Racial and Ethnic Identification and Racialization of Refugees in the United States

• In Event: 384 - Regular Session. Race and Ethnicity: Racialization across Diverse Groups

Abstract

What are the mechanisms by which a host society assigns immigrants to particular racial and ethnic categories? Specifically, how do American non-profit refugee resettlement agencies construct refugees’ racial and ethnic identities during their resettlement period? I analyze the ways in which refugees’ racial and ethnic identities become visible during everyday resettlement practices. Using over 500 hours of participant-observation as a worker in a non-profit refugee agency for eight months in 2010 and 2011 located in the Northeastern U.S., I observed interactions at the agency and the community among and between 10 workers and 20 refugees from Bhutan and Iraq. I argue that resettlement workers develop racial and/or ethnic perceptions of Iraqi and Bhutanese refugees from interactions during service provision and from making sense of the agency’s mission, training and the states’ refugee and welfare policy requirements to make refugees “self-sufficient.” While Bhutanese refugees are constructed as “very sweet, easy to get along with and willing to listen,” Iraqi refugees are constructed as “demanding, hard to communicate with and stubborn.” Results illuminate theories of racialization (Lewis, Phoenix, 2004 and Miles, 1989), of refugees which I argue occur through workers’ definitions of the “self” and what it means to be American and marking refugees’ racial and ethnic differences as meaningful. Expanding these theories, I take into account both micro and macro level explanations of the state and agency policies to understand the impact of them on racialization practices in the micro level setting of a refugee resettlement agency.

Author

• Fatima Sattar, Boston College