Everyone has their own unique path into refugee resettlement.
For some, it’s lived experience: they were displaced themselves, perhaps even being resettled by the agency they now work for. Others began as volunteers, tumbling into a job they loved after spending a few months in the company of refugees. Still others may have earned social work degrees and found the perfect fit for themselves in this cross-cultural setting.
For me, I made the decision to work in refugee services while living on the other side of the world.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, trying to make sense of my experience as a stranger in a new culture. Despite being less than a year into my two-year commitment, I was looking ahead to when I would return to the States, wondering what I was going to do with myself.
Prior to Peace Corps, I had been a freelance writer, still new enough at it to be delighted every time someone thought enough of my writing to pay me for it. But I felt a nagging feeling that I still needed to do something else. Peace Corps was a significant rerouting for me, but I felt like something good would come from it.
So almost from the start, I was trying to attach some kind of career path to this left turn in my plans.
My experience would translate well to working with immigrants in the US, as I now knew what it felt like to be culturally confused, to be suddenly illiterate, to be isolated as “the foreigner”. But that wasn’t quite a full idea.
Then a friend, in mild frustration at my extended musings, asked me what I’d be willing to starve for. The starving artist in the tiny apartment, scraping by but working in their passion. What was my equivalent?
The question didn’t work. My mind just wouldn’t fill in that blank. There were too many scenarios where I could imagine I’d be ok living on my natural frugality. So I changed the question.
What made me cry? And what made me mad?
Tears and true anger are not emotional responses that I often have. Except in some key areas.
Violence, war, persecution. These make me cry. And spur me to action.
Lack of charity, inequality, exclusion. These make me mad. And spur me to action.
Add in the backdrop of the Syrian Refugee Crisis, the photo of a toddler washed ashore dead, a xenophobic response to movement of persons out of danger – and you will observe how I came to decide on refugee services.
I wanted the US to respond with impassioned welcome, flinging open doors to safety. When it didn’t, I knew that I would do what I could when I got back to the States to welcome the vulnerable.
And thus began my career.
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