We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America

By Blair Sackett and Annette Lareau

Resettled refugees in America face a land of daunting obstacles where small things—one person, one encounter—can make all the difference in getting ahead or falling behind.
 
Fleeing war and violence, many refugees dream that moving to the United States will be like going to Heaven. Instead, they enter a deeply unequal American society, often at the bottom. Through the lived experiences of families resettled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Blair Sackett and Annette Lareau reveal how a daunting obstacle course of agencies and services can drastically alter refugees’ experiences building a new life in America.
 
In these stories of struggle and hope, as one volunteer said, “you see the American story.” For some families, minor mistakes create catastrophes—food stamps cut off, educational opportunities missed, benefits lost. Other families, with the help of volunteers and social supports, escape these traps and take steps toward reaching their dreams. Engaging and eye-opening, We Thought It Would Be Heaven brings readers into the daily lives of Congolese refugees and offers guidance for how activists, workers, and policymakers can help refugee families thrive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520976504

Blair Sackett

Blair Sackett is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Her next book project follows refugee families in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya.   Annette Lareau is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Unequal Childhoods and Home Advantage.

Book preview

We Thought It Would Be Heaven

PRAISE FOR We Thought It Would Be Heaven

This extraordinary book exposes how the gap between the American dream and its reality is, for many refugees, filled with administrative burdens. It demands both our attention and our capacity to rethink how to ensure that the most vulnerable immigrants are not lost in a bureaucratic maze.

Donald Moynihan, McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

As the former leader of one of the bureaucracies that the refugee families in Sackett and Lareau’s book traversed, I can only hope that my peers will have the wisdom to read this book.

León Rodríguez, Former Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

This deeply humanist ethnography explains how refugees who fled persecution confront new challenges as they resettle in the United States. It follows four Congolese families as they fight their way through bureaucratic circles of hell to make a new American life.

David Scott FitzGerald, coauthor of The Refugee System: A Sociological Approach

A must-read for anyone looking for an understanding of the dismal state of U.S. refugee admissions and for fresh ideas on what can be done to improve the outcomes.

Helen B. Marrow, Associate Professor of Sociology, Tufts University

Eloquently shows the many challenges and resources needed for refugee families in navigating different institutions in America to start a new life after having spent years surviving in refugee camps and civil wars. Captivating and often heartbreaking.

Leslie Paik, author of Trapped in a Maze: How Social Control Institutions Drive Family Poverty and Inequality

Exposes the bewildering maze of rules and regulations that trap refugees in Kafkaesque fashion as they navigate the U.S. bureaucracies charged with their resettlement. Highly recommended for everyone, especially for scholars, policymakers, and anyone who cares about the lives of some of the most vulnerable groups in society today.

Cecilia Menjívar, Dorothy L. Meier Social Equities Chair, University of California, Los Angeles

Compelling and timely. Theoretically innovative and insightfully argued, this book highlights how institutional barriers can derail courageous struggles for dignity and stability among the ‘lucky few’ as they rebuild their lives in a new land while underscoring how federal resettlement policies and future programs might better serve the ‘worthy many’ still in search of refuge beyond our shores.

Van C. Tran, Associate Professor of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center

We Thought It Would Be Heaven

REFUGEES IN AN UNEQUAL AMERICA

Blair Sackett and Annette Lareau

UC Logo

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Barbara S. Isgur Endowment Fund in Public Affairs.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2023 by Blair Sackett and Annette Lareau

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sackett, Blair, 1990– author. | Lareau, Annette, author.

Title: We thought it would be heaven : refugees in an unequal America / Blair Sackett and Annette Lareau.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022058926 | ISBN 9780520379046 (hardback) | ISBN 9780520379053 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520976504 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Refugees—Services for—United States. | Refugees—United States—Social conditions. | Refugees—Congo (Democratic Republic)—Social conditions.

