How did you come to choose your research topic?

I’m interested in conversations about space and place, belonging and inclusion, and the right to the city, and where they meet different aspects of mobility and migration. The specific idea for my research topic derived from my personal and professional experiences in the field of resettlement. Before coming to the Graduate Institute, I was working for a refugee resettlement agency in Buffalo, New York. There was a buzz around the city – people were talking about urban renaissance and regeneration, and at the same time, about the positive impacts of resettlement. Amid increasingly restrictive immigration policy and rhetoric at the national level, cities like Buffalo were vocal about their desire to resettle and welcome refugees. At the same time, Buffalo was in many ways a struggling city, and in my daily work, I saw the challenges, from expensive rents to navigating cultural difference.

Through my research, I hoped to better understand the ways refugees and refugee resettlement structures shape resettlement destinations, and vice versa. Buffalo was a good case study on resettlement, especially how it interacts with historically embedded sociospacial inequalities, because these tensions are not unique to this city. As increasing numbers of refugees are resettled in smaller or peripheral cities, there is a need for honest discussion and evaluation of both the challenges and the potential of these destinations as resettlement sites and future homes for arriving families.

Can you describe your thesis questions and the methodology you used to approach those questions?

Within my study, I asked what role “the resettled refugee” plays in the context of a disempowered city. First, I looked at how resettlement fits into the narrative, policy and practice of development in Buffalo, and the city’s position and identity as a disempowered city. Then, I explored the ways resettlement is framed, and finally, how these frames, narratives and tensions are navigated by local actors.

I primarily took a street-level, anthropological lens to this question, in conversation with development practice, policy, and narratives at the municipal level. The bulk of my data were collected through semi-structured interviews with local refugee service providers, activists, and city representatives. This was paired with a media and policy review. 

The intention of my focus on local actors was twofold. First, it allowed me to disaggregate the notion of “the city” as a unified actor. Second, it recognised that street-level actors are not merely implementing top-down programmes and frames. As the ones “doing” resettlement, the way that service providers and community leaders carry forward both frames and policies have a real impact on welcoming at multiple scales.  

What are your major findings?

Refugee welcoming emerges as a powerful counternarrative to the ethos of the disempowered city. Tellingly, new vibrancy and diversity were often contrasted with abandonment and emptiness. In this framing, refugees act as a particularly valued form of other, a source of diversity and economic potential who can connect Buffalo to the world. Accordingly, for the mayor’s office, official welcoming emerges as a priority closely tied to development.

Adding nuance to the official narrative, actors involved in refugee services recognised both challenges and opportunities in the trajectory of Buffalo’s development, often directly expressing the difficulty of balancing the two within their work, along with their personal lives. 

Ultimately, my study highlighted the limits of the idealised “refugees as the perfect salve for declining cities” trope. In well-intentioned enthusiasm for resettlement, it is easy to simplify refugees as a one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges faced by disempowered cities. Unsurprisingly, the reality is more complex. Further, a turn to a focus on refugees can easily function as a discursive shift to avoid addressing historical processes of disenfranchisement and instead call on a new, outside force as cure. 

What are you doing now? 

Recently, I have had the opportunity to get involved in my community again, through work with resettlement agencies and grassroots migrant rights advocacy organisations in Buffalo. I have also been working with the Migration Youth and Children Platform, liaising with local governments to share best practices for youth-led solutions for welcoming communities.

For me, the question that follows from here is how do we continue expanding capacity and support for resettlement, while recognising cities as they really exist, and positioning refugees as active city-shapers and city-makers. I hope I can continue working towards creating more welcoming spaces, cities and societies in my career!

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Where Goes the Neighbourhood? Refugee Resettlement and Urban Development in a Disempowered City was published thanks to the financial support of the Vahabzadeh Foundation. It reproduces Chiara Moslow’s master’s dissertation in Development Studies (supervisor: Valerio Simoni), which won the 2022 Ladislas Mysyrowicz Prize.
The Ladislas Mysyrowicz Prize is awarded for an excellent master’s dissertation or PhD thesis devoted to the study of refugees. 

How to cite:
Moslow, Chiara. Where Goes the Neighbourhood? Refugee Resettlement and Urban Development in a Disempowered City. Graduate Institute ePaper 49. Geneva: Graduate Institute Publications, 2023. https://books.openedition.org/iheid/9138 (open access).

Banner picture: part of the Global Voices mural on Grant Street celebrating many generations of immigrants and refugees in Buffalo.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.