"Every Crisis Is a Time for Opportunity": Immigrant-Refugee Leadership Perspectives in the COVID-19 Era

Background and Purpose: Immigrant and refugee serving organizations are experiencing catastrophic effects due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Refugees and immigrants are at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 due to healthcare barriers, precarious employment, culture and language barriers, and low socioeconomic status. Although community-based ethnic organizations (CBEOs), often led by immigrant and refugees, are typically the first responders to crises facing their communities, they are often siloed from the mainstream human service organizations. Despite their broader reach within immigrant-refugee networks and their cultural expertise, CBEOs are also often underrepresented in research, resulting in the lack of understanding of the scale and impact of these organizations among immigrant-refugee communities. The rapidly evolving literature on COVID-19 responses has largely overlooked the needs and capacities of CBEOs in the COVID-19 context, who have been charged to serve the vulnerable despite the diminishing funding resources. Our study explores the barriers and facilitators experienced by local refugee and immigrant-led CBEOs in the midwestern region during COVID-19.

We use the CHASMS (cascading hazards to disasters that are socially constructed emerging out of social vulnerability) model as the guiding framework for this study to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at the intersection of the larger structural and political environment. CHASMS posits the need to understand how social vulnerabilities are produced by the friction between the needs of local communities and the larger social structures and emphasizes the impact on six capitals: physical, political, natural, human, social, cultural and financial. We add the digital capital as the seventh capital to this framework, which has been a crucial determinant of overall well-being.

Methods: Immigrant and refugee leaders of CBEOs (N=7) participated in 90-minute in-depth virtual interviews exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on individual, organizational and community levels. Purposive sampling was used to recruit respondents in a mid-size Midwestern city that has seen a large influx of immigrant and refugee resettlement in the last 10 years. Participants represented diversity of background and displacement experiences: 7 countries of origin (Bhutan, Mexico, India, Russia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Ethiopia); and gender (Men= 3, Women= 4). Grounded theory approaches of theoretical sampling and coding (open, axial and selective) techniques were used to collect and analyze the data.

Results: Six overarching themes were generated from the data analysis: Heightened organizational strain: (1) Resource and capacity challenges; (2) COVID-19 disruption and exacerbation of social issues; (3) Loss of community wealth and economic progress reversals; (4) Access to COVID-19 information: Cultural and linguistic barriers; (5) Discrimination trifecta: Immigration policies, vulnerability & structural barriers; and (6) COVID-19 crisis: A path to better opportunities.

Conclusion and Implications: Refugee and immigrant-led organizations serving their communities hold a pivotal role within the larger human service landscape. This study provides an increased understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these organizations, localized efforts to respond to the pandemic, as well as the practice of CBEO leadership to effectively meet the critical challenges facing immigrants and refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic.