A New Beginning: Early Refugee Integration in the United States

Tran, Van C.; Lara-García, Francisco

doi:10.7758/rsf.2020.6.3.06

Cited by 14 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Non-profit organizations and faith communities provide social support and some non-formal financial assistance when possible. The reality is that it takes substantial time to achieve economic self-sufficiency (O’Donnell et al, 2020 ; Tran & Lara-Garcia, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigrant Family Financial and Relationship Stress From the COVID-19 Pandemic

et al. 2022

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We tend to overlook immigrant families in policy and program discussions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet they are some of the most vulnerable to the effects of this continuing crisis. This study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrant families in an upper Midwest state. We interviewed 19 human and social service providers from agencies serving Somali, Latinx, and Karen (refugees from Burma/Myanmar) immigrant families between June and August 2020. Results analyzed for this paper focused on responses to questions asked about COVID-19-related financial and familial stress, and coping resources and constraints that providers were observing with their immigrant clients. Guided by the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response Model (Patterson, 1988), we identified a pile-up of financial and relationship stressors including employment, housing, and family relationship strains, and resource access constraints. We found that job loss in already financially vulnerable immigrant families was particularly impactful. Housing insecurity soon followed. Immigrant families also faced significant constraints to resource access including lack of documentation, fear of making a mistake, language barriers, and lack of technology skills. We identified family and community resources that families used to meet demands, coping strategies, and glimmers of resilience. As we near the end of the pandemic, we urge family researchers to monitor long-term effects of the crisis on immigrant families. Findings can inform the creation of programs and policies that address immigrant family needs for resources and culturally relevant services to support their financial recovery post-COVID.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigrant Family Financial and Relationship Stress From the COVID-19 Pandemic

et al. 2022

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“…In our historical context, some immigrants studied English by attending night school, whereas others learned on the job from fellow employees (Lleras-Muney and Shertzer 2015; Carter 2009). Today, language training programs have been shown to meaningfully improve the incorporation of refugee populations (Tran and Lara-Garcia 2020;Friedberg 2000;Arendt et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussion/conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The mechanisms by which refugees are able to close initial gaps in socio-economic outcomes (the "refugee gap") has been of considerable scholarly interest. The dominant account of refugee success argues that refugee resettlement programs in the United States and elsewhere act as effective integration policies (Bloemraad 2066;Jiménez 2011;Waters and Pineau 2015;Zolberg 1988;Menjivar 2000;Tran and Lara-Garcia 2020). According to this view, refugee policy both facilitates the entry of selected groups fleeing persecution and assists their subsequent integration through occupational training, English-language instruction, and support through community organizations .…”

Section: Refugee Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although, in some cases, financial assistance is minimal given structural and resource constraints of resettlement agencies (Fee 2019;Fee and Arar 2019;Gowayed 2019), the positive governmental reception and legal status alone are assumed to facilitate refugee integration. Akresh 2008;Tran and Lara-Garcia 2020). Other data sets that separate refugees from nonrefugees are completely unavailable to researchers (Bevelander 2016).…”

Section: Refugee Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Refugees without Assistance: English-Language Attainment and Economic Outcomes in the Early Twentieth Century

Abramitzky¹,

Boustan²,

Catron³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The United States has admitted more than 3 million refugees since 1980 through official refugee resettlement programs that provide temporary assistance. Scholars have highlighted the success of refugee groups to show the positive impact of governmental programs on assimilation and integration. In the past, however, refugees arrived without formal selection processes or federal support. We examine the integration of historical refugees using a large archive of recorded oral history interviews to understand linguistic attainment and economic outcomes of migrants who arrived before 1940. Using detailed measures of vocabulary, syntax and accented speech, we find that refugee migrants achieved higher levels of English proficiency than did economic migrants, a finding that holds even when comparing migrants from the same country of origin or religious group. This study improves on previous research of immigrant language acquisition, which typically rely on self-reported measures of fluency, and on studies of refugees, which typically assign refugee status based on country-of-birth alone. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that refugees, being unable to immediately return to their origin country, may have had greater incentive to learn or be exposed to English, which increased their linguistic attainment. Our results provide an optimistic historical precedent for the incorporation of refugees into American society.

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“…Additionally, financial support for both English language education and citizenship training was prominent in the tangible assistance provided to refugees in the 1980 Act. Such tangible support reflected the host society's investment in refugees because becoming naturalized and attaining English proficiency increase structural access to economic opportunities and facilitate social participation (Portes and Rumbaut 2014;Tran and Lara-García 2020). Naturalization and greater English proficiency, thus, would be expected to account for (i.e., mediate) a large portion of refugees' children's education advantage over non-refugees' children, who did not receive such benefits.…”

Section: Host-society/refugee Relational Dynamics In the United Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Refugee Status, Settlement Assistance, and the Educational Integration of Migrants’ Children in the United States

Khuu

Bean

2021

International Migration Review

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Initial relations between the host society and migrants are likely to influence whether and to what degree migrants receive tangible and intangible settlement support that might affect their children's educational integration. As part of the 1980 Refugee Act, the United States officially began to provide settlement support to one group of migrants - refugees, thus institutionalizing more favorable host-society relations for refugees compared to non-refugee migrants. This article assesses the general idea that post-1980 US refugees will show higher levels of integration than non-refugees by testing the specific hypothesis that refugees’ foreign-born children will attain (by adulthood) higher levels of educational attainment than their non-refugee counterparts. As expected, we find that more schooling is completed among refugees’ children than among non-refugees’ children, all else being equal. We also observe that the level of governmental support at arrival is positively associated with educational attainment among refugees’ children. As expected, schooling differentials also drop in accordance with arrival-period declines in support due to drops in refugee children's schooling. The results highlight the pivotal roles that initial host-society/migrant relations play in fostering refugee integration and underscore the potential societal benefits from adopting and maintaining settlement policies for migrants.

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A New Beginning: Early Refugee Integration in the United States

Cited by 14 publications

References 52 publications

Immigrant Family Financial and Relationship Stress From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Immigrant Family Financial and Relationship Stress From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Refugees without Assistance: English-Language Attainment and Economic Outcomes in the Early Twentieth Century

Refugee Status, Settlement Assistance, and the Educational Integration of Migrants’ Children in the United States

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