The Perceived Challenges of Resettlement among Syrian Refugees in the United States

Abstract

This qualitative case study examines the resettlement experiences of Syrian refugees through semi-structured interviews with eighteen Syrian refugees living in Cincinnati, OH, USA. Resettlement experiences reveal challenges to refugees’ long-term integration, address the limitation in state policy practices, and provide insight to meet refugees’ needs. Findings indicate that Syrian refugees’ resettlement generates serious obstacles to their integration, including uninhabitable homes, unsafe neighborhoods, job insecurity and economic instability, lack of language proficiency, and social isolation. The findings also show that the resettlement policies and programs aimed to promote refugees’ self-sufficiency are not compatible with their self- identified needs of Syrian refugees. However, state and local resettlement agencies collaboration with refugees may ease refugees’ transition. Future research may explore the experiences of Syrian refugees who settle in other regions of United States to determine if their experiences differ based on location. Identifying the impact of contextual factors on the resettlement experiences of refugees can help us develop programs and policies that address the subjective needs of both Syrian and other refugee populations.

Keywords:

• Immigration
• Syrian refugees
• integration
• refuge policy
• and resettlement

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/

2 https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/syria-emergency.html

3 https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria

4 Ohio is counted a non-traditional destination for immigrants based on its proportion of foreign born. According to the Census Bureau, from 2006 to 2008 less than 4 percent of Ohioans are foreign born, compared to 27 percent in California or 16 percent in Texas (Timberlake & Williams, 2012).

5 Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service Report Syrian Refugee Admissions and Resettlement in the U.S: In Brief, 2015. p. 4.

6 Canada has hosted 27,000 Syrian refugees in 2016.

7 https://www.statista.com/statistics/742553/syrian-refugee-arrivals-us

8 https://www.wrapsnet.org/archives https://www.wrapsnet.org/archives/

9 Dedoose is the software that developed to analyze qualitative and mixed methods research data including text, photos, audio, videos, spreadsheet data and more (https://www.dedoose.com/).