Book
Articles
Edited Journal
Other
Sackett, Blair and Annette Lareau. 2023. We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America. University of California Press.
Sackett, Blair. 2024. “Barriers and Backslides: How Economic Instability Impedes Refugee Self Reliance.” Journal of Refugee Studies (JRS).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feae066
Studies reveal that refugees develop a wide range of economic activity in displacement. In recent years, priorities of refugee self-reliance have had a resurgence among humanitarian organizations and policymakers. Within these programs, models of self-reliance have focused on employment and income for individual refugee households. Based on ethnographic observations, interviews, and longitudinal questionnaires in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, I demonstrate the need to broaden our models of self-reliance to incorporate the role economic shocks, or exogenous and unpredictable events that affect household resources. Rather than rare events, economic shocks were common across sectors and compounded by cuts to humanitarian support. Nor were shocks isolated events. Households faced multiple intersecting shocks, which rippled across communities as households were affected by shocks to others in their social networks. Across employment type and income, shocks destabilized the economic trajectories of refugee households and impeded progress toward self-reliance.
Sackett, Blair. 2024. “Ghosted: Disappearance in Qualitative Research in the Digital Era.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416241237543
Clifford Clogg Student Paper Award, Methodology Section, American Sociological Association
Electronic forms of communication—including email, texting, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook—have increased the ease and speed of communication. Yet, a rise in non-response and ghosting (when someone ceases communication without an explanation) has been documented across contexts, from romantic dating to quantitative research studies. Surprisingly, the rise of electronic communication has received little attention in the methodological literature on recruitment for qualitative researchers. I draw on two qualitative studies I conducted, which each include a phase of face-to-face recruitment and a phase of virtual recruitment. I find that ghosting may be a common feature of recruitment in the digital age, and I propose two types of ghosts that may haunt qualitative researchers: the ghost of delays and the ghost of the ask. Ironically, “old-school” methods, such as seeking sponsorship, strategizing timing and scheduling, and incorporating face-to-face interaction, can help researchers capitalize on the benefits of electronic communication technologies.
Sackett, Blair and Annette Lareau. 2023. “Institutional Entanglements: How Institutional Knots and Reverberations Burden Refugee Families.” RSF: The Russell Sage Journal of the Social Sciences 9(4) 114-132;
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2023.9.4.05
Research on administrative burdens has demonstrated that families experience significant costs in navigating different institutions. Yet studies have often focused more on the nature of the burdens that result from administrative rules than on the types of obstacles that produce these burdens. Less attention has also been paid to how families navigate multiple institutions simultaneously. Drawing on qualitative research with Congolese refugees resettled in the United States, we conceptualize how errors and mishaps in organizations tangled procedures into institutional knots, or complex blockages. We also show how some knots had a ripple effect as problems in one institution reverberated, leading to new, unrelated problems in different institutions. These institutional knots and subsequent reverberations were costly to resolve and a hindrance to upward mobility.
Sackett, Blair. 2022. “A Uniform Front?: Power and front-line worker variation in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya.” Ethnography 24(1): 106-131.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221104288
Front-line workers, or street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 2010), who interact directly with clients, have significant discretion over clients’ lives. Drawing upon ethnographic observation in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and interviews with aid workers, I argue that front-line workers are not a uniform group. I examine three types of front-line aid workers (international, national, and refugee), who work directly with refugee clients. Workers use day-to-day work practices to structure where, when, and how they interact with refugee clients. Yet, workers at the bottom of the organizational hierarchy are less equipped to use these practices. As a result, they are vulnerable to increased criticism and accusations of corruption from co-workers and are uniquely affected by criticism from the refugee client community. By examining their day-to-day work practices, this paper illuminates how inequalities in power among workers contribute to differences in work practices and vulnerability in workplace interactions.
Arar, Rawan, Molly Fee, Heba Gowayed, and Blair Sackett, (eds). Resettlement as an Institution [Special Issue]. Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Special issue approved. Call for papers elicited 55 submissions. Publication expected 2025.
There are more than 27 million UN-recognized refugees in the world today. The UN Refugee Agency prioritizes three "durable solutions" to address their plight: voluntary return to the home country, local integration in a neighboring state, and resettlement to a third country typically in the Global North. Among these solutions, resettlement has been lauded for not only providing a lifeline, but a pathway to citizenship that can end the generational cycle of refugeehood. Yet less than one percent of refugees are resettled annually. Beginning from an understanding that this scarcity is politically and socially manufactured by states and humanitarian organizations, we seek to examine the scope and reach of refugee resettlement beyond its role as a migratory process. This special issue will explore historical and contemporary questions about how the institution of resettlement influences refugee hosting countries in the Global South, and the politics of those who offer resettlement as a “humanitarian” solution in the Global North, and thus shape refugees’ lives in enduring ways. What role does resettlement play in sustaining and perpetuating the global refugee system? The papers in this issue critically examine resettlement as an institution.
Sackett, Blair. “Institutional Roadblocks: Refugee Reception and The Case Against Means Testing.” Conflict(ed): Peace, War, and Social Conflict ASA Section Blog.
Sackett, Blair. “Neoliberal Refugees? Budget Cuts and Business Hurdles.” Conflict(ed): Peace, War, and Social Conflict ASA Section Blog.
Sackett, Blair. “The Paradox of Self-Reliance: Humanitarian Assistance in Kakuma Refugee Camp.” Conflict(ed): Peace, War, and Social Conflict ASA Section Blog.
Under review
Sackett, Blair. “Racialized Resettlement: Race and the Role of Institutions in the Context of Reception.” Under review.
Refugees and immigrants, who are new to U.S. racial hierarchies, undergo a process of racial learning through interpersonal encounters and institutional interactions. Prior work tends to focus on how Black immigrants seek to protect against racial discrimination by socially distancing themselves from Black Americans. Drawing on 89 in-depth interviews with Congolese refugee families resettled to the United States and aid workers and volunteers, I argue that processes of racialization are not homogenous, but vary across institutional contexts. In interactions within educational institutions and the workplace, Congolese refugees and their children emphasized their identity as Africans and their distinctness from native-born Black Americans. In contrast, encounters with the police system, particularly in the context of high-profile police violence, foregrounded race. Rather than distancing themselves from Black Americans, many reported a shared social location and drew connections between discriminatory police violence in the U.S. and state violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These findings contribute to our understanding of migration as a racializing process and the role of institutions in racial stratification.
In Progress
Sackett, Blair. Dreams Derailed: Barriers to Getting Ahead in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. Book manuscript.
Sackett, Blair. “Circuit Breakers in Social Networks: Rejection, Reciprocity, and the Temporal Context of Exchange in a Refugee Camp.”
Elise Boulding Student Paper Award, Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section, American Sociological Association
The sociological literature on social capital examines who people turn to for help, focusing on the absence or presence of different types of social ties. Due to obligations of reciprocity, rejected requests for exchange are assumed to severe ties—a change in network composition. Yet, less is known about rejection and changes in the flow of resource exchange between stable social ties. Drawing on ethnographic observation, interviews, and longitudinal questionnaires with refugee families in a refugee camp in Kenya, this paper examines temporal dimensions of social capital mobilization. I find that the success of mobilization depends on the timing of requests: when and how often requests are made. Requests are embedded within an institutional and relational context, and social ties’ resources and ability to help changes over time. Thus, it is not just who you ask, but when you ask—and a tie’s ability to help at that time. I introduce the concept of “circuit breakers” to show the contingent nature of resource flows and, thus, social capital.
Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya 2017. Photo courtesy of Rachel Clara Reed