‘What defines me is what I have been through’: Bhutanese refugee youth identity in the United States

Framed by a poststructuralist theory of identity, this phenomenological study explores Bhutanese refugee youth’s lived experiences before and after resettlement and the ways that these experiences influence their identity navigation. Data from this study come from a two-year ethnography with a recently resettled Bhutanese refugee community in a northeastern US city. By focusing on four Bhutanese refugee youth and two current Bhutanese refugee youth club collaborators who used to be teachers in the camp in Nepal, the findings indicate that the essential nature of refugee youth’s lived experience is a way of being, becoming, and imagining. From past to present, from camp to campus, refugee youth adjust not only to their situated environment, but also to who they are and who they want to be. This study highlights refugee identity as a multi-layered and multi-faceted construct, which is related to others, contested, imagined, power driven, and constituted by social practice.