From Burma to Dallas: The Experience of Resettled Emerging Adult Karen Refugees

Across the globe, millions of people have been forcibly displaced giving them a shared experience with other refugees. However, their journeys are differentiated by the sociohistorical circumstances and personal developmental stages that contextualize each experience. Every refugee has a story to tell. This qualitative study explores the stories of emerging adult Karen refugees who have resettled in Dallas, Texas, and examines what their shared experience entails. The Karen are the second largest ethnic group in Burma recognized for their strong ethnic identity and decades of in-country conflict. After fleeing Burma, many Karen refugees have spent most or all of their lives in refugee camps in Thailand. Thousands of Karen have left the Protracted Refugee Situation with the option of third-country resettlement in the United States. Through transcendental phenomenological methods this study seeks to understand the shared experience of eight participants who are now in their emerging adult stage of life. They were all born in Burma or in a Thai border camp, lived in the Thai camps for over ten years during their childhood, and then resettled to the United States. Through phenomenological reduction, clustered themes emerged giving meanings to the textural descriptions. These meanings took shape through the structural variation of continual flight occurring in the three stages of origin, Protracted Refugee Situation, and third country resettlement. The synthesis of these descriptions makes up the essence of the now emerging adult Karen refugee experience. The overall essence provides us with new knowledge and understanding of the Karen refugee experience phenomenon which informs previous theoretical research done on refugee studies and emerging adulthood as well as prior empirical work on the Karen people.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Cross-Cultural, International Education

Grantor dc:publisher

Bowling Green State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Booher, Laura Elizabeth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Booth, Margaret

• Multicultural Education
• Karen
• Burma
• refugee
• Protracted Refugee Situation
• resettlement
• emerging adult
• phenomenology

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: some rights reserved. It is licensed for use under a Creative Commons license. Specific terms and permissions are available from this document's record in the OhioLINK ETD Center.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1363190792

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:bgsu1363190792