ABSTRACT Sociologists traditionally use integration as the framework for studying the benefits and shortcomings of refugee resettlement, which is considered one of three durable solutions for forced migrants. This paper problematizes dominant narratives of resettlement as a time of integration and a solution to displacement. Based on over one thousand hours of ethnographic fieldwork and 102 interviews with refugees and services providers in two U.S. cities, this paper reveals how displacement extends through refugees’ initial resettlement. I demonstrate how the resettlement process becomes displacing for refugees, as it can reconstitute kinship structures in three distinct ways: 1) by prolonging earlier separations caused by forced migration; 2) by creating new separations that become difficult to rectify; and 3) by bringing together outdated family units. Consequently, resettlement engenders social, emotional, and economic harms that are further disruptive to refugees’ lives. By centering refugees’ experiences, this paper makes visible the tensions caused by this humanitarian program and offers a novel framework for understanding the early stages of a refugee's resettlement. With a focus on how initial resettlement has a displacing effect on refugee families, I contribute to scholarship on immigrant incorporation, immigrant families, and sociological understandings of displacement.
Molly Fee (Thu,) studied this question.