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Meredith Craig

Ida Leggett, Instructor

ANTH 2010- H01

21 November 2018

Karen Refugee Resettlement in the United States

Refugee resettlement within the United States has been a pressing issue regarding foreign

and domestic policy over the last few years, especially in the era of the Trump presidency. As

international humanitarian crises have come to light in the media, more attention has been

broadcasted onto the plights of marginalized refugee communities who have not been given

access to the resources in the United States. But what about the refugees who have emigrated to

the United States? What has their experience consisted of? The narratives of refugees who have

resettled in the United States have largely been ignored by popular media, assumingly because

entering the United States is viewed as the “end all, be all” of help; essentially, there is no greater

perceived privilege than getting to the United States of America. However, once refugee

populations enter the United States, the work is not yet done. The fight is not over. These

communities still need aid: there needs to be accountability in making sure they are provided for,

they are understood, and they are heard. Specifically, within the Middle Tennessee area, a

peculiar population has arisen- a population known as the Karen. In the heart of Smyrna,

Tennessee, this group made such an impact on the community that a major motion picture was

even made about the Karen people and how they saved a dying church- All Saints Episcopal

Church. Peculiarly, though, many people from the Smyrna community have no idea the Karen

even exist.
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Through this movie and through the experiences I have had with the Karen through many

other ministries, I have learned of their stories and of their experiences. My senior year of high

school, I felt what I attribute to be a divine calling to have a Christmas party for a group of

refugee children. The only problem was- I had never even met a refugee before, let alone an

entire population of refugee children. Grace came in, and I met these wonderful people and

cultivated a beautiful relationship with these youth and adolescents; shortly after, I saw All

Saints, the movie made about the Karen in Smyrna, and I was deeply convicted. I knew I had to

go back and experience their community, their love, more. As I have planned many events for

the adolescent and youth populations of the Karen at Chalet Apartments, I have grown to more

fully understand the culture, customs, and situation of the Karen as they learn to live and thrive

in an environment that is foreign to them.

Through my interactions with the Karen, I have learned more of the situation facing not

only these people, but many people who are placed into refugee resettlement programs in the

United States. I have drawn on the experiences of seeing refugees who have emigrated to the

United States first hard, and how these experiences can be improved.

To understand the situation that must be addressed for refugees being resettled in the

United States, and particularly the Karen people, it must be clear what it means to be a refugee.

Refugees are defined as: “people forced to live outside their homelands because of government

persecution or high risks of maltreatment based on their ethnicity, race, religion, or associations

with social or political groups,” (Wurtzburg). More than just a textbook definition of a

“maltreated” group, though, refugees are people who are forced, for fear of their lives, to leave

their families, their homes, their communities, their livelihoods, for a community and a place that
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they do not know about: a place where they do not know the language or the cultural practices or

the customs or the people. Often when the situations of refugees are discussed, there is a

romance associated with the relocation, as if being resettled is like moving to a nicer house in a

better neighborhood in your hometown. However, the relocation is just a terrifying part of the

process of being resettled. Refugees are surely thankful to be out of immediate harm, but the

process does not end once they are placed into a new geographical area. Some view this

transition as such a difficult experience, that they would choose to continue living in a place that

is physically unsafe for them, rather than being resettled to a new place, filled with new

challenges (Wurtzburg). That being said, resettlement is not the only battle refugees face.

The Karen people, pronounced Kah-ren, are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia. Many

of the refugees who have emigrated to Rutherford County are S’gaw Karen, though a few of the

refugees from that region of the world are also Burmese. Modern day Myanmar, which was

formerly recognized as Burma, was in a state of political turmoil and disaster. Ethnic wars

plagued Thailand’s next door neighbor to the East and heavy tension compounded between two

groups that have a large ethnic concentration in the area: the Karen and the Burmans. The

Burman monarchy was an advocate for the Buddhist faith, and because the Karen were in such

close proximity with Burmans, the Christianity that grew among the Karen people posed a threat.

