Seeking Refuge, Finding Inequality: Refugees Navigating Their Way

CCIS/CSIM Seminar April 22, 2022
Authors: Annette Lareau & Blair Sackett
Discussant: Catherine Besteman
Upon arrival to the United States, resettled refugees receive limited, yet valuable institutional supports: help from case workers, eligibility for government benefits, and a legal status which enables participation in American institutions. Thus, scholars have suggested that refugees have a more favorable context of reception than other types of immigrants, and particularly those with liminal legal status. Yet, as we show, eligibility for services does not equal access. Drawing on qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations of refugee families from the Democratic Republic of the Congo resettled to the US, Seeking Refuge, Finding Inequality shows that refugee families had to navigate many complex institutions at once—banks, workplaces, schools, and social service programs. These institutions were rife obstacles and errors, which could tangle into institutional knots, or complex blockages, impeding access even to resources for which they were eligible. Some knots had a ripple effect as problems in one institution reverberated, leading to new unrelated problems in different institutions. We show how these institutional obstacles are costly to solve and consequential, impeding upward mobility. By highlighting these obstacles, Seeking Refuge draws attention to the institutional mechanisms that shape the context of reception for refugee families.