Nations to Neighbors Montana (N2N) is preparing to help welcome refugees into our community very soon! As the new Program Developer with N2N, I (Laura) want to share a bit about how I came to this work, and why this work is so important.
I was born and raised here in Billings, Montana, and much of my extended family lives here or elsewhere in the state. I studied international affairs in college, which led to a number of international experiences, in college and after. These experiences, in turn, led me to pursue a PhD in Political Science with a comparative politics/international relations focus (more info here). Over the past 10 years, I’ve been an International Affairs professor, studying and teaching about global humanitarianism, among other interests. (How did I go from being a professor to working with N2N? I’ll touch on that at the end.)
One of my goals over the years has been to help students understand both the macro-level scale of forced displacement of people groups and also the micro-level human cost and struggle of being forced to flee one’s home due to persecution or severe violence. These dynamics are important for us all to understand, given the yearly record-setting displacement of people due to global conflicts/crises. There are currently over 110 million people displaced globally, over 62 million of those within their home countries, and more than 36 million forced to flee across borders as refugees. Around half of the 110 million displaced are women and girls, and an estimated 41 million are children.
While refugees may escape to a neighboring country, their troubles are only just beginning. They often spend more than a decade waiting for a “durable solution,” which refers to either: 1) voluntary repatriation back to their home country, 2) local integration into the current host country, or 3) resettlement to a safe third country. Voluntary repatriation is often not possible for years or decades due to ongoing violence, and it is illegal to force refugees to return in such cases. Local integration also is often not an option, as neighboring host countries can be unwelcoming or hostile to refugees (e.g., denying personal freedoms or the right to work), or the host country may have very limited assistance they can provide: around 75% of refugees are currently hosted in low- or middle-income countries. This is why many refugees, the most vulnerable, seek resettlement to a safe third country. Yet, this option is only granted to about 1% of global refugees in any one year. For the vast majority of others, permanent displacement may be life. As the United Nations body responsible for tracking, processing, and providing assistance to refugees notes:
Unable to return to their homeland, settle permanently in [the country to which they fled], or move to a third state, many refugees find themselves confined indefinitely to camps or holding areas, often in volatile border zones. Such restrictive conditions are a denial of rights under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and a waste of human talent. Furthermore, the prevalence in prolonged refugee situations of idleness, aid-dependency, a legacy of conflict and weak rule of law can induce fresh cycles of violence, threatening human security. (UNHCR, 2006: 129)
For those who are fortunate enough to be resettled, even resettlement can be a continuation of their trauma. First, there is the trauma of being forced to leave everything. Then you have the trauma from living for years in a refugee camp (most likely) or being socially marginalized, with uncertain hope. Lastly, for those resettled in a third country, there is the trauma of landing in a new community where, chances are, you do not speak the language or know how anything works.
Should you be approved for welcome to the US (only a fraction of the 1% of refugees resettled globally each year are resettled in the U.S.), you have a mere 90 days of financial support to get a job, get settled into market housing, start to learn the language, figure out how to navigate all the new “systems” everyone else takes for granted (e.g., medical, transit, schooling), and become self-supporting. Ninety days. All this while trying to find new community and friendship. And—and—then you have to pay back the cost of the plane tickets that got your family here. This is the challenging path of legal refugee resettlement in the U.S.
This is why Nations to Neighbors Montana was formed, and why I joined on. With the support of a host of caring members of this community, we can help reduce the stress and uncertainty of resettlement with culturally sensitive and research-informed programming. And in that process, we can bring kindness and community to our new neighbors, fostering integration and belonging. In short, we can love and care for them as we would want to be loved and cared for if we were in their shoes.
Last year around this time, I made the decision with my husband to leave my job as a professor, a vocation I dearly loved. But 70+ hours a week trying to juggle research/publishing demands, class prep and teaching, student support, college service, etc. stretched me far too thin, particularly as a mom with young children. We decided what mattered most was returning to Billings to raise our kiddos near family, so that they could experience a richer childhood, and so that I could be more present for them. Discovering Nations to Neighbors and its work, how it interweaves with the issues I have always taught and cared about, has meant exchanging the grief of what I lost for gratefulness. Gratefulness to be a part of the Billings community again in a new, meaningful way. And gratefulness to be tapping into my background in unexpected ways: researching, designing, and building the programs we hope will help our new neighbors find their footing and thrive.
– Laura Vinson
Nations To Neighbors Montana 