Invisible and on the Margins: A Demographic Profile of Emerging Refugee Populations in Northern Colorado

• In Event: 242 - Section on International Migration Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Refugee Experiences

Abstract

Theory and research focused on immigrant assimilation and integration is abundant in the social sciences. At the same time, there is a paucity of work specifically examining the experiences of refugees in the U.S. Refugee populations originating from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe are continuing to grow as a proportion of the immigrant population nationwide. Secondary migration of refugees within the U.S. is common, but the integration of refugees into areas that are not primary resettlement locations is under-explored in the scholarly literature. This paper presents a case study of Greeley, Colorado, a small city with an agriculture and meatpacking base about 50 miles north of Denver. The influx of refugees since 2007 has been substantial relative to Greeley’s size, and many of the community’s newcomers are in fact very recent arrivals to the United States. Understanding the processes of integration into the U.S. and within local communities has become an issue of increasing importance for both refugees and their host communities. Generating a profile of the Greeley refugee population has proven to be a great challenge. Simply stated, the data are hard to come by. Through collaboration with a local non-profit organization serving refugees, we have a database with demographic background information for 611 individual cases representing over 20 language and country of origin groups. This preliminary paper explores the factors that have fostered substantial demographic shifts, documents the challenges of collecting data on new refugee populations, and provides an initial demographic snapshot of the local refugee population.

Authors

• Kyle Anne Nelson, University of Northern Colorado

• Michelle Behr, University of Northern Colorado

• Christine Marston, University of Northern Colorado