Refugees experience some of the most visible manifestations of human rights abuses in the world today--and raise difficult issues for researchers and policy makers alike. This book investigates a broad range of complexities that arise as ethnographers work with refugee populations from different geographic areas in research, policy formation, and legal and social assistance. But the issues raised here have application to ethical concerns in ethnographic research and practice beyond refugees. The contributors draw on their intensive fieldwork to explore issues surrounding power and disempowerment between researcher and subject; dilemmas over the protection of research informants; and the rights and actions of refugees in representing themselves and their cultures in advocacy and policy arenas. The wealth of important insights in this book sharpen our understanding of the problems faced in any cross-cultural research and intervention. These explorations revitalize, in vivid detail drawn from case studies, recent theoretical debates on anthropology and ethnographic research, while suggesting new, empowering approaches to applied work and ethnographic study.

Reconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning presents the first systematic investigation of refugees' loss of their old identities and their efforts to construct new ones. Edited by the Chair and Vice Chair of the Committee on Refugee Issues (CORI) of the American Anthropological Association, it critically examines the interplay between cultural, ethnic, and gender constructions among resettled refugee populations. Each chapter is grounded in anthropological theory and method, and the book's framework demonstrates the relationship between the dynamics of forced migration and the ways in which ethnic and gender identities are reinvented in new socio-cultural settings. Unanimous in their perception of boundary maintenance as central to identity formation, these essays allow readers to view refugee resettlement as a creative, experimental process.