“To Learn the Society of the US, I See those Channels”: Refugees’ Use of Media During Ongoing Resettlement

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Ethnicity and Race in Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This project considers how refugees encounter, interpret, and use media as a conduit for acculturation during long-term processes of ongoing resettlement that take place after their arrival in the United States. Drawing on insights provided by seventy-four oral history interviews with refugees from Bhutan, Burma (Myanmar), Iraq and Somalia in the four states that accepted the most refugees in 2012—Texas, California, New York and Pennsylvania—this paper explores the interaction of media, language, and religion and demonstrates the ways that these three phenomena are inextricably linked in refugees’ lives. Moreover, the refugee narrators reveal, in their own word, the role of media in maintaining or negotiating connections between displaced families and friends.

Author

• Sarah C Bishop, Baruch College - CUNY