Resettlement Knowledge: The Expertise of Service Providers

Refugee resettlement is implemented by service providers who translate standardised policies into tangible services that meet the immediate needs of their diverse refugee clients on a daily basis. These service providers play a vital role in supporting newly arrived refugees, yet we know little about the work that resettlement entails. Considering prior research on the shortcomings of refugee resettlement policy along with scholarship on the dilemmas faced by street-level bureaucrats, this article sheds light on the role of professional expertise in carrying out this complex and dynamic programme of service provision. This article reveals how, alongside their formal prescribed duties of service management and administrative management, resettlement agency caseworkers also engage in the unofficial work of needs management and crisis management. To best support their refugee clients, caseworkers draw on specialised expertise that I call “resettlement knowledge.” Based on over 1,000 hours of ethnographic fieldwork in a resettlement agency in two cities in the United States and 102 interviews with refugees and service providers, this article illuminates the complexities of resettlement work, providing a nuanced representation of this occupation and the depth of unrecognised labour that states rely on for resettlement.