21st International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This paper considers community-driven scholarship on resilience and inclusive service delivery among refugee communities in one U.S. city. The collaborative research team includes one university and two refugee-serving agencies. The goals for this community-driven project are to: 1) yield action and deliverables that are beneficial to refugee communities and other stakeholders; 2) decolonize knowledge about forced migrants by supporting scholarship that is produced by forced migrants and immigrants; 3) move towards a strengths-based, survivor-centered understanding of refugee health and wellness, which is presently confined by deficiency-focused frameworks; and 4) develop critical understanding of how to undertake participatory community-engaged work that will enrich campus-community partnerships. The study explores models of university-community partnerships, participatory research methods, and critical community-engaged scholarship on forced migration.