In recent years, many anthropologists in the United States have become involved with organizations that serve newly resettled refugees, especially as budgets for the agencies have been severely cut since 2017. Here, we reflect on some of our experiences working with Refugees from the Congo Wars (RFCWs) and address some of the challenges we have faced as applied/practicing anthropologists and resettlement support personnel. Juxtaposing a larger southern city—Tampa—with a smaller rustbelt city—Akron—we see many commonalities but also a few differences that likely relate to host city size and existing diversity profiles. Drawing on almost 3 years of research, we offer some shared observations and comparative divergences among populations of RFCWs that shed light on issues of: timing of arrival in the United States, community and class, schooling, gender and family, and food and diet, for people working with this population.

This article addresses underlying inequities for resettling refugees that have been exposed by COVID-19, including language barriers and access to public health information, food, health care, housing, and employment. It also speaks to theoretical concerns about the role of structural forces in creating increased health risks for vulnerable populations. Fieldwork that began in May 2020 investigated the extent to which refugees in Tampa understand and can operationalize the state and federal pandemic policies that have been put in place in the wake of the spread of COVID-19. The issues include understanding of COVID-19 and how it is transmitted, ability and willingness to practice distancing, access to food assistance, ability to help children with remote learning, and workplace disruptions, including the need to file for unemployment. Our method speaks to community-based approaches to anthropological fieldwork in pandemic situations, while demonstrating that critical language skills and in-depth cultural knowledge are essential for evaluating public health pandemic messaging and helping vulnerable populations.

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Abstract:This article explores recent changes in Kenya's curio or handicrafts industry. In addition to a crisis in access to raw materials and a diversifying tourist market, the rise in the use of cell phones and the Internet during the early 2000s present unique challenges. Nonetheless, innovative Kenyan entrepreneurs are using these challenges to market and brand products in new ways—by representing modern global interconnectedness as “fair trade” or creatively promoting the authenticity of their products in other ways. Kenya's artisans and traders have also adapted to diverse and complex tastes beyond the desire for an invented tradition of ethnic and “tribal” art.

Removed from the roadsides by waves of “city cleaning” in the early 2000s, Kenyan crafts traders have spent their careers struggling for market access within the port city and tourism hub of Mombasa. An Indian Ocean city in which the mobile and immobile of the global economy converge and interact, some Kenyan traders strive to “jump scales” into international networks, made more possible in the last decade with the help of digital technologies such as cell phones and e‐mail. Based on research conducted between 2001 and 2014, this article explores the stories of two Kenyan crafts traders and how they negotiate the changing relationships and risks of different types of mobility, from everyday travel around Mombasa and Kenya to the mobility made possible by new telecommunication technologies. I focus on emergent strategies for economic advancement and the need to negotiate a variety of formal and informal political, legal, and economic barriers. I demonstrate that translating the new forms of digital technologies and mobility into economic success is contingent on the types of risks accompanying these new mobilities and the capacity for individuals’ social networks to help in gaining access to jobs, land, and new social connections.