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Nuer Refugees in America
DIANNA SHANDY
Summary In this article updated in 2015, Dianna Shandy, who has conducted ethnographic research among Nuer refugees in the upper Midwest since 1997, looks at what their status as refugees means, how they managed to come to the United States, why they were located in more than 30 different U.S. states, how a people raised as cattle herders survive and adapt to life in a U.S. urban setting, and what this tells us about "the interconnectedness of a globalizing world and anthropology's role in it."
Although no special categories were assigned to people who first migrated to the United States (they were all simply called immigrants), today there are at least two categories , migrants and refugees based on their reasons for coming here. The United Nations (UN) defines refugees as people who have left a country because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on race; religion; nationality; membership in a particular social group; or political opinion. They are not merely IDPs (internally displaced persons) who have left home but are willing to return. To manage the refugee "problem" (by 2014 there were 60 million refugees in the world), there is a UN agency headed by a high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR). The UN and many countries see three solutions for refugee placement: voluntary repatriation, integration into a country of asylum, or rarely, third-country resettlement. Typically, refugees are first housed in camps, and then certified for resettlement. The United States takes in a limited number of refugees and employs the UN criteria for refugee certification. But decisions about who is eligible vary, based on officials' interpretations of the criteria and ever shifting resettlement policies. Officials also must deal with cross-cultural differences and language barriers as they decide who is a refugee and who is an "economic refugee" (someone whose main motive to move is for economic advantage).
The Nuer who live in the United States have made it through this bureaucratic process. Thok Ding, who is mentioned in the article, was brought up herding cattle in a Nuer pastoral village, experienced the death of his father when northerners attacked his village, moved with his family to a camp in Ethiopia, attended and excelled at a Christian mission school there, moved to another camp for further schooling, moved back to the Sudan with his family when fighting broke out in Ethiopia, traveled back to Addis Ababa where he joined friends, moved to a camp in Kenya, applied for refugee status with the UN there, and was eventually accepted for refugee resettlement by the United States. His arrival and settlement in the United States was facilitated by Lutheran Social Services, a volunteer organization ("volag" to insiders) contracted by the United States. Helped by the organization, he was placed in Minneapolis, settled in an apartment, and guided toward a job. Later he left Minneapolis for Des Moines and a job in the meat packing industry, where he hopes to continue his education, save money, marry a woman from the South Sudan, and bring his family, with whom he corresponds frequently and to whom he sends money, to the United States.
The case illustrates several points. Refugee issues are complex and varied, and involve endless bureaucratic hurdles. Refugees who manage to gain resettlement (many do not) must be tenacious, ambitious, clever, and opportunistic. The Nuer make successful refugees because many possess these characteristics.
In "Nuer Refugees in America," Shandy notes that the UN defines refugees as IDPs, meaning "internally displaced persons."