Community Mapping with Resettled Refugees: Reflections on Embeddedness

Abstract

Place is at the center of forced displacement and migration. For community researchers and practitioners, this spatial marginality is a site for a response. Participatory, community-based mapping can be one such modality or tool. This study is such a project that sought to understand city-level factors that characterize resettlement geography of refugees in the United States, with the Bhutanese refugee community as a case study and community partner. Reflections center around ‘embeddedness’ as fundamental to the research process, not only procedurally—for connecting and engaging with communities to implement the study, but also substantively—for informing research questions and having a sense of what is possible to begin with.