The Project Overview

Since the Refugee Act of 1980 the United States has admitted over 3 million refugees as the world’s largest resettlement program until the 2016 White House Administration made significant cuts. As efforts are underway to restore the U.S. refugee resettlement program under the new administration, partners of this project believe this is a time to fully visibilize and address the gendered inequities resettled refugee and asylee women, girls, and gendered non conforming people face within the resettlement support structures and wider systems of service provision and philanthropy.

Deeply entrenched issues of race, class, gender, patriarchy, and poverty force women, girls, and gender non-conforming resettled refugee and asylees to navigate systems such as health care, disability access, reproductive health services, and immigration with some shared and many specific, unqiue barriers and lived experiences to those born in the U.S. They also face unique manifestations of state, community, and interpersonal violence.

The Listening Sessions Purpose: To listen to women, girls, and gender non-conforming people so that their voices and visions shape and co-create actionable recommendations for funders and services providers to support meaningful, immediate, and long term change in the lives of people forced to experience new types of battle grounds in the U.S.

Supported by a grant from the NoVo Foundation and guided by an Advisory Group of girls and women who’ve gone through the resettlement process, Listening Sessions were held in four states with over 400 women and girls, where they shared what gives them joy, what challenges they face, what chances and choices they wish to have, and what changes they wish to see and lead. These Listening Sessions created opportunities for women, girls, and gender non-conforming people to be the tellers of their own narratives as the political and social climate in the U.S. produces negative stereotypes and false perceptions of their lives. 

The Process

A team of specialists led by an Advisory Group of resettled women and girls, worked with local communities and partners to gather and listen to groups of women and girls in semi-structured conversations. In order to provide participants with the safest environment to share without fear of reprisals, this project specifically stayed neutral of any organizational affiliation, and ensured all participants remained anonymous.

Project leads traveled to locations to build rapport and trust with local partners and communities, and to understand the safest, most ethical, and least burdensome ways to gather resettled refugee and asylee women, girls, and gender nonconforming people.

A second trip was then conducted to host listening sessions in the locations they selected as the most convenient and safe, at the times selected by women and girls, who were provided with transportation and childcare, a modest gift for their time, and food and beverage.

A third trip was then conducted to return information gathered back to the communities as it belonged to them. The original participants plus additional women, girls, and gender non-conforming people from resettled refugee communities were invited to hear what was talked about across communities, and to share their reactions and if anything was missing. Information was presented largely pictorially to support all literacy levels, and interpreters in all necessary languages supported participation. Participants then gathered to co-create solutions to the issues raised in their communities inclusive of who and how they should be led.

Refugee women led businesses were supported throughout every possible engagement, from interpretation to food and catering and beyond.

The Pandemic

COVID-19 interrupted the original project design to listen and co-create with 500 women, girls, and gender non-conforming people across urban and rural areas in five states across the U.S. Pre-pandemic listening locations were selected as rural and urban locations in New York, Georgia, Texas, Idaho, and California. The pandemic prevented the team from continuing to conduct relationship-based, safe, and trusted listening sessions, most specifically with the LGBTQ+ refugees and asylees that we planned for 2020. Sexual orientation and gender identity present specific challenges for those resettling or seeking asylum in the US, so in order to represent some of those challenges we spoke to service provider organizations to gain insight.

Within days of the pandemic lockdowns across the country, project partners sounded the alarm of how women and girls and their communities were being impacted by the pandemic. Among many devastating impacts were:

—financial loss as job cuts across the country forced refugee families to live paycheck to paycheck, with families unable to make rent, access PPE, buy food, gas, or any other basic necessities. 

—illness and loss as other refugee and asylee women, girls, and gender nonconforming people were frontline workers and disproportionately in care-taking roles both as employment and in the home.

—fear and isolation as language and patriarchal barriers made it extremely challenging for resettled refugee and asylee women, girls, and gender non-conforming people to access accurate information about disease contraction, prevention and safety, and their rights to access health, unemployment, rent, and numerous types of support.

—increased risk of violence in the home, as reported by women, girls, and gender non-conforming people. They also talked about being trapped at home with abusers. Lack of access to information and appropriate service providers meant they had no way to seek help, and nowhere to go for escape during a lockdown. For queer and gender non-conforming resettled refugees and asylees, this often meant being trapped at home and in communities that were unsafe and mentally, emotionally, and physically violent toward their gender and sexual identities. Others reported physical violence and harassment due to rascist and xenophobic attacks when they were in public. 

—severe mental health impacts were felt around the world during the pandemic, and the particular devastation and re-traumatization caused by loss, lockdowns, violence, fear of homelessness, fear of the unknown, isolation, and more created deep mental health impacts for resettled refugee and asylee women, girls and gender non-conforming people. They also experienced little-to-no access to affordable, culturally sensitive mental health services or services that were interpreted into their language.