Additionally, the British, who used the Karenic alignment with Christianity to their advantage,

used Karenic forces to fight the Burmese which grew tensions even further (Olson 65). These

tensions heightened following British decolonization, and the separation of the different ethnic

groups into different provinces, such as Kayin, where the Karen resided.
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In the case of the Karen, they were persecuted heavily for practicing Christianity in a

politically unstable realm where Buddhism is the primary religious tradition. Burmese leaders

left the Karen with a religious community torn apart by “expelled ministers, arrested Christians,

compelled them to renounce their faith, and prohibited them from evangelizing and worshiping,”

(Blunt 20). The Karen were then driven away from not only their religious faith, but their homes.

Finding relative safety only in refugee camps, the Karen were moved to neighboring Thailand

where 140,000 Karen were placed in refugee camps; worse, another 500,000 Karen were moved

to refugee camps still in eastern Myanmar (Blunt 21). The Karen’s story both before they were

put into refugee camps and after was told beautifully by Ye Win, a Karen man who gives his

account of the events in All Saints through broken English and a broken spirit. He recalled the

Karen were farmers who worked and toiled the land to provide for their families, and quickly

had to become soldiers to survive, in harsh mountainous and jungle conditions. The villages they

lived in were burned to the ground and many were found dead, leaving families grieving over the

loss of loved ones, but also forced to continue moving. Once in the refugee camps, there was no

more work to be done. All they could do was wait. None of the Karen were able to leave or work

or carry on their lives; essentially they were stuck in time to wait. All of this culminated to both

girls and boys being raped and men becoming violent towards other men fighting out of

frustration (Armour).

As a volunteer and a tutor for the local Karen population in middle Tennessee, I have first

hand seen the effects of children who are brought to a country where they do not have the

educational support that they need. Thus, a program referred to as D4, named after the apartment

unit it is held in, was formed out of the apartment complex where the Karen live. Sponsored by
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Rutherford County Schools and Catholic Charities, students have access to a plethora of

opportunities: tutoring and homework help, preschool two days a week, weekly Bible studies,

service projects, and, what I am responsible for, planning special events to help the Karen

socialize and assimilate.

Children often come to D4 from families who do not speak, or even know limited

English. Therefore, most of the students are bilingual students who speak English in school and

in situations around native English speakers, but speak Karenic (often referred to as just Karen)

at home. With friends they often speak both languages or a combination of the two. To

complicate things even more, there are many subdivisions of the Karenic language, as there are

many subdivisions in the Karenic ethnicity, (Olson 61). Because there are even subdivisions in

the language the S’gaw Karen and Pwo Karen speak, this hightens even further the difficulty in

the English learning process, as translation becomes even more complicated.

This is where the necessity of English tutoring comes into play. Students, who are

attempting to do well in school, are constantly hindered by their lack of knowing English.

Students who has more recently emigrated to the United States will come to the after school

tutoring program desperately needing help with homework, especially in understanding the

instructions given to them. For example, a child, who was placed in second grade with no formal

education was struggling bitterly with school. I sat down to tutor him one on one and watched,

baffled, as a child who was put into a second grade classroom could not assign meaning to the

letters of the English alphabet. How in the world was he expected to be able to manage this kind

of work? This was particularly saddening to me because there was no way I would ever be able

to catch him up to the level of his second grade peers, when his education level was that of a
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kindergartener at best. He would always be behind his friends, or else, he would have to be the

oldest person in the class. Moreover, I thought of the way he had been placed into a classroom in

which he could not communicate and was bound to fail in. I thought of the lack of consideration

for this boy who was very obviously frustrated that he could not communicate with me, but was

still kind to me for trying to help him. This is just one of the many situations I have witnessed in

which the Karen, like other refugees who resettle in the United States, were left behind once they

emigrated here.

Along with tutoring, D4 works to cultivate and encourage students as they face new

spiritual struggles. Christianity has historically been so important to the Karen that they were

willing to be displaced and to lose their homes to pursue their beliefs. The Karen still hold this

same dedication to their faith- many Karen make attending church services, whether that be at

All Saints, Mission Church of Christ, or small home churches a priority in their lives. The Karen

know more of their Bible than many of the traditional American Christians of today, recalling

details in stories and biographies long forgotten to most. Because D4 understands the deep roots

of these beliefs, Bible study class is offered for the young women and the young men. One

Monday afternoon, we were discussing King David as a “man after God’s own heart” who had

made many mistakes. We spoke of his wives and his affair with Bathsheeba. While the teenage

girls have pretty firm grasps on the content of the Bible, their social barometer for understanding

what is and isn’t taboo in these sort of situations is sometimes off. One of the girls asked Mrs.

