Learning English,working hard,and challenging risk discourses

Introduction

Immigrants in the United States (US) are often seen as risk-takers – those who engage in potentially harmful behaviours that simultaneously provide opportunity. They are, in the words of AOL co-founder Steve Case, ‘gutsy enough to uproot from their home countries to take a chance on an idea of progress in America' (as cited in Hunt, 2012). However, due to their perceived weaknesses in English language training, overall education, and US cultural capital, immigrants are also frequently situated as being ‘at-risk' of not adapting to their new contexts. They are also positioned as overusing and becoming dependent on governmental resources. Countries, like the US, who admit immigrants, do so at some risk; it can be economically costly and politically risky for these countries (Nicholson, 2012). These interrelated discourses of immigrants and risk are not only in contrast; they are contested, complex, nuanced, and in need of greater interrogation.

Subpopulations of immigrants, including asylum-seekers, internally displaced people, undocumented migrants, and refugees are pushed by circumstances to become risk-takers, and thus are often at greater economic disadvantage than other immigrants (Connor, 2010). Defined as those who have been forced to flee their countries of nationality due to persecution or fear of persecution based on race, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, refugees are a heterogeneous, if not disparate, subpopulation of immigrants. When resettled in the US, refugees, who are not easily located in broad American categories of race and class, become embedded in broad narratives of risk in which there is a precarious and often contested balance between losing and gaining something, and in which interactions are uncertain. In these narratives, their experiences are portrayed as ones of hope, resilience, risk-taking, and perseverance, which tidily align with often-cited American values. Yet, along with other immigrants, they are also positioned as potential risks to working class and poor American citizens, with whom they might compete for increasingly limited jobs and social services. Even though they are net contributors to the US economy (Potocky-Tripodi, 2004), refugees, in the latter narrative, are seen as threats to the American economy and way(s) of life. They can, in more extreme framings, fall under a ‘pathologization of uprootedness' (Malkki, 1992, 32) and be depicted as potentially harmful, immoral, and terroristic. ¹

The political, social, and economic discourses of risk are implicit in chapter 2, title IV of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which contains the Federal Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980. The risks are also embedded in the United States’ Federal Refugee Resettlement Program, a provision of the INA, as well as in the practices of the local resettlement agencies. To mediate the risk of refugee dependency on the US government, the INA, Section 411 notes: ‘employable refugees should be placed on jobs as soon as possible, and often with minimal English training, after their arrival in the United States' (1)(B)(iii). Resettlement agencies are to:

make available sufficient resources for employment training and placement in order to achieve economic self-sufficiency among refugees as quickly as possible (1)(A)(i); provide refugees with the opportunity to acquire sufficient English language training to enable them to become effectively resettled as quickly as possible (ii); and ensure that cash assistance is made available to refugees in such a manner as not to discourage their economic self-sufficiency (iii). (www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/the-refugee-act)

In this paper, the simultaneous positioning of refugees as risk-takers and as being at risk is challenged. Drawing on a two year ethnographic study in a north-eastern city called Wayside for the purpose of anonymity, this paper focuses specifically on adult the educational components of the resettlement processes. Refugees participating in ESL and career-readiness classes offered by local resettlement agencies, which aim to support refugees in becoming self-sufficient, are documented. It is argued that because the national policies governing these local educational sites reduce social and educational adaptation to economic self-sufficiency three threads of risk discourse emerge: the risk of refugees being dependent on government resources; the risk of refugees ‘taking' jobs from Americans; and the risk of refugees threatening national security. The focus is on the first two threads, which represent a dichotomy of risk narratives, but which also pose refugees as risks to the mythical/idealized quality of American life and economic well-being. Additionally, these findings reveal how educators in both ESL and career classes employ the narrative of positive risk-taking to challenge the more negative risk discourses.

Refugees and economic adaptation

The employment trajectories of refugees in the US have become critical concerns and have earned the attention of researchers across the social sciences (for examples, Connor, 2010; Waxman, 2001). Securing employment is recognized as critical to refugees’ adaptation. Having them engage in and contribute to the economies of their communities is paramount for resettlement countries. For refugees who have worked as professionals in their countries of origin, gaining employment in competitive job markets of their resettling countries is difficult, even for those who have adequate English-language skills and prior education (Willott and Stevenson, 2013). To capture skilled positions, refugees must also have ‘soft skills' that include interpersonal communication and collaborative project experience, which are often culturally defined and learned over time.

