Asylum seeking and the related processes of migration have the potential to be a stressful experience for families. This experience might result in a reversal within the family hierarchy, where children assume emotional or instrumental tasks on behalf of their parents as the adults are unable to perform the tasks themselves. This phenomenon is defined as parentification or role reversal. Parentification research has not analysed the consequences that result from the burden that refugee families bear. Although previous research on parentification suggests that this phenomenon occurs more frequently in families with a migration background, it is unclear whether such results can be transferred to the forced migration experience. This article considers the question of whether refugee families represent a high-risk group for parentification due to an accumulation of predicting factors, based on a review of the current literature and using Jurkovic's integrative theoretical framework. This paper will examine specific predictors within the framework from a systematic review of literature. It is clear that in the context of refugee families, risk factors for parentification not only accumulate to become a high burden, but that cumulative effects caused by the interaction between the different factors add additional pressure on the family system. These results lead to the conclusion that refugee families require special support at an institutional, structural, and individual level -Taking into account their autonomy and selfefficacy - in order to prevent an overwhelming level of care taking done by the children and adolescents in these families. ©Schattauer 2017.

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male female risk factor refugee high risk population self concept Adolescent systematic review Article family study literature human experiment human conceptual framework Child