Refugee Week 2025: Students reflect on the power of community

“A true community is one where we all feel a sense of belonging”

Roya Rasully, an International Development BA student and former child refugee from Afghanistan, reflects on the often hidden challenges of displacement for young people. Roya explores what it means to grow up between cultures, navigating barriers while searching for a true sense of belonging.

Roya Rasully: "The struggle of belonging in a community is very familiar to me as someone who left Afghanistan at a young age to come to the UK as a child refugee.

"Growing up, it was hard for me to integrate fully into my surroundings, my peers in school could not relate to my unique struggles. Having to translate official letters from English into Uzbek for my parents, even though I had just learnt the basics of literacy at age six. Struggling to find friends in school that knew the Afghan children’s games that I would play with my cousins. Forcing myself to grow up quickly for the sake of helping my parents navigate this strange foreign environment that was so different from our comforting village in Afghanistan. This wasn’t supposed to be my role, there should have been support in place for my parents. England was supposed to be our refuge but what is a refuge where children cannot fully enjoy their childhood?

"To this day, I know I do not fully belong in the British community due to my Afghan background, but I also know that I also do not belong in my former community in Afghanistan due to my upbringing in England. I was seen as ‘one of the lucky ones that escaped’. I was seen as privileged, and it was clear that I was not welcome in their discussions about our home country. It quickly became apparent in my visits to Afghanistan that I was perceived as a foreigner in my native land.

"My personal experience as a refugee was also dismissed as I was continuously told I was too young to know any different, even though my whole childhood was altered by the unique challenges of being a child refugee. I felt truly alone. I am ‘too Afghan’ for my British peers, ‘too British’ for my Afghan peers and ‘too privileged’ in the words of other Afghan refugees in the UK.

"This is why I push to harness community as a tool for change, to ensure that children of refugees can have a proper childhood, to ensure that they can feel like they belong in the safe countries they go to. A true community is one where we all feel a sense of belonging.

"This is what we strive for at Kings as a University of Sanctuary. Kings Sanctuary Programme provides support to students who are refugees/forced migrants as we firmly believe that we all deserve our communities that uplift us and support us."

“It is the small details in life that end up having the most impact”

A student who supported the King’s Sanctuary Programme as an Engagement Assistant reflects on attending Origami Birds: Weaving Stories of Migration and Hope, an interactive workshop held at King’s where participants crafted origami birds and shared migration-related stories. They reflect on their first experience of forming meaningful connections in the UK as a political refugee.

Student: "Like birds, everyone has their own unique paths to follow, and some are forced to flee due to reasons beyond their control—that is just in our nature.

"All the origami birds at the event were unique and different in their own way, as well as filled with flaws. There was no perfect origami, just as we all are as human beings. We all come with different styles and backstories, no one like the other, and no ‘perfect’ one.

"The delivery of food during the event brought everyone together and allowed them to bond. This is one of the main powers of food. Reflecting on my past self, I can see many instances in which food has brought people closer.

"After my family had received our refugee status and were allowed to move into our own house, although we were very elated with the news, we were left feeling so alone and isolated after moving in. Food allowed this to change for us. It was the first way in which we personally bonded with our neighbours, who were so welcoming and willing to try new cuisines and exchange different cultural foods with us.

"This relationship with our neighbours was the first stabilising factor in this new and foreign land, far, far away from everyone and everything we were familiar with. Although it sounds like a very small detail, it is the small details in life that end up having the most impact. It was this relationship with the neighbours that gave my parents strength and boosted their morale after the hardest period of their lives. Food heals what war and politics destroy."