Utilizing data from the New Immigrant Survey, Connor (2010) tests several factors – including limited English language ability, less overall education, disrupted family support, poor mental and physical health, and neighbourhood segregation – to explain the economic gap between refugees and other immigrants. ² He finds that ‘there is no refugee gap for the likelihood of employment; however, there is an economic disparity for occupational level and earnings when refugees are compared to non-refugee migrants' (379). Only 25.6% of the refugees in Connor's study work in skilled jobs (teachers, engineers, health professionals, administrators, for example) compared to 41.7% of the other immigrants.

Possessing limited English ability and less education, refugees are often, with prompting by family, friends, or a resettlement agency, placed in low-wage, unskilled sectors. Once in the US, many refugees train for, and work in, menial jobs that force them to struggle to live in urban areas that are made undesirable through unemployment, low-quality schooling, and high rates of crime (McBrien, 2005). Nearly one in five refugees lives in poverty (Potocky-Tripodi, 2004). The work of Waxman (2001) in Australia confirms these ‘mismatches in underemployment', which he finds are common as many newcomers are pushed to take unskilled work by financially-burdened sponsors and family members. Newcomers thus delay or forgo attending English language classes, which, in the long term, may result in greater potential for upward mobility than immediately working.

In addition to education and English language ability, neighbourhood context and household composition appear important in explaining, although not in its entirety, refugee disparity in earnings (Connor, 2010). Refugees resettle in poorer urban neighbourhoods with higher newcomer populations and less access to stable transportation, diverse foods, and quality education for children. Moreover, refugee families are often not intact, which places multiple psychological, physical, and financial strains on refugees that Takeda (2000) states can lead to, among other things, lower economic achievement. Potocky-Tripodi (2001) finds that household composition, along with other demographic characteristics, have a greater effect on refugee economic status than does residency, acculturation, and community characteristics. Utilizing Census data and employing a cross-sectional quantitative design to test four factors in Kuhlman’s (1991) theory – demographic, residency, acculturation, and community characteristics – Potocky-Tripodi argues that ‘having a household headed by a married couple and having more persons in the household were associated with better economic status' (54). She also demonstrates that women refugees were less likely to be employed than men, and that having children in the household was associated with lower economic achievement; ‘even after controlling for human capital, household composition, and acculturation factors' (Potocky-Tripodi , 2004, 61), women consistently experience less favourable economic well-being.

Sociocultural notions of risk

As noted by Crook (1999), ‘risk phenomena and social theory have developed a close reciprocal relationship during the past two [and now three] decades' (160). The most prominent and enduring explications of risk via social framings are the sociocultural understandings of risk set forth by Douglas (1992; Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982), the sociological diagnosis of risk in late modernity by Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991), and the governmentality and regulation analysis by Foucault (1991). The utility of risk theory emerged in the current study through use of Actor-network (AN) analysis (Latour, 2005; Law, 1994), which has some noted convergence with Foucault’s ideas of heterogeneity, contingency, and incompleteness that inform risk analysis (Crook, 1999; Malpas and Wickham, 1995). However, risk theory was further explored and adopted in the current study only after notions of risk were repeatedly discussed during initial interviews with resettlement workers, but were absent in interviews with refugees. ³ This was an intriguing finding, and risk theory provided a framework that targeted further exploration.

The three strands of risk analysis in the social sciences diverge from the sociotechnical analysis of risk, in which the focus on risk as a taken-for-granted objective phenomenon essentially ignores the sociocultural and historical contexts in which risk is defined, appropriated, and enacted. Risks, in social theory, are problematic but serve particular social, cultural, and political functions. Aspects of risk phenomena that matter in these strands of analysis include the origination of notions of risk, the conceptualization of risk, the identification of risk, the appropriation of risk, the symbolic use of risk, the ascription of blame to risk, the negotiation of risk, the managing of risk, the challenging of risk, and the relationship between risk and broader social and cultural phenomena.