Classification: LCC HV640.4.U54 S235 2023 | DDC 362.870973—dc23/eng/20230309

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022058926

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Contents

List of Tables

Introduction

1. Journeys to America: Lots of Red Tape

2. Hurdles and Knots Everywhere: Honoria Kimenyerwa

3. Problems Reverberate: Malu Malu and Mariamu Mahamba

4. How Cultural Brokers Help: Joseph and Georgette Ngoma

5. The Power of People Doing Their Jobs: Alain and Vana Msafiri

Conclusion: Refugees in an Unequal America

Acknowledgments

Appendix A: Tables

Appendix B: Key Ideas in More Depth

Appendix C: How We Did the Study

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Tables

1. Defining what hinders: Institutional obstacles

2. Defining what helps: Resources that help resolve obstacles

3. Legal determination process for refugee resettlement

A.1. Summary characteristics of the forty-four refugee families in our interview sample

A.2. Key characteristics of the forty-four refugee families in our interview sample

A.3. Examples of key institutions and institutional interactions in day-to-day life

A.4. Selected examples of institutional benefits refugees experienced

A.5. Obstacles faced by families in interview sample

A.6. Racial discrimination in institutional interactions

A.7. Supports given to the Ngoma family by church volunteers

A.8. Research design: Stages of the study

Introduction

Honoria Kimenyerwa and her five children landed in Philadelphia on a sweltering summer day after a long flight from Uganda. ¹ Philadelphia was the latest stop on Honoria’s refugee journey that began abruptly and tragically almost two decades earlier. Early one morning in 2000, she returned home from her regular sunrise church service to the sound of gunfire. The country’s civil war had reached her town, a farming community in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her child was being cared for by her husband, and they were nowhere to be found. She found a policeman, but he couldn’t protect her. Instead, as she tearfully recalled in Swahili, he ordered me to run away very fast. He told me not to look back because I would die. She followed his instructions, turned away from town, and started running. A few hours later she reached the eastern border with Uganda, crossed, and found a United Nations (UN) reception center. There she learned that her husband and child had been murdered. In the face of hardship, Honoria is a study in persistence and survival. After years of grieving, she established a life for herself in a refugee camp in Uganda. She started a new family, marrying again and raising five children. For sixteen years she eked out a living there, making do with meager rations, food she grew and traded, and assistance from friends. Along with other refugees, her case was reviewed by the UN. She and her children were officially designated as refugees, and she applied for resettlement to another country. The odds, however, were low: less than 1 percent of refugees around the world are resettled each year. ²

Then, everything changed. Honoria and her children were selected for resettlement to the United States. ³ (Her husband’s name was listed on a different identification card and he thus wasn’t eligible to go with them.) ⁴ With the promise of support from the U.S. government, the family was optimistic. As Honoria’s daughter Grace reflected years later, We thought it would be Heaven. Honoria dreamed that her children would have a better life—especially Esther, her eleven-year-old daughter who relied on a wheelchair. After multiple rounds of interviews, security clearances, and health checks, they made the long journey to Philadelphia. When Honoria and her children arrived, like all resettled refugees in the United States, they qualified for limited yet essential resettlement services and access to the country’s social safety net. Her family was greeted at the airport by Zeus, a federally funded caseworker who spoke Swahili. He took them to an apartment furnished from donations. For the first few months they received temporary support for rent and basic expenses. Zeus also helped them get Social Security cards, visit the doctor, and sign up for health insurance and food benefits. He enrolled Honoria in an English as a Second Language (ESL) course and her children in local schools. As a resettled refugee she had a legal pathway to permanent residency (a green card) and, after five years, citizenship. ⁵

Yet very quickly, the shining promises by the United States government didn’t pan out. Honoria discovered that refugees in the United States are given very meager resources and, unlike in other countries such as Canada and Australia, they are expected to become self-supporting after ninety days. ⁶ Although Honoria would have liked to get a job, she had a rambunctious two-year-old at home and a disabled daughter to care for and no access to affordable childcare. On a tight budget of food stamps and a monthly disability payment for her daughter, Honoria managed to feed, clothe, and take care of her children. Despite her efforts, however, her children attended underresourced and low-performing schools, where they were bullied for being Black and African immigrants, and she worried about their safety in her neighborhood.

Honoria also faced obstacles from unexpected sources: the very agencies tasked to help. As she settled in and tried to access services, she encountered many problems. Each bureaucracy had its own forms, its own deadlines, its own eligibility rules—all in jargon-filled English. Any misstep threatened access to important resources. Juggling a heavy caseload, Honoria’s caseworker was delayed in filing an application for summer school for her children. By the time the application was processed, many of the classes were full, and two of her children missed out. In another mishap the family’s income from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) was abruptly canceled due to a fluke in the timing of payments. ⁷ Honoria struggled to untangle the snag. Fortunately, her caseworker caught the error and, after working hard, got Honoria’s benefits reinstated, yet again and again Honoria’s progress was stalled by tangles in the social safety net. All these knots took time and energy to unravel, jamming up access to the resources and services she was supposed to receive—resources valuable for upward mobility. ⁸ Back in Uganda, Honoria and her family believed that being chosen for resettlement would be akin to winning the lottery. In the United States, though, the reality proved different. While Honoria considered her family better off than they were in the refugee camp, sometimes she wondered if coming to the United States had been a mistake.