Anita, an elderly volunteer at D4 who leads the Bible study, if that meant King David had AIDS.

I highlight this, not only because it was a sweet and humorous moment, but because it

demonstrates the lack of social aptitude the Karen have towards the American culture in some
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instances. This young woman did not see any humor in the question she asked, though I worked

to stifle my own laugh. As she had learned about AIDS in her classroom at school that day, she

had no concept of that being a taboo subject, especially to discuss with an elderly woman.

However, this is not the only insight I have gained into the discrepancies between

Karenic culture and American norms. The event that started my relationship with the Karen

altogether was a Christmas party I threw my senior year of high school for the elementary aged

children. I had planned many games and activities for the children to play, including making a

Christmas ornament. I designed a cute snowman ornament craft that I believed the children

would just love to make. After the first group finished, I approached one of the little girls and

asked her if she was going to hang her ornament on her Christmas tree. When she said she didn’t

have one my heart sunk. I was distraught that she did not grow up with the luxuries surrounding

her that I did, things like Christmas presents- or even Christmas trees. Later, it dawned on me,

though, and I felt ridiculous. Of course, I thought, why in the world would they have Christmas

trees? Pine trees do not even grow in that region of the world! The same night, I fed the children

barbeque sandwiches, only to realize that most Karen people do not even eat bread. Being left

with dozens of hamburger buns and embarrassment for the lamenting of a child who grew up in a

different culture were my first insights into the Karenic culture and the way that I would come to

understand it more deeply.

Some of the culture I have come to recognize as paramount is the importance

surroundings relationships, even though they are not always the “kin” relationships Americans

hold. Surrounding children and family life, the Karen have built a community strong in

collaboration and cooperation. Everytime I interact with the Karen, they treat each other like
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siblings. Truthfully, their relationships are complicated. In the refugee camps, many children

were split up from their birth parents and this left them to be adopted by anyone else who could

care for them; with so many deaths and so many families being destroyed, the Karen found a

way to keep going and continue to care for each other (All Saints). This has translated to their

experience in the United States. Chalet Apartments recently experienced a fire where many

families lost their apartments along with their belongings. At first, I was extremely concerned at

what was to become of the families whose units have burned. I was worried how they could

survive and where they would stay. Not surprisingly to someone who knows these people,

though, the Karen rallied around each other. Some families are broken up with each member

living in a different neighbors apartment. But this is how they have learned to survive. This is

what they have learned to do. Family to the Karen has encompassed so much more than the

people they are related to by blood.

While the Karenic culture has been a culture adapted by the difficult circumstances in

which they have been forced to endure, the United States has brought about some challenges that

could be much more avoidable if refugees were more considered in once they are settled in the

United States.

Women, for example, experience a lack of support once they arrive as refugees to the

United States in the case of the Karen. In Southeastern Asia, particularly around Thailand where

the refugee camps were located, prostitution is very common and in some ways normalized.

Once these women have arrived to the United States, they are often left with families who are

hungry and without aid to fend for their family financially. Women, therefore, are put into a

position in which they have to somehow provide for their families, leaving many women to turn
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to prostitution. This leaves many families, and children, vulnerable as these new, strange men

come in and out of these women's’ homes. Though many of the instances of prostitution have

stopped, it is still a highly dangerous practice to occur when inviting new people into homes with

young children. However, many women, feeling as if they do not have the support they would

need to raise a family, hold this as their only option, which could be avoided if refugees were

more thoughtfully resettled.

