Jennifer Erickson

Jennifer Erickson is a doctoral candidate in the cultural anthropology program at the University of Oregon and a Wayne Morse Dissertation Fellow. Her research interests include social citizenship, refugees, local and international nongovernmental organizations, welfare, the state, feminism, and intersections of race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Her areas of interest include the United States, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and South Sudan. From 1998 to 2000, Erickson volunteered for a local women's NGO in Bosnia-Herzegovina and she speaks fluent Bosnian. In 2007-08, she conducted her dissertation research in Fargo, North Dakota, where she worked with Sudanese and Bosnian refugees and social service institutions. In August 2008, she went to South Sudan for the first time.

Abstract:
Citizenship, the State, and Resistance: Refugees and Social Service Organizations in Fargo, North Dakota

Based on comparative, qualitative ethnographic methodologies, I compare policies and staff of state, private, and voluntary organizations that work with refugees in Fargo, North Dakota. Neoliberal policies require nonprofit organizations to partner with state agencies, other nonprofits, and churches, and to encourage refugee clients to become as economically self-sufficient as possible. These agencies have markedly different ideas about the nature of such partnerships and about how clients should achieve self-sufficiency. How do cultural, racial, gendered, and classed differences between organizations influence how they carry out their policies and how they interact with and categorize refugees as worthy or unworthy citizens on an everyday level? I explain how refugees navigate these different sectors based on their own cultural, racial, gendered, and classed backgrounds. Comparing Bosnian and Southern Sudanese refugees, I demonstrate how, in some cases, culture mitigates other forms of discrimination while in others, it inhibits full membership in society. Finally, I argue that the current theoretical trilogy of race/class/gender in citizenship studies does not offer an adequate explanation as to why Bosnian Roma (Gypsies) are categorized as less worthy citizens than Bosnian Muslims or Southern Sudanese, and why it is useful to include culture within a critical race theory framework on social citizenship.