Abstract
This ethnographic project explores how refugee-serving staff and Rohingya refugees navigate the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which focuses on refugees achieving self-sufficiency as its main metric of success. The goal of this research is to understand how refugee-serving staff perceive self-sufficiency, which is seen as synonymous with achieving a “good life,” and how Rohingya refugees envision and establish a “good life” in Dallas, Texas. This study is oriented around the historical and current experiences of securitization faced by Rohingya refugees, their experiences in the United States, the neoliberal design of the USRAP, the issues that refugee-serving staff have with the USRAP, and how adult married Rohingya with children and unmarried Rohingya young adults conceptualize the elements of a “good life.”
I argue that Rohingya refugees work to create “good lives” and work to exercise their moral agency, the ability to be seen by others as a “good enough” person within the constraints of the USRAP. This occurs simultaneously as refugee-serving staff work to administer the USRAP’s goals while wanting to expand the definition of self-sufficiency and to increase the impact of their work.
Degree Date
Spring 5-11-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Anthropology
Advisor
Neely Myers
Second Advisor
Kelly McKowen
Third Advisor
Nia Parson
Fourth Advisor
Marcia Inhorn
Subject Area
Anthropology
Number of Pages
244
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Chowdhury, Nusaiba, "Moral Agency in Flux: Rohingya Refugees Envisioning and Establishing a “Good Life” in Dallas, Texas" (2024). Anthropology Theses and Dissertations.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_anthropology_etds/22
