me that as well.

(01:15:17):
That was interpretive question.

(01:15:19):
Yeah.

(01:15:20):
My biggest piece of advice in hindsight to people is well,

(01:15:29):
personally,

(01:15:30):
it is to remember that the PhD journey is not linear.

(01:15:34):
I think a lot of us come into doing a PhD

(01:15:38):
as like these high achieving,

(01:15:40):
super ambitious,

(01:15:43):
like doing really well in school kind of students,

(01:15:46):
like just studious people.

(01:15:48):
Speak for yourself.

(01:15:50):
Thank you.

(01:15:52):
I'm kidding.

(01:15:52):
I was not, I was not very serious.

(01:15:54):
I was just very hardworking.

(01:15:55):
And I think that's what I'm trying to get at.

(01:15:57):
Like,

(01:15:58):
you know,

(01:15:58):
when you're in honors,

(01:15:58):
you do this like one year where you're just like,

(01:16:01):
go,

(01:16:01):
go,

(01:16:01):
go,

(01:16:02):
go,

(01:16:02):
go.

(01:16:03):
And, um, and it feels similar to undergrad and you have results and you get grades.

(01:16:07):
And so,

(01:16:07):
you know,

(01:16:08):
how you're doing and the PhD journey feels a little bit like being thrown in the

(01:16:11):
deep end.

(01:16:12):
Cause you don't get grades.

(01:16:13):
You don't know how you're doing.

(01:16:14):
It's just a long road of absolute nothingness.

(01:16:18):
Um,

(01:16:19):
and I think,

(01:16:20):
I think embracing that it's not going to be linear because life happens in the

(01:16:26):
three or four years that you're doing your PhD and just being more,

(01:16:31):
um,

(01:16:33):
in acceptance I would say with that because it's an entirely different and people

(01:16:38):
you know throw cheesy quotes around like oh it's a marathon not a race but it says

(01:16:43):
nothing it says nothing about how you cope with a marathon and not a race like how

(01:16:48):
many people have actually run a marathon why do people say that anyway more and

(01:16:54):
more people on my timeline these days the older we get people get into running I

(01:16:58):
don't know why yeah that's fair I do run I'm just like

(01:17:04):
It's just a different process.

(01:17:07):
And I think it's hard to not be like, I'm just going to hit the ground running.

(01:17:13):
And three years later, I'm going to come out and it's going to be amazing.

(01:17:16):
And I'm going to be amazing.

(01:17:17):
And I'm going to have done all of these things.

(01:17:21):
Yeah.

(01:17:21):
So I think just accept the fact that it's not going to be linear and that life is

(01:17:24):
going to get in the way is probably my primary takeaway.

(01:17:30):
Awesome.

(01:17:32):
Nish, any final thoughts from you?

(01:17:35):
I am curious about what you're up to now and where you're going next.

(01:17:40):
Good question.

(01:17:45):
What am I up to now?

(01:17:47):
Well,

(01:17:47):
I've been a teaching fellow this whole year,

(01:17:50):
which has been an interesting change of,

(01:17:54):
I don't want to say career,

(01:17:55):
but like role,

(01:17:56):
because I went from being primarily like a researcher to now primarily a teacher.

(01:18:01):
And I will be lying if I said that I didn't love it.

(01:18:07):
I really, really enjoyed teaching.

(01:18:10):
It felt like doing science communication every single day.

(01:18:15):
And that has kind of been, in some ways for me, in terms of career, an absolute disaster.

(01:18:21):
Because now I've loved it so much, I want to stay in it.

(01:18:25):
And I don't like, you know, academia is really struggling right now.

(01:18:28):
And so I don't know.

(01:18:30):
if I will have the opportunity to stay in it,

(01:18:31):
but I really enjoyed talking to students and teaching them the things that I didn't

(01:18:37):
get taught,

(01:18:38):
you know,

(01:18:38):
like a lot of my course was around how do you use social psychology and take a

(01:18:45):
problem that exists in the real world and come up with a solution for it.

(01:18:50):
And they really loved it.

(01:18:52):
I got so much positive feedback around the content.

(01:18:56):
So teaching has

(01:18:58):
been where I've been at I was like lucky and got this teaching fellow position and

(01:19:04):
I've been teaching the whole year but in terms of like what I want to do next I

(01:19:07):
definitely want to develop the game further and I am leaning into like the space I

(01:19:16):
want to exist in like there are it always seems like there's one way to be an

(01:19:20):
academic and I don't fit that way and I definitely like the space between

(01:19:27):
academia and getting it out into the world and making it into something.

(01:19:32):
Like if someone could just hire me and be like, here's the research.

(01:19:36):
Can you figure out how to make something out of it?

(01:19:39):
I'm your girl.

(01:19:39):
Like that's, that's where I would exist.

(01:19:42):
So yeah, that's, that's basically what I've been up to.

(01:19:46):
Nice.

(01:19:47):
If people have a job open,

(01:19:49):
which requires someone to look at research and make it into something practical.

(01:19:55):
Honestly, yeah.

(01:19:56):
Like get in touch with me, like talking about it and then making it in something.

(01:20:00):
I really like like community resources.

(01:20:03):
Like how do you help like solve community problems, like marginalized community problems.

(01:20:10):
So don't call me if you like want some techie, like something in tech.

(01:20:14):
I don't know.

(01:20:15):
Like call me if you're going to use tech as a solution for the thing.

(01:20:19):
Yes, I will, that I can help you.

(01:20:22):
But yeah.

(01:20:23):
Awesome.

(01:20:24):
Anyway, thank you guys.

(01:20:27):
Thank you, Nizar.

(01:20:27):
That was awesome.

(01:20:29):
Only took two years.

(01:20:33):
Maybe part of my science communication dream would be like being on as a co-host or something.

(01:20:40):
Go on, yes.

(01:20:41):
Well, we can start that off when we interview Nusha on her work next time.

(01:20:45):
That would be a good start.

(01:20:47):
We'll see.

(01:20:49):
It's only on two years of this.

(01:20:53):
um don't worry it starts today okay take a note just stop taking notes now yeah

(01:20:58):
yeah exactly oh thank you so much guys uh hope you guys enjoyed it thank you

(01:21:05):
everyone for listening as well and yeah until next time goodbye bye