Geopolitics of Refugee Resettlement Volunteering

Volunteers in North Carolina

Volunteers in the U.S. refugee resettlement system perform care work and emotional labor to support newcomers. Volunteers work closely with refugees, interact with them in their homes, and get entangled in the intimacies of refugees’ everyday lives. At the same time, volunteers are expected to build and maintain boundaries with the refugees they support. However, it is uncertain where these boundaries are and how one navigates the messiness of volunteer-newcomer relationships. Based on interviews with volunteers and refugee resettlement agencies in North Carolina, we trace how the research participants identify the discomfort and relationality that arise in moments of encountering and crossing boundaries.

Neoliberalism and Humanitarianism

Since the first Trump administration’s funding cuts for federal support to refugees, volunteers and new forms of sponsorship have become an even more critical part of the resettlement ecosystem. Volunteers continue to play a significant role in refugee resettlement and some volunteers have become part of sponsorship groups as well. As the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the mass evacuation or displacement of Afghans in 2021 was going on, there was a federal shift in refugee policy toward a system called Welcome Corps. Similar to the Canadian community-led resettlement system, this sponsorship system allows groups of at least five private citizens to sponsor refugees and places the onus of refugee resettlement onto these sponsors. Beyond raising the funds required to help refugees gain a foothold in the United States, sponsors are responsible for all essential assistance to refugees in their first three months in the country, including tasks such as connecting refugees with social services or enrolling children in the school system (Office of the Spokesperson). This project aims to contribute to an understanding of volunteerism and sponsorship that is critical to this shift in federal policy towards giving more responsibility to individual citizens in refugee resettlement. We understand the move toward private sponsorship as an outcome of the increasing neoliberalization of refugee resettlement in the Global North but also linked to and potentially deepening the coloniality of the global asylum regime.

Infographic

Infographic

Infographic

Infographic