WHAT HELPS AND HINDERS: GETTING AHEAD IN AMERICA

The United States is defined by its paradoxes. As the refugee families we studied will tell you, America is a land of opportunity. The families reported that their children were no longer hungry, and they had electricity and running water, unlike in the refugee camps. Yet they also discovered that the United States is a land of inequality. The refugee families, along with many other immigrants, began their journeys in America at the bottom of the hierarchy: working in grueling low-wage jobs with few opportunities for promotion and living in poor segregated neighborhoods with underfunded and underperforming schools. ⁹ As Black residents in the United States, they were confronted with racism and the staggering racial inequities that mark U.S. society—in pay, wealth, neighborhood resources, schools, and violence at the hands of police and other government agencies. ¹⁰ Further, they began their American journeys in debt. Just before they walked on the plane, the United States government required that they sign paperwork for a loan to pay for their flights. This was not the America they had envisioned.

When refugees arrive on our shores, like other immigrants, they start a new journey as they settle in a new country. We know from prior research that after arriving in a deeply unequal United States, some immigrants make more progress than others—a pattern described as differences in incorporation. ¹¹ There are many ways to assess the degree of incorporation. Employment is one key way. Most refugees and immigrants find jobs, often through the help of families and friends. ¹² Many, however, also find that their prior education and job skills are devalued in the United States, and even those with a college degree and experience as professionals end up in working-class jobs, such as servicing lawns, washing dishes in restaurants, or cutting up cows in meatpacking factories. ¹³ Some immigrants are able to purchase a home and even send their kids to college—other important markers of upward mobility. ¹⁴ We also know that as they settle in, many immigrants learn English, marry Americans, and make other changes signaling their integration. ¹⁵ (For a more in-depth discussion of scholarly findings on immigrant incorporation, see appendix B.)

In these journeys toward upward mobility, immigrants and refugees interact with institutions as they sign up for utilities, get mortgages, secure health insurance, or send their children to school. ¹⁶ Compared to other types of immigrants, refugees are given special services. ¹⁷ They are brought to the United States with the support of the government as part of the country’s commitment to humanitarian assistance, and they have special rights and resources. ¹⁸ Because of this support, many scholars of immigration have conceptualized refugees as advantaged, particularly compared to those without legal status. ¹⁹ This sponsorship matters. As we discuss in chapter 1, refugee status can unlock valuable resources in schools, social welfare agencies, and medical facilities—bureaucracies that migration scholars have demonstrated play a role in immigrant incorporation. ²⁰ Even so, as we show, the refugee families in our study faced formidable challenges, and few escaped poverty. They struggled, and many were bewildered by what had befallen them. They felt stuck.

Researchers have also shown that these social service agencies are rife with byzantine processes and a blizzard of paperwork, which create administrative burdens, or costs for families seeking services. ²¹ In these different agencies, street-level bureaucrats, or frontline service workers such as caseworkers, teachers, and police, dole out services; they can capriciously help or thwart clients. ²² Yet scholars, with few exceptions, have tended to focus on the challenges of only one type of agency at a time. ²³ Much attention has focused on resettlement agencies and other organizations that serve immigrants, illuminating challenges such as overwhelming caseloads and delays in processing green cards. ²⁴ Scholars have also examined refugees’ and immigrants’ interactions with other institutions—for example, as they faced employment challenges or their children had difficulties at school. ²⁵ What has been less developed, however, is the reality that refugees and immigrants confront many institutions all at the same time as they build a life in a new land—and, for many newcomers, they do so in a new language. Many of the challenges they face are with agencies that don’t just serve immigrants, but all Americans. Navigating many agencies all at the same time, families frequently find themselves to be, as Leslie Paik terms it, trapped in a maze. ²⁶ Furthermore, these agencies are often interwoven but not coordinated. ²⁷ Hence, the staff at the driver’s license office expect refugees to have a green card to apply for a driver’s license; Head Start officials demand parents to present medical records, paper copies of pay stubs, and bank records. The complex web of agencies, and the ways in which the interdependency among them creates obstacles, hasn’t been sufficiently understood. ²⁸ Nor have we grappled enough with the reality that errors are routine in these agencies and, as we show, can block upward mobility.

