ix, 86 p. / Using interviews with refugee farmers and insights gained through participant-observation at farms and at farming events, this thesis explores how Somali Bantu refugees interact with the Global Gardens resettlement project in Boise, Idaho. Somali Bantu refugees' engagement with the agricultural integration program reveals that the United States refugee resettlement system often focuses on economic integration goals and measures to the exclusion of alternative development or integration options. Refugee farmers' common and differing experiences and evaluations of the farm project challenge the wisdom of a purely neoliberal, economics-focused approach to resettlement. This study suggests that refugee-farming participants were not uniformly and principally motivated to farm by potential financial gain: in addition to viewing the farms as an economic resource, participants valued the farms as important social, cultural, and civic resources. / Committee in charge: Stephen Wooten, Chairperson; Lynn Fujiwara, Member; Dennis Galvan, Member

This thesis examines post-2003 Iraqi refugee narratives of identity in the United States and the intricacies constituting the establishment of 'home' in the country that remains an occupying force within their native land. The project provides insight into the lived experiences, feelings of belonging, and resettlement of Iraqis in two U.S. cities. I draw on interviews focused on the resettlement experiences and expectations of Iraqis currently living the Pacific Northwest city of Portland, Oregon and how that may compare to constructs of identity and conceptualizations of home in the southwestern city of Austin, Texas. I employ work by geographers and the growing body of literature on diaspora, refugee studies, and resettlement in other related disciplines to frame important and challenging questions about refugee identity, home-making, and sense of belonging.

This thesis explores the relationship between community gardens in Portland, Oregon, and the refugee integration process. Using interviews and observations of a community garden in southeast Portland, the research explores the actors and organizations working with refugees in community gardens all over the city. The most prominent actors in the community garden networks are referred to as Community Cultivators. These individuals are refugees and also strongly tied to organizations and institutions in Portland. It is through these social networks that Community Cultivators are able to build bridges between their refugee communities and Portland-based organizations, fostering integration. This research also explores how integration happens in the community gardens in Portland and why community gardens are able to foster these relationships. The foundational framework used in this research is Alison Ager and Alistar Strang’s (2008) Indicators of Integration, which is adapted for the unique process of refugee integration through community gardens engagement.

The flight of two million anti-Bolshevik refugees from Russia's new Soviet regime during the late 1910s and early 1920s caused a major refugee crisis that was the first in twentieth-century Europe ultimately to require significant governmental intervention and resolution. Large international charitable organisations, especially from America, worked in Europe to administer a professional and scientific solution on the colossal post-war humanitarian emergency. However, among the Russian refugees were active members of the former Unions of Zemstva, Union of Towns and the Russian Society of the Red Cross who were able to pool their own considerable collective expertise to provide significant practical humanitarian aid as well as to advocate 'from the inside' for the rights of the refugees on the national and international stage. In the refugee camps of Constantinople the activists used multiple, often creative, methods to deliver relief aid while struggling with a limited budget and overwhelming numbers of needy refugees. In Paris, Zemgor, under the chairmanship of Prince G. E. L'vov, negotiated funding and international support for the exiled Russians, keeping the refugee crisis in plain sight of a sometimes impassive world. As refugees themselves, the professional and intellectual members of the former Russian public organisations were able to present and validate the unheard voices of the most vulnerable displaced people on a broad platform which began with, but was not limited to, emergency food aid in 1920-21.

abstract: In 2001, a refugee group of unaccompanied minors known as the Lost Boys of Sudan began arriving in the United States. Their early years were met with extensive media coverage and scores of well-meaning volunteers in scattered resettlement locations across the country. Their story was told in television news reports, documentary films, and published memoirs. Updates regularly appeared in newsprint media. Scholars have criticized public depictions of refugees as frequently de-politicized, devoid of historical context, and often depicting voiceless masses of humanity rather than individuals with skills and histories (Malkki 1996, Harrell-Bond and Voutira 2007). These representations matter because they are both shaped by and shape what is possible in public discourse and everyday relations. This dissertation research creates an intersection where public representation and everyday practices meet. Through participant observation as a volunteer at a refugee community center in Phoenix, Arizona, this research explores the emotions, social roles and relations that underpin community formation, and investigates the narratives, representations, and performances that local Lost Boys and their publics engage in. I take the assertion that "refugee issues are one privileged site for the study of humanitarian interventions through which 'the international community' constitutes itself " (Malkki 1996: 378) and consider formation of local 'communities of feeling' (Riches and Dawson 1996) in order to offer a critique of humanitarianism as mobilized and enacted around the Lost Boys. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Geography 2014

