Rebuilding the family after forced migration: An ecological study of newly resettled Liberian and Burundian refugee families and youth in the United States

The purpose of this study was to explore how refugee families and their adolescent children positively adapt to their new environment during the first five years of resettlement in the United States. Data come from a two-year ethnography of 33 Liberian and Burundian adolescent refugees, their families, and their service providers. A grounded theory approach was used to analyze refugee families' migration and resettlement experiences, particularly the challenges they faced and resources they drew upon during resettlement.;The first study, Rebuilding the family after forced migration: Transcontextual processes for establishing stability during the early years of resettlement, explores how family structures among Liberian and Burundian refugees changed over the course of forced migration and how families positively adapt to their new environment in the first five years of resettlement. Findings suggest that refugee families experienced separations and reunifications frequently before migration and in the first five years of migration. Families coped with these and other changes through transcontextual strategies comprising a pattern of family rebuilding, in which refugee families that been separated and reunified during migration re-established themselves as a family in a new way during the relative stability of the resettlement environment.;The second study, Creating a safety net for refugee youth: The need for family-school-community partnerships in refugee education, investigates multi-setting factors and processes that facilitate or impede refugee adolescents' educational engagement during the first five years of resettlement. Findings suggest a model of family-school-community partnership, framed in terms of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory model. Family involvement supporting youth education, school characteristics promoting relationships with refugee families, and community support and facilitation of youth education are three setting-specific, microsystem-level processes facilitating educational engagement for refugee youth. Strengthening connections among these settings (microsystems) establishes the mesosystem supports that comprise a safety net for youth education, whereby youth can rely on different types of support from multiple settings and links between the settings to facilitate educational growth.;Discussion includes implications for policy and practice developments that would be beneficial to new refugees in the United States.