OUR KEY POINTS

In this book we have three complementary goals. First, we provide a detailed portrait of the experiences of refugee families from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in their initial years as they adjust to life in the United States. ²⁹ Second, we argue that the organizations designed to help refugees and others often hinder them by creating complex obstacles, errors, and other challenges that prevent people from accessing promised programs. We show how in the United States key promises aren’t realized. Compared to support provided by other countries, such as Canada and Australia, U.S. support for resettled refugees is too short and too meager. ³⁰ Meanwhile, the programs that do exist often end up entangling refugees (and Americans at large) in obstacles that keep them from getting ahead (table 1). Our book demonstrates the role of these intersecting obstacles in creating barriers to upward mobility and thereby shaping the incorporation process of the refugees (see appendix B for more detail). ³¹ Third, we point to the importance of public policies in helping refugees, particularly those that are streamlined and reduce eligibility constraints. Federal policies and programs, despite being limited, can be a crucial asset, and different types of helpers can make a crucial difference in the upward mobility pathways of refugee families (table 2).

Table 1 Defining what hinders: Institutional obstacles

Table 2 Defining what helps: Resources that help resolve obstacles

In this book we identify three main types of obstacles: hurdles, knots, and reverberations. First, there are hurdles to accessing resources—institutional requirements, such as obtaining a hard copy of a pay stub to file for unemployment benefits, filling out a recertification form to receive food stamps, or accessing Wi-Fi to make an online appointment. ³² Life in America entails countless small steps like these that involve paperwork, deadlines, and forms. They can be simple (although tiresome) for some, but more challenging to others, such as newcomers who don’t speak the language.

Second, sometimes things go wrong. A well-intentioned worker misspells a name on an application. A form gets lost in the mail. The bus schedule changes and a refugee misses an appointment. One error intersects with another, tangling together to form a knot in organizational processes. ³³ The precise form of knots varies, but they share some common elements: they are often triggered by one small error, the error ties up access to services, and untangling it takes significant time, effort, and knowledge.

Third, problems can metastasize. A problem in one organization spreads, creating new, unrelated problems in new settings—a reverberation. A family’s investigation by Child Protective Services (CPS) leads to a problem with their landlord, who threatens to evict them. An issue with a tax form with the IRS creates an issue with a college financial aid package, jeopardizing the college career of a family’s son. Because refugee families (like all families) are navigating a web of multiple social agencies, routine errors and mishaps in one agency can reverberate to create a series of entanglements in another.

While scholars have studied the barriers immigrants face in isolated institutions, such as workplaces or schools, the intersecting nature of obstacles suggests that they may be more widespread, interwoven, and consequential than research has generally shown. Overlooking the nature of these obstacles also risks making invisible the labor needed to resolve them. Our conceptualization contributes to our understanding of how one seemingly small issue—a missed signature or a lost piece of mail—can trap refugees and stall their attempts to get ahead.

We also illuminate how families were helped and were able to overcome these obstacles. Refugee families’ upward mobility journeys were certainly aided by their hard work and thrift, but cultural brokers (helpers with cultural knowledge) and institutional insiders (paid employees doing their jobs, and, occasionally, going the extra mile) made a crucial difference. ³⁴ They were key since their cultural knowledge of the rules of the game in U.S. institutions enabled them to help refugees overcome hurdles and resolve knots, thereby helping refugees gain access to services. In one refugee family we introduce, Alain and Vana’s, a neighbor helped their children get accepted to a local Catholic school on scholarships. Similarly, a mom from their son’s soccer team acted as a cultural broker by explaining how college financial aid worked and fixing a paperwork mishap. Other help was connected to people doing their jobs—institutional insiders. For example, educators helped Alain and Vana’s children learn English, improve their academic skills, and apply to high-performing schools and college. A bank loan officer gave Alain and Vana valuable information about how to navigate the mortgage application process in a first-time homebuyer program. Ultimately, they were able to buy a home, which they rented out for additional income. ³⁵ Alain and Vana worked hard in grueling, low-paying factory jobs. But money alone wasn’t enough to meet their goals. They also needed access to key people and programs to achieve upward mobility. In some cases, cultural brokers and institutional insiders wove across different agencies, creating intersections across institutions through which they gained services and moved ahead.