Violent conflicts and social unrest in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and in Africa have led to growing numbers of persons seeking refuge in Europe since 2011. The phenomenon culminated in 2015. In that year, with 88,300 new asylum applications, Austria was the 4th largest receiver of asylum seekers in the EU, thereby increasing visibly religious diversity in the country. Using two social surveys carried out in 2015 and in 2017 among asylum seekers and refugees, we study religious affiliation, religiosity, and attitudes as well as participation in religious groups. By focusing on the time span shortly after arriving in Austria, we aim to shed light on first steps in the host society and the multi-layered roles of religion for participation and integration. We provide a comparison with the host society in terms of religious affiliation and religiosity, and discuss recent qualitative research on refugees and religiosity. Insights into the engagement of refugees in several activities related to religion or not are valuable to shed light on the multi-layered characteristics of the recent inflow of forced migrants in Austria.

This thesis provides an anthropological account of the relationship between experiences of migration and reproduction among Somalis living in Nairobi, Kenya, specifically the complex relationship between motherhood and migration, and the intricacies of balancing the significance and consequences of both. Due to their legally ambiguous and often volatile status, many Somalis did not perceive Kenya as a ‘durable solution’ for settlement, instead locating themselves within an ongoing process of migration, and as part of a fluid yet highly connected transnational diaspora. This thesis draws on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in Eastleigh, the ‘Little Mogadishu’ area of Nairobi, with Somali women and their families, as well as medical practitioners, NGOs, UN agencies, and governmental bodies, during which I followed how reproductive decisions were made and medical facilities were navigated within a context of displacement. In this thesis I unpack what it means to exist as a ‘refugee’, ‘a migrant’, and ‘a Somali’ within Kenya, as well as the significance of living within a global diaspora community. I analyse (re)creations of ‘home’ through the temporal appropriation of space, as well as the reproduction of the nation within a context of displacement. I argue that in order to understand how women experience migration, it is essential to understand how they identify themselves within their own transnational family and clan networks as women, wives, and mothers. By illuminating how women protect and act upon their own social positions, this thesis will analyse interwoven concepts of beauty, morality, and motherhood, with a particular focus on how these were entwined with perceptions of both Islam and the Somali nation. Finally, a detailed ethnographic exploration of how women and their families navigated fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth, while simultaneously accounting for possibilities of onward migration, will shed light on the body as a site at which matters of kinship, migration and the future were negotiated. Drawing these issues together, and situating them within medical and political anthropology, this thesis argues that maternity and motherhood are points at which concepts of kinship, religion, citizenship, and gender are intricately interwoven and crucially tethered to strategies for onward migration.