Here, the functional structuralist analysis tool developed by Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) to measure cultural responses to risk in communities and organizations is not used, but instead the current study adopts what Lupton (1999) refers to as the relativistic ‘cultural/symbolic' framing and broader analysis of risk phenomenon associated with Douglas, who focuses on the cultural enactment of risk. While Douglas acknowledges that there are dangers that pose ‘real' risks, it is the cultural response to risk that captures her analytic attention. Examining the notion of risk as a way in which contemporary Western societies aim to construct and maintain cultural boundaries, she describes risk as a locus of blame, with those groups who are designated as ‘risky' as being dangerous. Risk narratives function, in part, to construct and maintain otherness. Cultural concepts of risk are embedded with shared beliefs, motivations, and sometimes, imagined experiences. They are often become taken for granted.

Notions of risk serve to provide both a map and an explanation for events that will or have occurred. Risk phenomena in education, for example, have been used both to explain variable academic achievement and to justify particular policies. As American education – namely formal education – has become explicitly in the service of the economy, the concept of risk has become embedded in educational discourses, practices, and policies. This functional association between risk and US education can be traced back at least to 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (National Commission on Excellence in Education), which, in much detail, decried American education for placing the nation at risk for not being able to compete globally (Bialostok, Whitman and Brady, 2012). However, at-risk’s association with education has become amplified in the contemporary neoliberal response to globalizing processes, characterized by the increased availability of comparative data and the circulating narratives about education as the means to increased productivity, efficiency, economic instrumentalism, and national security.

English language classes and workforce training required for refugees in the US are interventions for what is perceived (and thus acted upon) as potentially hazardous futures – dangerous not only to the well-being of refugees, but also to the stability of their resettlement communities. Such education is a response to concerns about refugees’ potential impact on the social fabric, but more so, on the economy of America. Contemporary realities and fears associated with the uncertainties caused by the economic recession give rise to particular anxieties about refugees taking jobs away from ‘Americans', and burdening the government’s welfare programmes. Being vulnerable to future dependency, refugees are ‘at-risk' at the same time that they are decried for being risky to employ. They are also applauded for being hard workers and risk-takers. The current study launches from these ideas of risk phenomena to explore the question: In what ways is risk enacted for, by, and about refugees in specific educational contexts?

Methodological considerations

In 2010, after giving a talk on emergent bilingual and immigrant education, I was invited to attend a workshop for agencies and organizations serving English language learners (ELLs). There, the directors of the two refugee resettlement agencies were met, and several interviews with them identified other agencies and organizations that also provided services to refugees. ⁴ Thus began a 26 month ethnographic study of immigrants and refugee networks; this paper draws on data collected between January 2011 and March 2013 as part of that study, in which the assemblage of services accessed by immigrants and refugees in Wayside were traced and examined to better understand the relationships between the services used, the educational choices, and the work experiences.

Refugees and Wayside

In 2011, 56,384 persons were admitted to the US as refugees. New York State (NY) received nearly 6.3% or 3,529 of those refugees (Martin and Yankay, 2012). The upstate NY city, called Wayside here, has resettled approximately 1000–1500 refugees annually since 2005. However, due to the implementation of more stringent screening policies by international institutions, fewer refugees were resettled in 2011 than in immediately previous years. According to the 2010 US Census, Wayside’s immigrant and refugee community is 7% (approximately 18,291 people) of the overall population in the city and 1/3 of the immigrant and refugee population in all of New York State (http://quickfacts.census.gov/). These refugees originate from countries as diverse as Burma, Somalia, and Iraq. To date, seventy-three languages are spoken by students in the city’s public schools.