NOT JUST A PEOPLE PROBLEM

The problems that the refugee families faced were linked to the ways policies and programs were designed. The United States was formed around the notion of a weak central government with power placed in the hands of the states and the people. This history has led to a mind-boggling patchwork of federal, state, county, and local systems. Each locality has a different set of rules—everything from how long milk can stay on the grocery store shelf to how you sign up for unemployment insurance. ³⁶ In addition, as part of a neoliberal agenda there have been moves to reduce big government and strip funding for the social safety net, and fewer people are able to receive assistance. ³⁷ Despite little evidence of fraud, workers at nearly every government and private agency spend an inordinate amount of time scrutinizing applicants to see if they are eligible for—and deserving of—services. ³⁸ These social systems were designed, sometimes deliberately, to trim government services by establishing would-be clients’ (lack of) deservingness.

In this context, refugee families encountered a bewildering array of offices, rules, and regulations. Government agencies, for example, are worried that people are receiving food benefits (SNAP) when they don’t deserve to get them. In order to demonstrate their continued eligibility, families need to be recertified regularly, sometimes as often as every six months, by producing a complex stack of documents demonstrating financial need, work history, and expenses. With many complex rules and no slack (i.e., backup systems to correct errors), even one mistake can have big consequences. ³⁹ One missing piece of paper or signature can grind the entire process to a screeching halt. Despite continued eligibility, refugee families lost services, including food stamps, health care, and heating assistance, and they faced long delays in gaining benefits, such as unemployment funds or a green card for permanent residency. Moreover, in the context of cost-cutting, downsizing, and increased surveillance, a variety of American institutions have shifted the responsibility to notice, identify, and solve errors to clients, including refugee families. ⁴⁰ It is the organizations, however, that created the hurdles and set the standards. It is the organizations that failed to provide safeguards to correct for mistakes, such as requiring a caseworker to call and follow up.

Nor is it the case that these barriers affect only newcomers, like refugees. We know that a significant number of poor families never succeed in getting services they are entitled to receive, including food stamps, medical help, and so forth. For example, almost one-half of eligible women don’t get WIC or food supplements for women and children; one-fifth of eligible people don’t file to receive their Earned Income Tax Credit. ⁴¹ Too often we have looked at the qualities of individuals rather than investigating the systems themselves and examining how complying with the rules of the game can be consequential for getting ahead. ⁴²

These systems are not a level playing field. The rules of the game are fundamentally unequal according to social class, race, and gender. ⁴³ For working-class and poor families, scrutiny and surveillance are often tied to services. ⁴⁴ These standards are also deeply racialized in the ways that the rules are constructed and implemented—what scholars refer to as racialized administrative burdens. ⁴⁵ Indeed, in the United States these burdens for proof of deservingness disproportionately demand time and resources from people of color. ⁴⁶ Different expectations for men and women also play a role. For instance, caseworkers in Child Protection Services (CPS) investigations have racialized and gendered expectations for mothers, whether they are conscious of them or not. ⁴⁷ Thus, even seemingly neutral rules and requirements are rooted in inequalities.

Policy design can cause problems—but it can also prevent them. Indeed, like air traffic control systems, some organizations have excellent backup plans to prevent errors, such as plane crashes. ⁴⁸ They build slack into the system so workers can take stock to see if they are doing things correctly and make changes to correct mishaps. Some social control systems, such as fingerprint identification and police records, prove that relatively easy coordination across state lines is possible. ⁴⁹ The implications of our research are clear. Although there are reasons for creating policies that are complex and contingent, such as ensuring eligibility, our research highlights the fundamental point that unclear, complicated policies increase the risk of errors—with the consequence that people don’t receive services. Simple, streamlined policies are better. Each and every rule increases the risk of knots in the social safety net.

OUR RESEARCH

This book draws on intensive family observations of four Congolese refugee families and in-depth interviews with an additional forty Congolese refugee households and thirty-five aid workers and volunteers to provide a deeper understanding of the experiences of refugees resettled to the United States. ⁵⁰ At the time of the study, refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were the largest nationality group being resettled to the United States. The study started in Philadelphia, a city with a long history of welcoming newcomers that had reemerged as an immigrant destination by the late twentieth century. ⁵¹ As a Welcoming City for immigrants and refugees, Philadelphia is an important destination to study. ⁵² Indeed, as our research reveals, obstacles emerge even within relatively favorable contexts for receiving newcomers.

