Refugees, Rights, and Race: How Legal Status Shapes Liberian Immigrants' Relationship with the State

Drawing on three years of participant observation in a Liberian immigrant community, this article examines the role of legal refugee status in immigrants' daily encounters with the state. Using the literature on immigrant incorporation, claims making, and citizenship, it argues that refugee status profoundly shapes individuals' views and expectations of their host government as well as their interactions with the medical, educational, and social service institutions they encounter. The refugees in this study use their refugee status to make claims for legal and social citizenship and to distance themselves from native-born blacks. In doing so, they validate their own position vis-à-vis the state and in the American ethno-racial hierarchy. The findings presented demonstrate how refugee status operates as a symbolic and interpretive resource used to negotiate the structural realities of the welfare state and American race relations. These results stress the importance of studying immigrant incorporation from a micro perspective and suggest mechanisms for the adaptational advantages for refugees reported in existing research.