Abstract
Refugee communities in resettlement countries, such as the United States, are often underserved and marginalized. State-contracted organizations are often constrained by policy and funding restrictions, thereby limiting assistance. Meanwhile, grassroots organizations that are led and run by refugees themselves provide key supports, but they often function without legitimacy and resources. Moreover, although some localities welcome and support refugees, anti-refugee sentiment and policies have surged in many local contexts. Given such challenges, warranted is social work with refugees that is not only effective and culturally appropriate, but also empowering, just, and forward-looking.
This chapter presents a conceptual discussion of social work practice with refugee communities upon resettlement, drawing specifically from two concepts, accompaniment and emergence, that attend to issues of power, commitment, mutuality, and responsiveness. After an overview of state-funded resettlement agencies and grassroots refugee-led community organizations in the United States and the conceptual framework, we detail social work practice with refugees, through alternative institutions, volunteerism or community service, community relations as social capital, and participatory research. Social work practice is envisioned as accompaniment rather than hierarchical and with emergent processes rather than rationalized, prescriptive processes. These sensibilities can generate innovative and brave modalities, as social workers walk alongside refugee communities in practice.
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Gonzalez Benson, O., Burnett, C. (2021). Accompaniment and Emergence: Social Work Community Practice with Resettled Refugees. In: Opačić, A. (eds) Practicing Social Work in Deprived Communities. European Social Work Education and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65987-5_7
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