Postgraduate research students

Research Summary

This study looks at the experiences of Higher Education (HE) of young UK-born Tamils from refugee backgrounds, through the overlapping lenses of family pressure, social mobility, and intergenerational trauma and how these may engender forms of resilience that shape educational experiences and outcomes. Very little is currently known about the lives of UK adult-born children of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, despite their numbers increasing. As a result, these youth have been absented from policy pertaining to integration and social mobility, such as educational opportunities.

Education is significant because it not only holds a major role in ambitions and life course but is also a key component of Tamilness, where some subjects and careers are significantly more valued than others such as medicine and engineering. Through a combination of parental pressure and an acute awareness of the opportunities that their parents missed out on due to the civil war and gender norms, these Tamil youth feel a moral obligation to conform to their parent’s expectations of success.

As a result, these youth are simultaneously bound to the past and present, balancing their own aspirations, their parents’ desires and intergenerational trauma which is evidenced to affect levels of stress and resilience. However, little is known about these youths’ own aspirations and how these youth navigate parental pressures that shape educational outcomes.

Research Interests:

• Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora 
• Higher Education Experiences 
• Aspirations vs Expectations 
• Belonging 
• Diaspora Identity 
• Intergenerational Trauma 
• Narrative Gaps & Silences
• Symbolic Violence 

Disciplines include: Sociology, Education & Higher Education Studies, Anthropology, Family Studies

• Dr Teresa Piacentini
• Dr Giovanna Fassetta

Harishankar Balasingham is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow. His research interests lie in exploring the dynamics and intersections of parental pressures and individual aspirations within higher education, with a specific focus on young Sri Lankan Tamils from refugee backgrounds. He is also interested in how intergenerational trauma can influence educational experiences and outcomes.

Harishankar graduated with an MSc in Contemporary Identities & Inequalities (with distinction) from the University of Bristol. He was awarded the top mark in his course and has been invited back by the university to speak at a roundtable on his experiences being a BAME student at the university and to discuss his masters dissertation. 

Prior to this, he graduated with a BSc from the University of Manchester (with second class honours).