US Resettlement Policies in Practice: Structuring Voice

When refugees are resettled in the US they are entitled to an array of services and benefits, many of which are provided by resettlement agencies under contract with federal and state government institutions. These service providers are mandated to deliver myriad supports, and increasingly are evaluated against performance measures intended to improve service delivery. Refugee resettlement studies have evaluated many of the outcomes associated with these contracts, but little is understood about how these outcomes are achieved, how service delivery is accomplished, or what role refugee clients have in the service delivery process.

This paper is part of a larger study that seeks to explain how refugee resettlement service provision works. Other parts of this study find that performance measures associated with resettlement contracts create an incentive for caseworkers to make certain choices on behalf of their refugee clients in order to expedite outcomes. This paper asks how direct service workers either incorporated or hindered refugee client participation in the process of implementing resettlement policy, and how these actions related to performance measure incentives.

Data for this paper come from an organizational ethnographic study that uses a street-level approach to understand how resettlement policy is implemented. Research was conducted over an 18-month period at two urban resettlement agencies operating comprehensive services. Research methods included over 150 interviews with 75 subjects, extensive observation, and archival review of relevant documents and contracts. Data was coded using a theoretically based matrix, and analyzed with the guide of street-level theory.

This paper finds that, in spite of demands and incentives created by service contracts and performance measures, workers in one agency went out of their way to incorporate refugee client participation in several aspects of service provision. Clients were engaged in defining their choice-set of housing options and were included in conversations about agency policy. However, this same agency excluded clients when identifying work opportunities, and instead encouraged clients to comply with employment caseworker demands. Workers at the second agency routinely and actively discouraged refugee client participation or expression of voice in the service delivery process. The differences in the behaviors of these caseworkers appear to be influenced in part by the level of resources at hand, and in part by the kinds of performance measures in place. Workers with greater access to resources were more likely to encourage client voice in the service delivery process. However, resources were not an explanatory factor when identifying the practices of employment caseworkers at either agency. For these staff the power of performance measures was to decrease the extent to which they were willing to incorporate clients into the service delivery process.

These findings could have implications for agency administrators, service providers, and policymakers. Social service administrators should try to protect caseworkers from pressures that encourage expedited service delivery at the expense of client participation. Social work practitioners and other providers need to carve out opportunities for client expression wherever possible. And policymakers need to understand the consequences of performance measures that incentivize expediency and enumeration.