publications

Print media and news featuring RiT team members are displayed below.

The Refugees in Towns project is pleased to publish two new case reports as part of its Race and Refugees research program: Mobile, Alabama, USA and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Both reports explore the historical, cultural, and political contexts in addition to the lived experiences of refugees grappling with the U.S. construction of race.

Research assistants Lucy Mastellar, Yumeka Kawahara, and Charlie Williams conducted the research between June-August 2022. Their reports, conducted in partnership with the Hello Neighbor Network, have informed a second phase of research which seeks to create community-developed, anti-racist interventions to better educate and support refugees as they are resettled in the U.S.

Both reports have been adapted into StoryMaps, allowing readers to interactively explore Mobile and Pittsburgh while showcasing RIT's reflexive and localized methodology. View the StoryMaps here: Mobile, Alabama, USA and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

ASSESSING REFUGEES’ UNDERSTANDING OF AND RESPONSES TO U.S. RACE RELATIONS: AN ANALYSIS OF FINDINGS

by Yumeka Kawahara, Lucy Mastellar, Sarah Rose Morehouse, Charlie Williams, Dr. Karen Jacobsen

Refugees in Towns is proud to release preliminary findings from its latest project, Assessing Refugees’ Understanding of and Responses to American Race Relations. The study investigated understandings of race before, during, and after migrating, finding that refugees learned about US race relations through school, media (digital and print), word of mouth, and personal experiences of discrimination. However, the degree of this learning is heavily dependent on education level, age, and country of origin.

We would like to acknowledge the Hello Neighbor Network and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life for their financial and technical support in producing this research.

‘Nobody wants to run from the war’ – a voice from Ukraine’s displaced millions describes the conflicting pulls of home, family and safety

Web article

RIT Principal Investigator Karen Jacobsen challenges our assumptions about displaced Ukrainians in this article in The Conversation, drawing on her own studies as well as input from RIT Researcher Yuliia Kabanets, who is currently displaced within Ukraine. Jacobsen and Kabanets illuminate the many reasons why most Ukrainians want to remain close to their homes to enable them to return as soon as this is safe and possible. While the United States is working to admit some of these displaced Ukrainians as refugees, we need to understand that many are not seeking to resettle abroad.

When ‘hunker down’ isn’t an option: the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season showed how low-income communities face the highest risks

web article

In this article in The Conversation, RIT Program Manager Marina Lazetic and Principal Investigator Karen Jacobsen explain the disproportionate impact of climate disasters on low-income communities. Through the lens of Hurricane Ida in 2021, Lazetic and Jacobsen discuss consequences of climate change for vulnerable communities, inequities in government resource allocation, and what can be done to mitigate these problems in the coming years.

WHAT FACILITATES REFUGEE INTEGRATION?

SUMMARY REPORT

Since 2017, the Refugees in Towns (RIT) project has commissioned case reports on forced migrant integration in urban areas conducted by local researchers who live in the area under study. Almost all researchers were forced migrants or members of the host population, experienced integration themselves, and were connected to local communities. To date, the project has completed 34 cases, with additional cases underway. This report shares our initial findings.

COMMUNITY BASED STRATEGIES TO REDUCE GANG AND COMMUNITY VIOLENCE AND FOSTER POSITIVE SOCIAL, HEALTH, AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND FAMILIES IN CAIRO

ANALYSIS & PROGRAMMING PROPOSAL

Building on our findings from the Cairo RIT Report, this concept note lays out an analysis of what we see as the two main protection problems facing refugees in Cairo: youth and child protection and housing. We propose a program of interventions to address these problems. The analysis is based on research conducted in the heavily marginalized Sudanese, South Sudanese and Somali refugee communities in Kilo Araba wa Nus and Hay el Ashr, Cairo. It is intended as a foundation to build partnerships with local actors to move forward with designing and implementing these program ideas.