The international refugee problem cannot be ignored. The leading agency in the protection and resolution of refugee problems, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognizes some 11 million refugees worldwide. This number is only a fraction of the nearly 50 million displaced persons throughout the world. While there are issues that all displaced persons have in common, DukeImmerse: Uprooted/Rerouted focuses specifically on those faced by the subset legally defined as refugees: people who have fled from their home country and cannot return because they have a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. As straightforward as this definition seems, the real life delineation is much more complex. Was the persecution actually personally targeted? Is there a strong enough fear of persecution? Is the person’s account of his or her experiences believable? These are the questions that shape the defining of an individual as a refugee.

Once a person receives refugee status, the future remains uncertain. Most will receive support in the country to which they fled until they can voluntarily and safely return to their home country. A small number of refugees will be allowed to become citizens in the country to which they have traveled, and an even smaller number—primarily those who are at the highest risk—will be resettled in a third country. The refugee experience is often associated with forced living in camps, but that is not universal. Around the world, refugees are living in broadly varying conditions: in well-established camps, in collective centers or makeshift shelters, and more than half in urban areas. Whether in camps, cities, or in between, all refugees lack the basic protections of citizenship and have no clear future. They have been uprooted and they do not know where or when they will be able to put down new roots again.

The combined coursework and fieldwork of this program during the Spring 2013 semester provided students with a broad understanding of the dynamics and drivers of global displacement, and also gave local and global insights into the experiences of Bhutanese and Iraqi refugees.  Locally, while less than 1% of refugees worldwide will ever resettle, the U.S. Department of State has made these two groups a priority for resettlement.  Many Iraqis and Bhutanese have already become our neighbors here in North Carolina. Globally, the two groups represent distinct displacement trajectories. The exodus of refugees from Iraq has been dispersed throughout the Middle East, with large concentrations in major cities like Cairo, while the Bhutanese refugees have been largely concentrated in camps in a single region on the plains of eastern Nepal. The students were able to study these two very distinct refugee populations through a comparative lens in order to develop a deeper understanding of the complex phenomena of displacement.
The Bhutanese come from agricultural backgrounds and have been living in camps in Nepal for two decades, supported by international aid organizations. To some Bhutanese refugees, life in the camps is all they have ever known. They feel a strong sense of community there, along with a mixture of fear and excitement about the changes resettlement could bring to their lives. On the other hand, Iraqis are typically highly educated professionals whose flight from their homes has occurred recently and who have found the countries where they sought protection to be consumed by their own violent uprisings. Dispersed across the city of Cairo, the Iraqi refugees interviewed by the students had little sense of community and no secure basis of support.

The likelihood of resettlement also varies drastically between the two groups. Despite the fact that Iraqi refugees far outnumber Bhutanese refugees, much higher numbers of Bhutanese are resettled each month. For example, in one month last summer, nearly 2,000 Bhutanese refugees resettled to the U.S., compared with about half as many Iraqi refugees in the same month.  These differences are largely a product of the distinct historical, political, and international security situations of the two populations.

In this DukeImmerse program, the students began their study of displacement where many of the refugees’ journeys have ended: here in the Durham region, where prominent communities of Bhutanese and Iraqis are developing. The students connected with the refugees over the course of the semester through both community engagement and research. The interactions with the communities here revealed the struggles refugees face upon resettlement, illuminating that the challenges of displacement continue even after a refugee is given a path to citizenship in a new country. Working to address gaps in the resettlement process, the students developed community engagement projects specifically targeting the problems that individuals in the refugee community here identified. A particular focus was on the idleness and isolation that many refugees face upon resettlement, targeted with projects that would promote occupational skills the refugees pursued prior to resettlement. The goal is for these programs to develop and grow.
 
With training in the methods and ethics of field-based research from their coursework, the students went abroad to study the displacement experience of the Bhutanese and Iraqi refugee populations abroad. For four weeks during the semester they moved out of the classroom and into the field, six in Cairo, Egypt, and six in Damak, Nepal. Throughout their time abroad they were able to connect with the local refugee communities and conduct a series of life story interviews with the refugees. Through these interviews, the students learned not only about the history of each person’s displacement and how they managed to sustain their lives on a day-to-day basis, but also how the experience of displacement shaped the refugees’ sense of identity, memories of the past, and hopes for the future. A significant benefit of the work was for the students to develop relationships with the individuals interviewed. Some of the life stories have been adapted into monologues, which were performed in April, 2013 to a public audience. Others were combined with observations to create field reports, all of which can be viewed or read on this site.