Additionally, adolescents are often left with no outlet in which to express themselves or

to channel their energy. Chalet Apartments, where many of the Karen live, has seen a rise in

gang activity among the Karen. Many of these teens struggle with English and have different

social customs, making relating to their peers at school, where they spend most of their time,

difficult. Additionally, many families cannot afford to get a car for their teenagers, so teens are

left to go places only within walking distance with no other outlet. Chalet has a small swing set,

pool, and soccer are, but this leaves hardly any options besides playing video games for young

adults to participate in. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase in the rate of gang activity

among the young adult men. This demographic is just one more example of the danger in failing

to continuing to support a migrant population once they have been resettled.

There is not only one pocket of Karen people in the United States, though. In a case study

done on another Karen population in Georgia, similar issues are present. When interviewed on

her perspective of being resettled in rural Georgia, Samber Htoo, aged 19, had this to say of her

experience:

Why they [US government] make us live in city? It not good for Karen people because

they never know city. Many Karen people say to me they scare and don't trust city.
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Everything in city different, difficult and many kid go bad way. But in countryside we

live like we know and happy here. (Gilhooly, Daniel, Eunbae Lee).

This case study reinforces that problems that refugees coming to America face: once they arrive

in America the help seems to end and there is a lack of thoughtfulness when placing refugees.

While I am thankful the Karen were resettled to Smyrna, I cannot fathom a logical argument for

why they were resettled there, considering many of them have a large commute to work, and

crave unadulterated outdoor space. The Karen are a population that relied on, and still somewhat

relies on, agriculture to feed their families and produce income. The movie All Saints, highlights

the supreme cultural importance of subsistence agriculture among the Karen people, when they

create a garden on a church’s lawn to feed themselves (Armour).

It is evident how important the land is to them even witnessing them just be. One

afternoon when I was setting up for an event with the teenage girls, I saw a, elderly Karen

woman admiring a garden next to the apartment complex in which they were placed. She wore a

long skirt and no shoes and a grin as she looked onto the beautiful garden patch. Her delight in

the simple pleasure of a garden was a clear portrayal of the importance that nature and

agriculture plays as vital to the culture of the Karen. With this in mind, it becomes much more

clear why an apartment complex right off of a major highway is not the most thoughtfully

considered place for a community that has expertise in growing and cultivating the land. These

scenarios lend to the idea that as long as refugees get to “The States”, their American dream will

find them. However, refugees, and especially the Karen people need more support than just a

place where they can land.

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The United States has dropped in rates of refugee resettlement from significantly starting

in 1990, going from accepting about 122,000 persons in 1990 to about 85,000 persons in 2016

(US Department of Homeland Security 2016). This drop in the number of refugees who will be

permitted to enter the United States is alarming in the fact that it foreshadowing a growing

sentiment of apathy around the idea of refugee resettlement. These implications are even more

startling in the context that over 90,000 Karen refugees have been admitted into the United States

since 2005 and they are still struggling to assimilate. The Karen are a people I have fallen in love

with. From their fighting spirit and their story, to their culture, I have considered it an honor to

know them. I want the best for them, and now for other groups who have been resettled in the

United States. Following the hardship in which they have endured, they truly deserve it. Because

of this, I hold to the notion that refugees should be considered more thoughtfully and we have

more work to do, as a nation, to make sure that people who must leave their homes for a better

life truly have the opportunity to build new, beautiful homes in strange places.
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Works Cited

Addison, Bland. “Karen Refugee Crisis.” Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2013. EBSCOhost.

Armour, Steve. All Saints. Directed by Steve Gomer, Affirm Films, Provident Films, 25 August

2017.

Blunt, Sheryl Henderson. “‘Destroy the Christian Religion.’” Christianity Today, vol. 51, no. 4,

Apr. 2007, pp. 20–21. EBSCOhost.

Gilhooly, Daniel, and Eunbae Lee. “Rethinking Urban Refugee Resettlement: A Case Study of

One Karen Community in Rural Georgia, USA.” International Migration, no. 6, 2017, p.

37. EBSCOhost.

Olson, Collin. “Karen Immigration in Tennessee.” TNTESOL Journal, vol. 7, 2015, pp. 56-74.

US Department of Homeland Security. "Number of Refugees Arriving in The U.S. from 1990 to

2016." Statista - The Statistics Portal, Statista.

Wurtzburg, Susan J. “Refugees and Population Migrations.” Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2013.

EBSCOhost.