Here & Now

What Afghan Refugees Will Encounter

Zac Schultz:

Eventually those Afghans will be settled and will have to adjust to their new lives. For more on what they can expect we turn to Paul Van Auken, an associate professor at UW-Oshkosh who has worked extensively on this issue. Thanks for joining us today.

Paul Van Auken:

Thanks for having me. I wish it was under better circumstances, though.

Zac Schultz:

Let’s start first with the words we’re using. These people fleeing Afghanistan are refugees, but once they’re settled you prefer to call them residents with refugee background saying we shouldn’t be reducing their identity to a single thing. Why is that important to you and your team?

Paul Van Auken:

That was one of the first things that we decided as we started this project working with local resettlement agency partners so that we could help establish that idea in the community where we’re working in resettling people, that they are not something to be stigmatized as falling into this category, but they are people that were forced to flee as refugees, had that status and had that background but they are people first and foremost with all kinds of interesting experiences and stories to tell and things to offer.

Zac Schultz:

Now, you and your students have been studying these communities in Wisconsin for a few years. I think a lot of people would be surprised to know Oshkosh is one of the leading places for people to resettle in Wisconsin. Why is that?

Paul Van Auken:

Yeah. That was part of the basis for the origin of the whole project, sort of curious situation where the city of Oshkosh is the ninth biggest city in the state, or at least it was, I think it still is. The census numbers just came out. But the second largest place of resettlement in the state, ahead of Madison. So that’s a pretty interesting phenomenon that has its roots in resettlement of Hmong people in the ’70s. The Fox Valley was one of the first. First families to come as Hmong refugees came to the Fox Valley, and there were organizations that were interested in sponsoring and helping, and things moved on from there to eventually having a resettlement agency World Relief be located in Oshkosh. Now they have Oshkosh and Appleton offices, so that infrastructure is there. You know, it’s maybe more affordable than other places in the state, so you add that along with this history of welcoming and resettling people so people know how to do it in this area. And word of mouth means a lot because there are a number of people that come and they’re resettled to someplace they didn’t choose in the United States but they followed their networks to places that others in their families or friendship circles have told them this is a good place to raise kids, or to find a job and that sort of thing.

Zac Schultz:

Along those lines, one of the people that you studied and you changed his name, you call him Jawad, is a former Afghan translator who’s been settled in Wisconsin. What can his experience tell us about what some of the people coming here might go through?

Paul Van Auken:

Yeah. He’s — like so many of these people, they are just such interesting, amazing people, really resilient. I think one people need to know about residents with refugee backgrounds is it’s less than 1% usually of people that are displaced because of war and violence and other persecution that actually ever get resettled somewhere. These people have gone through serious trauma and gone through a lot of rigmarole to end up being placed in Wisconsin, wherever that might be. So it’s a hard thing. In his case, the reason we had to hide his identity, even though he was so willing to talk to us, such a warm person. We were in his house. He served us tea and treated us like friends. But it’s that people are actively looking for him and would like to see him dead. And he’s very, very worried. This is a couple years ago when we actually interviewed him. So now I can only imagine what he and others like him are going through that are here on special immigrant visas who are treated like — people in that category are treated similarly to people that come as refugees, but they come because they’ve given aid to the U.S. government. He told us then that he was every second of every day thinking about his family that was not with him in the United States. So they’re dealing with trauma of all kinds, but a guy like him, like many people that we talk to from all over the world, have extensive education and experience. They have a lot to offer. But people need to understand that they have been through some hellish trauma and it’s going to take some time to readjust to life here. By the time we talked to him after being here about five years, he owned a home. He had a steady job, had enrolled in a four-year university with plans to get a master’s and maybe even a Ph.D. That is not unusual. These are often quite highly educated people that in some ways take a step down when they come here. They’re grateful to be here but they have a lot more to offer in a lot of cases than the opportunities they’re given partly because people don’t quite understand what a refugee is or why people like him have ended up in Wisconsin. So hopefully people can become more aware of that, especially with this relative deluge of people that we may soon be seeing in Wisconsin that are going to need extra, extra help and compassion and interest.

Zac Schultz:

We have just a few seconds left, but I want you to briefly answer, the idea of assimilation and America as a melting pot, is that still apply? Is that still relevant today? What does that mean for the people coming here to come in to a majority culture but still retain their own identity?

Paul Van Auken:

Yeah. I think one thing that’s been really interesting is that for the most part people — we interviewed and/or surveyed over 100 residents with refugee backgrounds so far. Most of them have expressed positivity about how they were welcomed here, that they were welcomed in Wisconsin but many also said yes but people don’t really understand our culture and yes to the question of, you know, do you feel like people expect you to change your culture. So on the one hand, it is — I think it meets up with people’s expectations in a lot of ways in terms of being the land of opportunity, especially when it comes to education. But in other ways, they feel like Wisconsinites aren’t necessarily — and not everyone, but they’ve had experiences, enough experiences to know that not all Wisconsinites are very well-educated on who people are from different parts of the world.

Zac Schultz:

All right.

Paul Van Auken:

So that the intermingling doesn’t necessarily happen very easily always.

Zac Schultz:

We’ll have to leave it there. We’re out of time. We do want to follow up with you on the road. Thank you for your time today.

Paul Van Auken:

Thanks a lot.