Bhutanese refugees represent one of the most recent waves of immigration to the United States. Resettled since 2008, the community finds itself marred by what Berry et al. [1987. "Comparative Studies of Acculturative Stress." International Migration Review 21 ( 3): 491-511] termed 'acculturative stress', which has resulted in a high level of suicide and fractured communities. This paper contributes to the literature on resettlement through an analysis of the experiences of 32 Bhutanese refugees in Metro Atlanta. The data for this project come from two sets of interviews in 2015 and 2018. The Bhutanese participants exhibited a willingness to engage in the integration process, but this has come with a cost: systematic gaps in the help refugees has created a wave of 'integration distress' that has affected the entire Bhutanese community in Atlanta.
Classical collective action theories assume that successful political movements must have an organization and the ability to mobilize supporters in support of a common goal. Yet the unprecedented achievements of networked political movements have led scholars to reconsider these assumptions. South Korea’s Nosamo and the Tea Party Movement are unique among networked political movements in that they were aimed at electing specific political candidates. The ability of these two movements successfully to bypass party orthodoxy without a traditional organizational apparatus has bolstered optimism about participatory democracy. However, while both of these movements began as free-flowing horizontal networks, each developed a hierarchical organizational structure. We examine how the development of an organizational structure affected each group’s dominant frame, comparing structures and outcomes in the two cases. In particular, we find out whether there are differences in each group’s ability to affect a unified presence by examining group documents and news coverage. Our results suggest that a cohesive collective action frame is possible without formal organizations, though there may be other requirements that might obtain only under certain circumstances, somewhat weakening prospects for participatory democracy.
While civic engagement continues to be a buzzword in political science, there is still a lack of discussion about what practices work, and in what context. In particular, are there certain initiatives to engage that do particularly well at two-year colleges versus larger universities? What about colleges with diverse student populations? At the 2014 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, seven scholar-teachers came together to discuss civic engagement at their respective institutions and to share ideas about what worked. Collectively, we represented a diverse group of institutions, including teaching and research universities as well as multi-campus community colleges. All of us, however, were focused on implementing practices that ameliorated American civic knowledge among students, faculty, staff, and universities as a whole. While some of us focused on global civic engagement and giving students the skills to succeed after graduation, others tailored projects on media literacy, public policy, humanitarian law, poverty, and citizenship.
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