Care and neoliberal self-sufficiency in the U.S. refugee resettlement program

Abstract

This paper interrogates the intricacies of care, neoliberalism, and self-sufficiency within the U.S. refugee resettlement program and as shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. For refugees, as well as for most Americans, the pandemic rendered (more) visible the injustices of neoliberal individualism and self-sufficiency. I examine how humanitarian care, via the resettlement program, is co-opted toward neoliberal goals of economic self-sufficiency, and how the pandemic shaped these humanitarian and economic responses and narratives. Drawing on feminist ethics of care, I demonstrate the ways in which care is infused with power and normalizing values; however, feminist ethics of care also provides a framework for envisioning a different world in which the goals of resettlement are not predicated upon neoliberal standards of self-sufficiency, but instead center collectivity, interconnection, safety, and belonging. Drawing on 12 months of fieldwork in a resettlement city in the U.S. West between 2021–2022, this article examines how resettlement services and care are provided in ways that often reinforce neoliberal expectations of good citizenship, and questions what this means for resettlement beyond self-sufficiency.