‘The Little Things’: The Temporality of Young People’s Strategies for Existential, Grounded, and Expansive Wellbeing in Rural Australia

Abstract This paper is based on research in rural southeast Australia with young people from recent migrant and refugee backgrounds. While existing research on the wellbeing of this group often emphasises successful settlement through education, employment, and belonging as pathways to future wellbeing, this paper asks what we can learn from young people’s own experiences and understandings of wellbeing. Guided by the words, images, and reflections of young people involved in this research, the paper explores everyday wellbeing as an existential, relational, and situated happening that takes both time and place. Young people in the study highlighted the importance of finding beauty, joy, and connection in ‘the little things’ of daily life to bring a sense of meaning into monotonous temporal rhythms and weekly routines structured by work and study. Drawing from Todres and Galvin’s ‘dwelling-mobility’ wellbeing framework, this paper conceptualises young people’s ability to be well as intricately intertwined with their ability to experience their lives over time as grounded and secure, while also having a sense of greater meaning and possibility. Ultimately, the paper illustrates how young people understand their ability to be well as temporally complex, informed by ongoing, non-linear interactions between past, present, and future experiences as they look forward and back over their lives, seeking to transform the passage of time from meaningless to meaningful.