For the last two decades, refugees, like other immigrants, have been settling in newer locations throughout the US and other countries. No longer are refugees to be found only in major metropolitan areas and gateway cities; instead, they are arriving in small towns, rural areas, rustbelt cities, and suburbs. What happens to them in these new destinations and what happens to the places that receive them? Drawing on a decade’s worth of interviews, surveys, spatial analysis and community-based projects with key informants, Dr Pablo Bose argues that the value of refugee newcomers to their new homes cannot be underestimated.
For the last two decades, refugees, like other immigrants, have been settling in newer locations throughout the US and other countries. No longer are refugees to be found only in major metropolitan areas and gateway cities; instead, they are arriving in small towns, rural areas, rustbelt cities, and suburbs. What happens to them in these new destinations and what happens to the places that receive them? Drawing on a decade’s worth of interviews, surveys, spatial analysis and community-based projects with key informants, Dr Pablo Bose argues that the value of refugee newcomers to their new homes cannot be underestimated.
Tracing the history of refugee settlement in Fargo, North Dakota, from the 1980s to the present day, Race-ing Fargo focuses on the role that gender, religion, and sociality play in everyday interactions between refugees from South Sudan and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the dominant white Euro-American population of the city. Jennifer Erickson outlines the ways in which refugees have impacted this small city over the last thirty years, showing how culture, political economy, and institutional transformations collectively contribute to the racialization of white cities like Fargo in ways that complicate their demographics. Race-ing Fargo shows that race, religion, and decorum prove to be powerful forces determining worthiness and belonging in the city and draws attention to the different roles that state and private sectors played in shaping ideas about race and citizenship on a local level. Through the comparative study of white secular Muslim Bosnians and Black Christian Southern Sudanese, Race-ing Fargo demonstrates how cross-cultural and transnational understandings of race, ethnicity, class, and religion shape daily citizenship practices and belonging.
Despite the velocity and scale of the cumulative changes of immigrant integration and receptivity infrastructures in fast growing regions of the United States, less research has focused on the new and evolving experiences in these regions in recent years. Editors Paul N. McDaniel and Darlene Xiomara Rodriguez and the contributors in Integration and Receptivity in Immigrant Gateway Metro Regions in the United States fill this gap through case studies of different types of immigrant gateway metro areas. They provide insight into how immigrant settlement, integration, and receptivity processes and practices within each metro area have continued to evolve beyond the nascent experiences documented in the early 2000s. This interdisciplinary volume examines ongoing processes in not only well-established immigrant gateways, but also in previously overlooked regions. This book is a resource for researchers, students, and practitioners to contextualize the ongoing changes in new destination metropolitan regions in the United States and to learn from the challenges, opportunities, and best practices emerging from different metropolitan regional contexts.
Knowledge of the integration process for refugees is often subsumed under the broader category of “immigrants”. This book focuses on this process for refugees, including the structural and systemic challenges they face as they integrate in their new host societies, and how they respond to such challenges. The book provides a critical analysis of Canada’s approach to integrating refugees with additional chapters focused on refugee integration in Australia, Northern Ireland, and the United States. This collection of work critically addresses a range of topics and employs a variety of qualitative approaches to gain a better understanding of the lived experience of integration for refugees, including the ways in which refugees view integration and the attendant challenges and opportunities encountered during the integration process. Departing from viewing refugees as a “burden” that must be shared by the international community, the contributors to this collection explore the complex dynamics of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, generation and legal status for refugees in a selection of local contexts of reception. The work begins a dialogue about the long-term dynamics of refugee settlement and integration with implications for the viability of future resettlement programs and practices. How the world responds to the ongoing plight of the growing numbers of displaced people will be a defining feature of the contemporary global order. This collection shifts the discourse about refugees from one of victimhood to one of refugee agency and rights. The book will be of primary interest to academics in the field of refugee and migration studies, to practitioners in the settlement sector, and to those involved in making refugee policies. It will also be useful for those who work in social services and education in countries of the global north that receive refugees and refugee claimants, and anyone with an interest in refugee lives.
