Older Congolese Refugees’ Resettlement Challenges in the U.S.: A Bioecological Convoy Model

Abstract

Older Congolese refugees face more challenges upon resettlement in the U. S. compared to younger refugees. We compared the convoy and bioecological models to explicate the challenges faced by older Congolese refugees during resettlement and integration in the U.S. Second, we created an integrated model that focuses on the importance of social relationships and situates this understanding within the broad bioecological perspective to illuminate how influences on resettlement and integration operate bidirectionally across different system levels and across time.

Keywords:

• Congo
• older refugees
• forced migration
• displaced persons
• convoy model
• bioecological systems theory