Refugees Need Respect & Justice: How Resettlement System Can Shift Power

Late last year, I drove three hours to Rock Island, Illinois, for my doctoral thesis titled Refugee’s Strategies of Survival (Olanrewaju, 2021). I interviewed two refugee women, “Betty and her sister.” Both willingly shared every experience, from post-traumatic migration growth to ever-present, challenging post-resettlement stressors. After forty minutes, I acquired the information needed. But because the sisters had so much to share, an hour turned into a three-hour conversation. We had proceeded until they were both exhausted and…