Unsettled Families

Sophia Balakian is an anthropologist and assistant professor in the School of Integrative Studies at George Mason University.

Foreword by Mark Goodale Acknowledgments Acronyms Introduction 1. The Figure of the Fraudulent Refugee 2. Selling Cases and Eating Money 3. Mending Broken Bones 4. Testing DNA and Transforming Kin 5. Resettled Families in an Age of Global Security Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

"Sophia Balakian's important book shows how family ties are tested and sometimes sundered, not by displacement, but by the humanitarian system that is meant to help refugees. Based on extensive ethnographic research with people displaced in Kenya and some resettled in the US, Unsettled Families paints a vivid portrait of how lived relations are rendered suspect by bureaucratic anxieties about fraud and of the 'makeshift' families that nonetheless endure." -Ilana Feldman, George Washington University "Based on meticulous research, this book uses vivid vignettes and life histories to juxtapose the experiences and points of view of refugee resettlement organization (RRO) staff to those of Somali and Congolese (Banyamulenge) refugees. Centering 'the family' as a central object of concern to refugees and humanitarian actors alike, Balakian brings together new kinship studies with an analysis of RRO discourses and practices. It is an important and engaging book of broad appeal on one of the most pressing topics of our day." -Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Carleton College "A deeply insightful, nuanced ethnography that brings together two critically important debates: one about refugees, and the other about families. Both are sites of deeply contentious political and moral unrest in today's world, and this book skillfully explains why they must be understood in the same frame. In following the refugee resettlement program from Kenya to the US, by way of Somali and Congolese refugees, Balakian demonstrates how the borders of the nation-state are once again being remade by patrolling definitions of family; this time, however, it is done by way of DNA technology, which imposes a biogenetic notion of the nuclear family on refugees, ignoring the realities of war which can undo families and force them to be remade in new ways. In this sense, refugee resettlement can work to separate families rather than unite them. This is an essential read for those interested in justice for people on the move, offering unexpected insights about care, violence, and the work of science." -Miriam Ticktin, CUNY Graduate Center