Reimagining Refugee Resettlement: Collaboration, Endurance, and Temporality in the Displacement Assemblage

As the number of forcibly displaced people increases globally, strategies for resettlement in the United States require reform to accommodate and support the individuals within resettlement. Decrease in funding for refugee resettlement over the past decade has forced resettlement agencies to navigate resettlement with limited resources, these events have put additional strain on both the service providers (caseworkers, employees, and volunteers) and the refugee clients they support. This project will explore the obstacles and expectations within U.S. resettlement from both service provider and refugee client perspectives to collaboratively identify and conceptualize strategies that mitigate feelings of exhaustion and promote long-term endurance in the liminal spaces of resettlement. Using qualitative methods to collaboratively explore resettlement with service providers and refugee clients is an opportunity to explore the entanglements of international and domestic resettlement policies, how these policies affect individuals, and what strategies could be implemented to advocate for a more human centered model of resettlement.