M.A. / Migration and resettlement in South Africa bring many challenges to refugee women. Within a very hostile and discriminating environment, refugee women have to familiarise themselves with a new culture and new languages, as well as gain access to systems of health, education and employment. Loss of identity, income, career, equality and significant others are evident, which leaves them, as refugee women, excluded, isolated and disempowered. However, instead of just becoming passive recipients of aid, refugee women are active in forming their own informal horizontal helping networks, defined as Philanthropy of Community (PoC). PoC can be described as informal, multi-directional, intra-gender helping relationships among refugee women, who share communality in terms of language, culture, social circumstances and ideals. In this study, the networks are also referred to as “the sisterhood”, based on the shared goals, circumstances and feelings of mutual empathy and loyalty toward each other. Driven by the philosophy of ubuntu, altruism and religious beliefs, and guided by the principle, “If I have, I give”, the sisterhood gives and receives material and non-material help in its community. The goal of this study was to gain an appreciative understanding of philanthropy of community (PoC) among refugee women in Johannesburg as a social asset for community development. Objectives of this study were to identify and describe the PoC of the sisterhood, as it perceives and experiences it, and identify assets that can be utilised to facilitate community development practice. The sample consisted of five Congolese refugee women from Yeoville. All participants had a tertiary qualification, yet were unemployed. A qualitative research approach was followed to allow participants to construct meaning out of their social and cultural realities. Data collection methods were focus groups and individual interviews to elicit information and meaning of the sisterhood in Yeoville. 2 The following social assets were identified in the sisterhood of Yeoville: protection against social exclusion, provision of informal social support, maintenance of cultural links, promotion of socialisation and communication, community-building, pooling of human capital, self-organised support in adversity and a sense of well-being and spiritual fulfilment. Despite the positive effect of PoC, it also has limitations: a perceived sense of familiarity, based on same-ethnic relationships, as well as laziness, often lead to exploitation of fellow sisters, resulting in distrust and loneliness. It was concluded that PoC does not have the potential to meet all the psycho-social needs of refugee women, and cannot fully replace organised social welfare services. Research concluded that while participants acknowledge PoC within the sisterhood as their main means of survival, they find it difficult to envision the mobilisation of existing sisterhood networks towards participatory community development initiatives, creating sustainable livelihoods and integration into the local community. Reasons are a lack of capacity, lack of assertiveness and distrust. While they seem well-informed about the internal functioning of their sisterhood, they show a lack of information and skills on how to link with the external community to form partnerships and networks to stimulate development. A participatory Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach, with its mechanism for healing, social cohesion and nation-building, is the most appropriate way to propel human, social and economic integration and growth in the current migration context. By focusing on what is present, instead of what is absent, problematic or needed among women refugees, and embracing their strengths, gifts and indigenous wisdom, PoC within the sisterhood can be applied by community developers as a social tool in a planned change process to facilitate integration and development of refugee women in South Africa.

The majority of empirical literature on refugee identity and homeland attachment focuses on single exile trajectories: one migratory movement out of the homeland and possibly repatriation. It largely neglects more complex experiences of exile and their implications. Double-exile, a second fleeing of one’s homeland after repatriation, adds complexity to our conventional understanding of refugee perceptions of home and identity. This study explores double-exile experiences of the Rwandan Hutu refugee population of Dzaleka refugee camp to examine its impacts on notions of home and identity construction. This ethnographic study found that the Rwandan Hutu refugees have a unique relationship to home and identity. Double-exile ended their sense of belonging to Rwandan society. Thus causing a break in the conventional longing for home and deterritorializing their identity. These impacts are apparent through the juxtaposition of study participants’ notions of home and their experiences of return and double-exile, a lack of connection or desire to return to Rwanda, and an absence of pride in their Rwandan identity and cultural practices. These findings suggest that more importance must be placed on the role of pre-flight experience of refugees as an integral element to their construction of notions of home. It also indicates that, contrary to more conventional exile trajectories where refugee identity is derived from a historical consciousness, double-exile refugees construct identity through a present-focus.

A majority of refugee-immigrants experience a variety of psychological difficulties during their resettlement in a new country. Using a sentence completion method, this study tested a hypothesis that in a majority of refugee-immigrants the manifested difficulties were of temporary and transitional character. Eighty subjects completed 51-item Incomplete Sentence Blank questionnaires: 20 Canadian-born individuals, 20 refugee-immigrants living 1-3 years in Canada, 20 refugee-immigrants living 5-7 years in Canada, and 20 refugee-immigrants living in Canada over 8 years. All refugee-immigrants were of Czechoslovakian origin. Sample groups were matched in sex, age, and education of subjects. The questionnaire was designed to reflect different levels of satisfaction with self, others, and the whole environment. The responses were quantified and evaluated blindly by three independent judges; the higher score was expressing the higher subject's dissatisfaction. Analysis of variance and consequent multiple comparisons showed that the mean score of the sample of refugee-immigrants living in Canada 1-3 years was significantly higher than the mean scores of all other investigated samples; the differences in mean scores between other samples were not significant. In all sample groups, t-tests did not indicate significant differences in scoring between females and males. Fifty-one analyses of variance and multiple comparisons identified separate questionnaire items on which "new" immigrants scored significantly higher than all or some of other sample groups. These items highlighted the adaptive nature of difficulties experienced by the majority of "new" immigrants. Three brief case studies supported these results. Other related findings included suspicious attitudes found mainly in new immigrants, comments on questionnaire forms differentiating between samples, and the topic of "refugee dreams". All findings seem to indicate that for the majority of new refugee-immigrants the psychological difficulties experienced during their resettlement are of temporary and transitional character, a natural expression of their coping adaptive struggles in a new environment. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate