The paradox of intimate care: volunteers navigating boundaries and self-sufficiency in U.S. refugee resettlement

Volunteers in the U.S. refugee resettlement system perform essential care work, becoming deeply involved in the everyday lives of newcomers. Expected to promote self-sufficiency and maintain boundaries, their relationships frequently blur these lines, revealing tensions between emotional intimacy and institutional expectations. We introduce the concept of intimate care to describe the relational, emotional, and embodied labour volunteers perform—work that is both deeply personal and structurally constrained. Drawing on feminist geographies of care, migration studies, and critiques of neoliberal governance, we examine how volunteers navigate, enforce, and resist boundaries within a system that demands care but discourages dependency. Based on interviews and participant observation in North Carolina, we trace volunteer responses to these contradictions, including strategies like ‘going rogue’ to sustain caring relationships beyond imposed limits. Our analysis illuminates the messy and contested terrain of care within neoliberal systems, contributing to feminist scholarship on emotional labour and boundary negotiation.