Integration and agency: African refugee women and a playgroup in Melbourne, Australia

This chapter explores how a small group of African women from refugee backgrounds respond to the challenges of integration in Australia through utilizing and adapting a localized community-based playgroup initiative, designed to educate and engage refugee mothers and ensure their children have access to educative play and pathways to additional support. The ethnographic research reported in this chapter is focused on a community-based African women's playgroup based at a public housing estate in western Melbourne, Victoria, which is the initiative of a predominantly government-funded child and family service organization. playgroups can support children's social, emotional, cognitive and physical development, and contribute to children's wellbeing; increase parental awareness of the importance of play and facilitate the creation of social networks through which parent education occurs; and provide structured opportunities for the establishment of meaningful social contact and support. Playgroup thus facilitated agency and became pivotal to facilitating women's integration in ways beyond those originally intended or predicted.