SHOWING UP AND OPENING UP: CONDUCTING RESEARCH WITH AND ABOUT REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT ORGANIZATIONS

ABSTRACT

This article uses research conducted with and about refugee resettlement agencies in traditional and nontraditional destinations to critically assess the opportunities and constraints that social scientists encounter when conducting research on refugee incorporation experiences. Drawing on ethnographic field notes and reflections from two qualitative research projects in the U.S. Northeast and Midwest examining refugee incorporation postresettlement, we analyze how the geographic and institutional contexts in the case studies impacted research outcomes and differences in refugee participants’ showing up and opening up during data collection. We describe how the priorities of refugee resettlement agencies, along with the social locations and positionality of researchers, shaped our relationships and negotiations with institutional gatekeepers, as well as how refugee participants responded to the research. We show how conducting community-based research can introduce overlapping and conflicting reciprocal moral obligations between researchers, refugee participants, and refugee-serving organizations that ultimately shape the research process, decisions, and outcomes.

Keywords::

• community-based research
• cultural brokers
• fieldwork
• institutional gatekeepers
• reciprocity
• refugee resettlement agencies
• researcher positionality

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Emily Frazier and Lauren Fritszche for their very thoughtful feedback and direction on previous drafts of this article, as well as the editors of this journal and the reviewers for excellent suggestions that helped improve our article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Refugee resettlement agencies are also known as VolAgs or voluntary agencies. See: Nawyn (2010).

² Names of locations and organizations have been changed to protect the anonymity of participants and agencies.

³ For a history of resettlement in metropolitan America and changes, see: Singer, A. and J. Wilson (2007). “Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America.” [https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/refugee-resettlement-metropolitan-america].

⁴ As Morken and Skop (2017) note, however, research has not shown that smaller cities are more effective in promoting refugee integration.