What are the different contours of defining a subject? How does a subject form in the act of resilience? This multi-author book explores the concept of a wandering subject, especially in the context of resilience. The wandering subject can be understood as an ever-forming subject through different mobilities. This movement is not just the physical movement compelled by a certain agency but also the various mobilities of the selves of the subject, mobilities through spaces, the interconnections formed with other subjects, and the fluidity between the subject/object/spaces at most times compelled by the spirit of resilience. Each chapter of the book delves into the myriad modalities of movement in spaces that are imagined or real. The space is always one of contestation, be it emerging from gender conflict, or that of a nation or a trauma inflicted by war. In this mode of displacement, either physical, emotional or spiritual (and at times, a seepage of all), the subject evolves and defines itself beyond the boundaries of binaries. It questions available definitions of self, subjecthood and identity and prompts one to imagine ways of comprehending and elucidating the concept of subject. In this sense, the book not only illuminates multiple perspectives on the subject but also compels the reader to formulate their own mode of grappling with this complex idea of the subject. It renders itself as an aid to current and future scholars to re-imagine and re-configure the subject.
This book examines immigration to small cities throughout Canada. It explores the distinct challenges brought about by the influx of people to urban communities which typically have less than 100,000 residents. The essays are organized into four main sections: partnerships, resources, and capacities; identities, belonging, and social networks; health, politics, and diversity, and Francophone minority communities. Taken together, they provide a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary perspective on the contemporary realities of immigration to small urban locations. Readers will discover how different groups of migrants, immigrants, and Francophone minorities confront systemic discrimination; how settlement agencies and organizations develop unique strategies for negotiating limited resources and embracing opportunities brought about by changing demographics; and how small cities work hard to develop inclusive communities and respond to social exclusions. In addition, each essay includes a case study that highlights the topic under discussion in a particular city or region, from Brandon, Manitoba to the Thompson-Nicola Region in British Columbia, from Peterborough, Ontario to the Niagara Region. As a complement to metropolitan-based works on immigration in Canada, this collection offers an important dimension in migration studies that will be of interest to academics, researchers, as well as policymakers and practitioners working on immigrant integration and settlement.
This guide is for educational researchers interested in conducting ethically sound qualitative studies with diverse populations, including refugees, documented and undocumented immigrants, and people with disabilities. Through a description of a case study with refugee families, their children, school personnel, and liaisons, the authors highlight humanizing methods—a multidirectional and dynamic ethical compass with relationships at the center. Topics in the book include working within the limitations of Institutional Review Board (IRB) standards, using cultural and linguistic liaisons to communicate with research participants, and creating reciprocity with research participants and their families and communities. Through accessible real-world examples, the text covers the full arc of a project, from conceptualization of design, to navigating human subjects committees, to the complex task of representing ideas to academic and community-based audiences. Book Features: Engages readers in the complex and sometimes uncertain terrain of working across diverse constituencies in schoolÐcommunity partnership research.Centers practical and ethical tensions in fieldwork as sites from which to learn more about research participants and researcher values.Includes reflections by contributing authors on how to work with non-dominant students, ensuring full equity and inclusion for all learners.Models an approach of metacritical reflexivity and researcher positionality.
This edited volume draws attention to the interlinked yet understudied relationship between the role of cities in dealing with international displacement and forced migration and the influence of forced migration in stimulating spatial, societal, and institutional transformations in and of cities. In 2022, almost 84 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced. More than two-thirds of them reside in urban areas. Displacement and forced migration are an urban experience and an urban story of those seeking protection. This book helps us understanding the conditions of displaced population in cities, and the way cities and urban actors respond to recent migration trends. It applies an urban perspective to the analysis of migration processes, and it provides insights into the urban governance of forced migration and asylum, the production of spaces related to forced migration, and the role of the displaced population as actors of urban change. Thereby, it covers a broad spectrum of topics including migrant dispersal, welfare and social protection, urban humanitarian policymaking and governance, neighbourhood development, migrant solidarity and refugee protest, and new refugee and migrant destinations. Given the increasing mobility and displacement of human populations, this book provides a relevant prerequisite for readers interested in current urban, (forced) migration and asylum trends, and on the intersections of those topics. The book will be of great value to researchers and academics of Geography, Migration and Urban Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.