Wayside is a mid-size city characterized by a steadily decreasing native population, a declining body of highly-educated and skilled residents, and a shrinking economy. It is home to one of the country’s largest refugee shelters and a few authorized resettlement affiliates, as well as numerous organizations that provide legal, educational, transportation, health, and spiritual services to refugees and other immigrant newcomers. The federally-approved refugee resettlement agencies, affiliates of national voluntary associations referred to as VOLAGs, provide initial resettlement, education, employment, legal, housing, and interpreting services. Individual agencies also have specialized programmes, including mental health services and legal assistance. Under the mandates of the US Department of State, these organizations guide refugees as they learn to navigate their initial ninety days in the US. The agencies in this study focus intensively on the first thirty days of resettlement, during which they secure, among many other things, housing, legal documents, medical examinations, resettlement plans, school enrolment for children, applications for social services, and referrals to ESL classes; they then provide varying services (some grant-funded) up to 180 days after arrival.

Data collection and analysis

Data include: fifteen semi-structured interviews with directors, managers, and programme coordinators at the local refugee organizations; semi-structured and informal interviews with the leaders and staff of twenty-five agencies and organizations that provide services to refugees and immigrant newcomers; five business personnel who hire refugees; three business personnel who did not hire refugees although they had the opportunity to do so; thirty-one refugees who attended ESL and career/workforce training programmes at one of two resettlement agencies; and twenty refugees who have obtained jobs or are working as entrepreneurs. The refugees were recruited to the study through direct contact and referrals by fellow refugees or staff members at the resettlement agencies. Language interpreters from local refugee organizations or members of the research team were used when requested by refugee interviewees. All of the interviews were audiotaped and later transcribed verbatim.

In addition to the interviews, there was observation and participation in weekly ESL classes and two month-long career readiness programmes at both resettlement affiliates. During the study, there was participant observation as volunteer ESL instructor at one resettlement agency and as a volunteer employment trainer assistant at another. The daily work at both agencies one or more days a week throughout the study was observed, multiple community and school meetings, events and activities in which refugees participated were attended, and a variety of government meetings and forums in which issues associated with the Wayside refugee population were discussed.

Data were managed, coded, and analysed using the software program NVivo 8.0. First level coding was done according to identifiable processes through which refugees are to pass. For instance, intake assessments, placement into ESL classes, and workforce training were coded. Codes were also made to denote descriptive identifying information, such as demographic information, names of documents, and agency information, as well as refugees’ countries of origins, languages, and family structures. Secondary and tertiary coding centred on the knowledge and information, that came to be circulated as ‘facts'. These included employment rates, job satisfaction, and self-sufficiency, as well as values, perceptions, and ideas about education and employment.

Enacting and negotiating risk narratives

In both ESL and career-readiness classes, overcoming risks in the refugees’ past was coupled with becoming employed in two ways. Hard work was positioned as either a result of their previous risk-taking or as one reason they were able to triumph over such risks. In each instance, having been a risk-taker was used by the instructors, class assistants, and guest speakers in a seemingly positive, if not motivational way. At a career-readiness class, the guest speaker, a manager/owner of a local production business, who at the time employed nearly twenty refugees, exemplified the coupling: ‘You’ve risked your lives and everything … and we’re betting that you are looking for good stable jobs that are safe and good and pay decent wages' (fieldnotes, 12 April 2011). The following exchange between two instructors and refugees during another career-readiness class also reflects the perceived relationship between risk and work:

Lead instructor: [to the eleven refugees who are attending a course on interviewing]

You worked so hard to get out of the trouble in your countries, and homes, and [refugee] camps, so getting a job will be not as difficult, as hard for you as others. You’ll just work hard and get through rough spots and we’ll help. It won’t be hard for you.

Assistant instructor: But, you’ll need to become workers, contributors here because people will forget what you’ve been through. They’ll just see your hard work and work ethic here and that’s how you’ll be judged in Wayside.

Assistant instructor: Yeah, when you work you’ll get respect … You’ll belong here … Risking your life to get a new life will pay off with a new life and work here. (Fieldnotes, 20 September 2011)

Several refugees expressed doubts that their pasts could assist them in getting jobs. During the same class cited above, Bishnu, a male refugee from Nepal and Kesang, female from Bhutan, questioned how their past experiences, which did not include paid work, would lead to employment in the US. These doubts were met with reassurance from the instructors that learning new job skills as compared to fleeing one’s country was as ‘easy as pie', a term refugees did not likely know (fieldnotes, 20 September 2011). In general, the refugees did not make explicit connections between the situations from which they escaped and their lives in the US. Of the thirty-one refugees interviewed, seventeen stated that they wanted to begin new lives in the US, and twelve said that they both missed their countries, family members, friends, and way of life, and also that they wanted different lives from the ones they led in their countries of origin. Grace, a female from the Democratic Republic of Congo stated it best: ‘What happened is far past … What I do here is now. Two separate lives … ' (interview, 7 February 2012). Grace’s ability, or desire, to leave the past in the past, and also her disregard for the loosely-coupled linkage between her past life experiences and her life in the US was echoed by most of the study’s refugees.

Learning English to get a job

The English is hard for me. I need the English for job … Class is for the job English. (Patrique, fieldnotes, ESL class, 11 September 2012)

Federal policy directs agencies to transition refugees to employment as soon as possible. Supporting refugees to become economically self-sufficient through employment influenced the local resettlement practices and programmes. As explained by a caseworker who often removed refugees from ESL classes to take them to job training programmes and interviews, ‘the goal of resettlement isn’t only education. It is getting them into jobs so that they can support themselves and their families' (interview, 15 November 2011). The director of resettlement of another resettlement agency reiterated this, noting that ‘the [US] Department of State places tremendous emphasis on the importance of employment of refugees during the early stages of resettlement, usually after the first thirty days' (public presentation, 21 May 2011). According to a resettlement case manager: ‘The government and the public don’t want refugees coming here and then living off the state, so getting them to work and getting them to be self-sufficient is one of our top priorities … They need English skills to do this so that’s where we start' (interview, 4 March 2011). From the perspective of those working in resettlement agencies, and their governing bodies, becoming or remaining dependent was a risk to be overcome through learning enough English to land an entry level position.

Refugees in the ESL classes also expressed their need to learn English as a means to get employment. According to Ubah, a Somali female refugee, who had begun studying English in a refugee camp, ‘Without the good English, I won’t be in a good way for my family … I need to learn English for the job, for the work' (ESL class, 17 October 2012). Ahmed, a male from Iran, said that he wanted to learn English so that he could get a well-paying job and also so he could take a bus to work. He explained: ‘English for the job first. English good for bus and the work … No English, no job' (ESL class, 29 August 2012). Several refugees who had studied English in refugee camps, talked about wanting to learn more English so that they could get what they called ‘good jobs'. Ram, a male refugee from Bhutan summarized it best: ‘Speaking English well is the goal to getting success in America, to getting a good big job or being a business owner … ' (fieldnotes, ESL class, 24 May 2012). For these refugees, learning enough English to get a job was their stated goal. It was a goal that resonated, nearly verbatim, with the ESL ideas expressed by those, including the ESL instructor and ESL volunteers, working in the resettlement agencies.

When asked further, during interviews, about learning English, all of the refugees, often through interpreters, talked at length about how learning English would help them adjust to life in America. Many talked about wanting to get US citizenship and buying a house. Thus, even though the resettlement agencies focused their ESL programmes on providing English training so that refugees could obtain employment, refugees had greater aspirations for adaptation in the US, and recognized the important role being proficient in English would play. With their ESL programmes, the resettlement agencies were being compliant with the Federal Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, but their practices came also to reify the national policy of providing only enough English necessary to get refugees employed.

Taking American’s jobs?

There were concerns that hiring refugees was risky – not because they were not yet proficient in English, but because they might find new jobs once they were.

One manufacturing manager stated:

I want them to learn English, but when they start learning too much English, they begin looking to get out of the factory … can’t blame them, but training new replacements is one of my greatest costs outside materials and shipping … They just got here so they can’t expect to move up too quickly. (Interview, 17 February 2012)

Data from the resettlement agencies, however, indicated that refugees actually remained at initial low-wage positions longer than the average worker in the region. The director of one agency attributed this statistic to several factors:

Refugees are looking for some stability. They need to get some normalness, well set new routines, in their lives. Change, at this point, can be just too much. They’ve had enough … It takes them quite a while, especially if they are working too, to finish more English classes so they aren’t going anyway … And they all like to work together. (Interview, 21 March 2011)

In response to the perceived risk, one production shop changed its practices, implementing several incentive programmes aimed particularly at the refugees. According to the manager, ‘The programme is a smart proactive measure on our part. It isn’t enough to keep our regular workers, but for refugees it can be a lot of money” (personal communication, 10 May 2011). Again, by situating the refugees as risky enough to require monetary incentives in order to remain and not as ‘regular workers', the company offered each one $50 gift cards for a supermarket for every six months of work they completed. During the time of the study, only 2% of the refugees left their employment after less than one year; 29% of the ‘regular workers' left. The manager explained the disparities in employee turnover by noting that ‘these [regular] workers get better opportunities and I can’t blame them. They got to go for it. Take a chance' (personal communication, 10 May 2011). In contrast, refugees were seen as liabilities who might take future risks to secure better employment.

As demonstrated in this section, the perception of risk requires preventive actions; although there was evidence demonstrating otherwise, refugees were perceived to be a threat to the employment of other Americans and to their employers. As articulated by Douglas (1992), the notion of risk is used to proactively defend individuals, institutions, and societies from the intrusion of those who are identified as outsiders. Here, employers relied upon and contributed to the commonly held belief that those on the economic and social margins, including undocumented immigrants and refugees, created uncertainties and potential disruption for unemployed Americans in an already sluggish job market. Since the 2008 recession, such risk rhetoric has been used to organize and reify particular societal and economic stratifications along ethnic, race, and class lines. Outsourcing, undocumented labour forces, and those holding green cards and work visas have become caught in discourses of risk.

Conclusion and policy implications

In the commonly circulated resettlement discourse, not knowing English places refugees at risk of economic and social dependency. Yet, according to INA policy, as appropriated by local resettlement agencies, refugees must become economically self-sufficient as soon as possible. Rapid job placement is valued over adequate training in English, and formal education, such as ESL courses, can limit refugees’ availability for initial employment. Thus, refugees are often placed in entry-level and low-wage positions. Once secured in such positions, refugees delay their learning of English, which keeps them marginalized in American society. When they do gain proficiency in English, they are perceived as threats to their employers; it is anticipated that refugees with ‘too much English' will quit their initial jobs and seek better-paying employment. For non-refugees and newcomer employees who are not embedded in risk narratives, such aspirations are expected, if not promoted.

Recognizing the risk narratives as sociocultural configurations that function to keep ‘others' – in this case, recently-arrived refugees – at some distance from the rest of American workers may lead to policies that support the simultaneous development of English and employment skills. Although the current trend in the US (and perhaps, globally) is to conflate social policies, including education policy, to its economic instrumentality, refugees’ economic adaptation in the US is but one aspect of resettlement that must be addressed. A longer view of adaptation, not only in the economic sphere, but also the social and cultural ones, is required. Changes in national policy, beginning with the Federal Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980, should include a greater time investment in educational programmes, especially an extension of ESL instruction (Connor, 2010; Waxman, 2001). As demonstrated in the current study, refugees with minimal English skills are often forced into entry level, low-paying positions that have the potential not only to delay their further learning of English, but also to diminish their long-term social mobility (Koyama, 2013; Potocky-Tripodi, 2003). A longer period of economic support, coupled with additional ESL training and workforce training, could result in greater economic and social adaptation.

Policymakers would be wise ‘to engage with, and stimulate, more basic research and reflection' on refugees (Black, 2001, 71). As well, researchers should be encouraged to study and partner with Voluntary Agencies (VOLAGS) and their local resettlement agency affiliates to better understand what kinds of educational programmes exist and can be developed. Scholars (Black, 2001; Connor, 2010; Waxman, 2001) argue for more education and prolonged ESL training for refugees. All the resettlement workers in the current study agree that refugees should have more education and prolonged ESL training, and it is further argued that greater efforts must be made at the international level to provide consistent education in refugee camps where many refugees spend multiple years prior to being resettled in the US and abroad. However, more needs to be empirically known about the most effective training strategies. From his review of fifty years of refugee studies, Black (2001) urges further policy-relevant research and notes that a variety of examinations are possible. Utilizing risk-theory, as in the current study, provides one potentially promising perspective for future qualitative studies of refugees’ education in the US.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.