REFUGEES AND RESETTLEMENT: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF REFUGEE INTEGRATION THROUGH SOCIAL & SUPPORT SERVICES

This dissertation studies refugee resettlement in the United States utilizing the Integration Indicator’s framework developed by Ager and Strang for the U.S. context. The study highlights the U.S. refugee admissions program and the policies in the states of Maryland and Massachusetts while analyzing the service delivery models and its effects on refugee integration in these locations. Though immigration policy and funding for refugee services are primarily the domain of the federal government, funds are allocated through and services are delivered at the state level. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, was established after the Refugee Act of 1980 to deliver assistance to displaced persons. The ORR provides funds to individual states primarily through The Refugee Social Service and Targeted Assistance Formula Grant programs. Since the inauguration of the ORR three primary models of refugee integration through service delivery have emerged. Two of the models include the publicly/privately administered programs, where resources are allocated to the state in conjunction with private voluntary agencies; and the Wilson/Fish Alternative programs, where states sub-contract all elements of the resettlement program to voluntary agencies and private organizations —in which they can cease all state level participation and voluntary agencies or private organizations contract directly from the ORR in order for all states to deliver refugee services where the live. The specific goals of this program are early employment and economic self-sufficiency. This project utilizes US Census, state, and ORR data in conjunction with interviews of refugee resettlement practitioners involved in the service delivery and refugees. The findings show that delivery models emphasizing job training, English instruction courses, institutional collaboration, and monetary assistance, increases refugee acclimation and adaptation, providing insight into their potential for integration into the United States.

Credible Commitments and Post-Conflict Refugee Return: A Statistical and Network Analysis

I examine determinants of refugee return after conflicts. I argue that institutional constraints placed on the executive provide a credible commitment that signals to refugees that the conditions required for durable return will be created. This results in increased return flows for refugees. Further, when credible commitments are stronger in the country of origin than in the country of asylum, the level of return increases. Finally, I find that specific commitments made to refugees in the peace agreement do not lead to increased return because they are not credible without institutional constraints. Using data on returnees that has only recently been made available, along with network analysis and an original coding of the provisions in refugee agreements, statistical results are found to support this theory. An examination of cases in Djibouti, Sierra Leone, and Liberia provides additional support for this argument.

Bodies on the Line: Violence, Disposable Subjects, and the US-Mexico Border Industrial Complex

Bodies On the Line: Violence, Disposable Subjects, and the Border Industrial Complex explores the construction of identity and notions of belonging within an increasingly privatized and militarized Border Industrial Complex. Specifically, the project interrogates how discourses of Mexican migrants as racialized, gendered, and hypersexualized “deviants” normalize violence against border crossers. Starting at Juárez/El Paso border, I follow the expanding border, interrogating the ways that Mexican migrants, regardless of sexual orientation, have been constructed and disciplined according to racialized notions of “sexual deviance." I engage a queer of color critique to argue that sexual deviance becomes a justification for targeting and containing migrant subjects. By focusing on the economic and racially motivated violence that the Border Industrial Complex does to Mexican migrant communities, I expand the critiques that feminists of color have long leveraged against systemic violence done to communities of color through the prison industrial system. Importantly, this project contributes to transnational feminist scholarship by contextualizing border violence within the global circuits of labor, capital, and ideology that shape perceptions of border insecurity. The project contributes an interdisciplinary perspective that uses a multi-method approach to understand how border violence is exercised against Mexicans at the Mexico-US border. I use archival methods to ask how historical records housed at the National Border Patrol Museum and Memorial Library serve as political instruments that reinforce the contemporary use of violence against Mexican migrants. I also use semi-structured interviews with nine frequent border crossers to consider the various ways crossers defined and aligned themselves at the border. Finally, I analyze the master narratives that come to surround specific cases of border violence. To that end, I consider the mainstream media’s coverage, legal proceedings, and policy to better understand the racialized, gendered, and sexualized logics of the violence.

"Jazz is Back": Alternative Jazz Venues and Gentrification in Washington, D.C.

Gentrification has dramatically changed the urban landscape of Washington, D.C. Non-profit alternative jazz venues have become important sites for negotiating this complex process that is re-shaping the city. Each such venue aligns itself with one of the two primary factions of gentrification: new urban migrants or long-term residents. Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Jazz Night in Southwest fosters a community of repeat-attendees resisting social displacement. The Jazz and Cultural Society unabashedly foregrounds ties to long-term residents in highlighting a black identity and its local interconnectedness. CapitolBop’s Jazz Loft demonstrates the difficulties that come with trying to cater to a young audience, and at the same time, resist gentrification. These venues present three perspectives on gentrification and together bring light to the overlapping complexity of gentrification.