Three of the focal families arrived in Philadelphia during the same two-month period and were assisted by the same aid worker from the same resettlement agency. Like all resettled refugees, these families were sponsored by the U.S. government and were helped by a federally funded refugee resettlement agency. As we detail in the methodological appendix (appendix C), aid workers for the resettlement agency were looking for volunteers to help with translation and reached out to a Swahili professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Blair, who speaks Swahili and had done research in a large refugee camp in Kenya over a number of months, agreed to help with an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. She met the focal families at this ESL class within weeks of their arrival in the United States. ⁵³ With the families’ permission and approval from various officials, Blair studied the class and visited the Congolese families regularly in their homes—two families for eight months (until they moved away together to Iowa) and the other two for more than eighteen months. Blair accompanied the families on their day-to-day errands, chatted with them in Swahili, and generally did what the families did. While her presence was felt—and, as other studies have found, inevitably shaped the family’s dynamics—the families relaxed and adjusted to her presence over time. ⁵⁴ In addition to the families met through the class, we also added another family—Joseph, Georgette, and their children—to the study because they received support from a forty-person volunteer group in addition to U.S. government sponsorship. As a result they had a different adjustment process, as volunteers prevented and solved obstacles by providing financial support and helping navigate red tape. Five years after these families had arrived in the United States, Blair was able to reestablish contact. All the families enthusiastically agreed to follow-up interviews; in three families, she was able to interview not just the parents but also their teenage children.

This type of intensive family study research is rare, offering an unusually in-depth look at the experiences of refugee families shortly after their arrival as well as five years later. We focus on the family household rather than individuals, which provides a fuller picture of how obstacles intersect within the family as members navigate institutions. Indeed, it was the intensive observational research of the entire family that proved to be crucial since it showed the ways in which family members were bombarded by demands from many different organizations, the intricate interweaving of obstacles across organizations, and the near misses when families narrowly dodged obstacles. The four case studies also revealed ways that families were helped by organizations, yielding advantages over time.

Our findings are also rooted in our broader research sample. With the assistance of three Swahili-speaking undergraduate research assistants who grew up in Kenya, we completed interviews with an additional forty resettled Congolese refugee families living across the United States. Blair also conducted interviews with thirty-five aid workers and volunteers who had worked with refugees resettled from the Congo. For additional information about the refugee families in this study, see appendix A, table A.1 and table A.2; for an in-depth discussion of how we did the study, see appendix C.

Scholars have raised complex questions on the position of researchers doing research as outsiders. ⁵⁵ As White women born and raised in the United States, we are outsiders in terms of race and nationality. ⁵⁶ We also don’t have experience as refugees. Although an outsider, Blair was deeply familiar with eastern and central Africa and had done research in a refugee camp in Kenya for more than a year for her graduate school dissertation. She spoke Swahili, which participants commented showed her commitment to and respect for their culture. The refugee families gave her a friendly welcome; they were surprised to meet an American with these experiences and appreciated discussing life in the refugee camp with her, analyzing the qualities of different refugee camps in the region. Reasonable people disagree about the legitimacy and desirability of researchers’ different positionalities. One common position in the social sciences, however, is that both insiders and outsiders have valuable perspectives to bring to the research process. Insiders—in this case, Congolese refugee researchers—would have intimate knowledge of the refugees’ experiences that could likely more easily build a trusting relationship and enhance interpretation of their experiences. Outsiders can bring fresh perspectives too, however, and they can ask questions that might be inappropriate for insiders to raise. ⁵⁷ Still, there is always the risk that outsiders will misunderstand key issues, and researchers shouldn’t presume to have a special rapport with those they study. We wondered, for instance, if Blair’s position as a White American might have affected the families’ comfort discussing issues of racism. However, the interviews conducted by Black Kenyan research assistants, which used the same interview guide, produced similar reports, and throughout our data collection and analysis we discussed our understandings of racism with the Black researchers as well as other scholars. The results were also consistent with those of other researchers. ⁵⁸

Is it possible to gain useful insights from an intensive study of four families, along with interviews of forty additional Congolese families and thirty-five aid workers? We believe that it is. The research offers valuable depth and illuminates the world as experienced by at least some refugees to better understand the obstacles they face in a new country. By designing this study to follow families, we capture mechanisms that produce inequality. We hope this work will help a wide variety of people—from social scientists to aid workers to policy makers—improve their understanding of the factors that block upward mobility. In addition, we situate refugees’ lives in a broader context to highlight how their opportunities are structured by social forces beyond their control. We cannot, of course, empirically generalize our findings as