Refugee resettlement in the American midwest in challenging times

The practice of refugee resettlement in the United States has been altered significantly by the policies of the Trump administration, which were driven by white nationalist and neoliberal ideologies that view refugees as a burden to the state’s welfare system and pose a security threat to the country’s citizens. Using the case of refugee resettlement agencies that serve refugees from Somalia in the Midwestern cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota and Garden City in Kansas, the paper seeks to understand how refugee resettlement agencies have been affected by, and responded to the challenges posed by the policies of the Trump administration. The paper argues that the policies have created a hostile environment within which to resettle refugees, with devastating impacts on refugee resettlement into the local communities. With their survival under threat, refugee resettlement agencies have turned to local communities for support in order to survive the challenging times.