Aspiring Americans: Refugee Aspirations and the Governmentality of the United States Domestic Resettlement Program

The United States Federal Refugee Program measures resettlement success against the economic self-sufficiency of each refugee household’s employable adults. For arriving refugees without access to various forms of capital, resettlement success, as measured by the Federal Government, is tantamount to immediate employment. Resettlement researchers and practitioners have long criticized the early employment focus of the refugee program for favoring immediate outcomes over the long-term success of the resettled. This research contributes to evaluating the impact of the resettlement process on refugee aspirations and resettlement success. Participants from two groups arriving in North Carolina’s Research Triangle in 2012 and 2015 answered questions about their aspirations at three points in time over a six-month period. The data-collection-points correspond with and reflect the distinct phases of the government funded refugee resettlement process. The aspirations and trends identified during this study indicate that refugees with long-term aspirations perceive their resettlement as more successful than do refugees with immediate or short-term aspirations. Contextualized data analysis shows that the resettlement process can have a leveling impact on the aspirations of employable refugees but access to resources beyond government funded programs mitigates the severity of this impact. My findings suggests that co-ethnic community structures increase the likelihood of retaining long-term aspirations during resettlement and ultimately improve resettlement success. This research highlights how the normalizing ecosystems of healthy community can provide the sustainable and individual support needed for improving both programmatically defined success rates and individual perceptions of success during resettlement.