The Crux of Refugee Resettlement

While the world’s refugee population reaches record high numbers, countries offering third-country resettlement are increasingly shifting toward policies of exclusion and austerity. This edited volume envisions a more humane future for refugee resettlement. Combining anthropology with a variety of professional perspectives (education, health care, theology, administration, politics, and social work) ethnography is used to demonstrate the efficacy of programs and interventions that create and nurture social capital in culturally specific and accessible ways. The contributors present case studies of resettlement in the United States, England, Australia, and Canada and contend that social networks have an essential role—are the crux—in the reconfigurations of refugee well-being, belonging, and place-making vis-à-vis the bureaucratic limitations of state and institutional factors. This book includes short contributions from refugees, representatives of resettlement organizations, and government officials, including Jhuma N. Acharya, Bimala Bastola, Khada Bhandari, Kiri Hata, Govin Magar, Madhu Neupane, Natacha Nikokeza, Angela K. Plummer, Lance Rasbridge, Chris Sunderlin, David Thatcher, and John Tluang.

Chapter 1 The Competing and Shifting Relevance of Social Capitals in Successful Refugee Resettlement

Chapter 2 Guatemalan Mayas in the American Midwest: Creative Intercultural Networking

Chapter 3 Re-Imagining Home: Resilience and Social Networks among Resettled Refugees in Columbus, Ohio, United States

Chapter 4 Re-constructing Social Ties: The Multi-Ethnic Engagement Patterns of Refugees Residing Within a North Carolina Settlement House

Chapter 5 Community-Based Organizations and Psychosocial Care in the Bhutanese Refugee Diaspora

Chapter 6 The Pitfalls of the Community Development Approach in Refugee Resettlement: Community Divisions among Bhutanese Refugees in Manchester, United Kingdom

Chapter 7 Refugee Perspectives on Social Networks and the Resettlement Information Landscape in the United States

Chapter 8 The (Re)Generation of Life in Resettlement: Birth and Social Connectedness for Central African Refugee Women in Australia

Chapter 9 The School Socialization of Young Nepali Women Refugees in a Medium-Sized Town in Québec, Canada

Chapter 10 “There Will Never Be a Foreclosure in Our Community”: Networks of Dependence in the Secondary Relocation of Nepali-Bhutanese Refugees

Chapter 11 Refugee Resettlements Divergent Outcomes: The Role of the Social Network in Housing Type and Location

Chapter 12 Emplacing Bhutanese Refugees in the Rust Belt: Work, Networks, and Mobility in Resettlement