Compared with nations around the world, Australia has one of the highest rates of refugee resettlement per capita. Approximately 40 per cent of newly arrived refugees in Australia in 2018-19 were under the age of 18 and close to 90 per cent spoke a language other than English. Given that education is compulsory until the age of 16 in most states and territories of Australia, young people labelled as refugee-background students (RBSs) are tasked with navigating the English-only education system, in which their multilingualism is often viewed as a barrier; however, there are increasing calls for research to focus on the positive, affirmative practices of RBSs through a strengths-based approach in education, to counter a 'damage-centred' and deficit discourse. Thus, this article presents a systematic literature review of studies conducted in Australia with RBSs between 2010 and 2022. Specifically, this review explores the strengths-based multilingual practices of RBSs in compulsory education in Australia. Inspired by RefugeeCrit theory, we seek to highlight strengths-based examples of RBSs multilingual practices as examples of counter-narratives to the prevailing deficit discourse, while remaining attentive to issues of trauma, agency and multilingualism.