Refugee Resettlement as an Institution

This book examines how scholars and policymakers primarily characterize refugee resettlement as a humanitarian solution or a migration pathway. While these descriptions may be accurate, they are not comprehensive. This book examines how such framing influences understandings of resettlement's scope and impact, generating conceptual blind spots that limit critical inquiry.

By reframing resettlement as an institution embedded in a complex network of actors, relations, and practices, the chapters in this book reveal how resettlement is not a passive process. They explore historical and contemporary questions about how resettlement influences refugee hosting countries in the Global South and its political dimensions as a "humanitarian" program offered by countries in the Global North. By including the experiences of refugees at various points along the resettlement trajectory, such as those who may never be resettled, the book's chapters demonstrate how refugees actively strategize to become resettle-able, advocate for others within their networks, or even reject resettlement altogether. Contributions centering perspectives from the Global South expand the discourse around resettlement by examining how it operates from Southern host countries. These dynamics underscore how the specter of resettlement shapes refugee experiences in enduring ways, even when the prospect of being resettled is unattainable.

This book is invaluable for students, scholars, researchers, and practitioners in refugee studies, migration studies, human rights, development studies, international relations, humanitarian affairs, political science, and sociology.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Ethnic & Racial Studies.

Rawan Arar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Washington. She completed her PhD at the University of California San Diego and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University. Her book, co-authored with David Scott FitzGerald, is The Refugee System: A Sociological Approach.

Molly Fee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University of South Florida. Her research examines how refugees interact with the institutions that grant rights and resources. Her book is entitled Believing in Light after Darkness: Displacement and Refugee Resettlement.

Heba Gowayed is Associate Professor of Sociology at CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center and author of the award-winning book Refuge: How States Shape Human Potential. Her research and writing centers the lives of people who migrate across borders and the unequal and often violent institutions they face.

Blair Sackett is a Fellow at the Immigration Lab at American University. She completed a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines the barriers refugees face in accessing resources, and her book, co-authored with Annette Lareau, is We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America.