Refugee resettlement amid anti-refugee rhetoric: How refugee families navigate school in a southeastern US city

• In Event: Refugee trajectories, mobility, aspirations, and political constraints

Proposal

Introduction and Conceptual Framing

While refugees who are resettled from settings of conflict to the US arrive with hopes of peace and opportunity, these hopes are often dashed by schools and neighborhoods that fail to meet their needs (Dryden-Peterson & Reddick, 2017). Our work in a southeastern city in the US extends our understanding of these challenges. We find that refugee young people and their families face significant barriers to the kinds of opportunity, safety, and future-building they had imagined they might find, experiencing bring boundaries that limit experiences of belonging (Alba, 2005).

The United States’ longstanding role as a global leader in refugee resettlement is under threat, as political leaders increasingly retreat from a decades-long commitment to providing safe haven to individuals and families seeking peace (Aleaziz, 2025). Although refugee resettlement has always been a fraught undertaking, often enabling safety and opportunity in name more than in practice (Gowayed, 2022), the US nonetheless professed a commitment to a robust refugee resettlement program. Now, this program has been canceled, with no indication that it will be renewed (The White House, 2025). And the southeastern US, home to some of the largest populations of refugees in the country, has become a leader in anti-immigrant policies (National Law Review, 2025).

Research Design

Given this larger context, we draw on the comparative case study method (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) to examine the ecosystem of refugee resettlement in a democratic-leaning, southern US city within a politically conservative state. Using arts-based methods as well as interviews and observations, we ask:
● How do refugee young people and their families experience school in a small city in the southeast US?
● How do broader dynamics of refugee resettlement influence children’s and teachers’ local educational experiences?
● How do stakeholders at the school level (e.g., teachers and principals) navigate their work with refugee learners? What opportunities and challenges do they face in the context of diverse classrooms, and how do they work to overcome these challenges?

Through this study, we look both horizontally and vertically (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017) to examine education for refugee young people at a time when refugee resettlement is under threat. This project involves interviews at three levels: at the family level, with refugee young people and their caregivers; at the school level, with principals, teachers, and peers in classrooms; and at the city level, with key organizational stakeholders. We seek to shift the gaze that is so prevalent in comparative and international research, from studying contexts far afield to studying what is happening in our own backyard. In this project, we draw, in part, on Menashy’s (2025) call to “study up,” examining the work of refugee resettlement stakeholders and the larger political environment as part of an ecology that affects refugee families and host community educators.

As part of this work, we are engaged in data-collection and engagement through an arts-based project with refugee children and their peers. In this arm of the research, students collaboratively examine, analyze, and share their lived experiences through artistic representation. We collect observational data and data related to the artifacts young people create, reflecting on peacebuilding, ongoing disruption, and the promises and perils of resettlement. Our research team brings together our own diverse experiences and backgrounds to develop the kinds of relationships needed for this work; some of us are from regions and language backgrounds represented by participating families, others from contexts represented among teachers and other stakeholders. We all have deep experience working in diverse research settings, within and beyond the US.

Findings

Our project is, to our knowledge, the first systematic study of the educational experiences of refugee students, their families, and teachers in a democratic-leaning, diverse city, located in a multilingual state currently espousing an anti-immigrant agenda. Initial analysis of interviews with children reveals that refugee young people are facing significant headwinds to learning and belonging at school. A former staff member of the local chapter of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) highlighted these difficulties. “They feel they just don’t fit in,” she explained, pointing to issues of language, culture, and academic progress to explain the challenges refugee young people in the city face. “There is also bullying, as well as issues related to financial literacy, health insurance, disabilities, and other concerns,” she continued. Resettled refugee young people and their families are struggling to find their footing in a hosting setting that is very different from the communities where they most recently lived (in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Venezuela, Syria, and Afghanistan).

At the center of these challenges are a lack of English language skills to enable relationship-building and literacy development; there are also few practices among teachers to support English language learning or to draw on students’ existing linguistic repertoires (García & Wei, 2010). The significant social barriers young people experience due to language result in high rates of bullying and exclusion alongside significant academic struggles. We are currently conducting analysis of interviews with refugee young people, their parents, teachers and other stakeholders, integrating these analyses with findings from the arts-based afterschool program. Our focus is on the major themes of home-building that refugee young people explore collaboratively.

Implications

This collaborative research project with refugee young people, families, educators and other stakeholders will illuminate the challenges of resettlement at this political moment, contributing to both theory and practice. Furthermore, we anticipate utilizing this research to take the first step in creating a long-term Youth Participatory Action Research coalition with young people in the city, supporting young people to contribute their own essential research knowledge about their lived experiences in local schools. This will contribute to a policy-relevant research agenda centered around promoting justice and wellbeing among refugee youth in the southeastern US and across the country, providing vital data about refugee resettlement in one of the most politically unsettled times in recent history.

Authors

• Brenda Aromu Wawire, Florida State University, Learning Systems Institute

• Celia Reddick, Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University

• Adrienne Barnes-Story, Florida State University

• Sana Tibi, FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY