by Lily Tierney* November 8, 2023
In 2022 American University’s Immigration Lab began conducting interviews in the DMV (D.C., Maryland, and Virginia) area to better understand the experience of migrants and refugees. All migrants and refugees have vastly different experiences due to their place of origin, economic status, and or racial identity. However, there are common threads within these experiences.
Many participants found employment outside of their educational training because there were more opportunities to earn a higher income elsewhere. This does not deviate from what many people must do to support themselves, but the reasoning differed. A Colombian woman shared that she went into sales rather than film, her field of study, because she knows that one day she will have to support her mother and siblings. Many noted remittances as the reason why they had to seek a higher-paying job and depart from their original discipline.
On the other hand, some participants were unable to use their degrees to seek employment because they were obtained outside of the United States. This circumstance almost always resulted in that individual having to accept a lower-paying job and having to learn a new set of skills. Participants who have yet to work toward higher education tend to pursue employment in the informal labor market, which is defined as work that is not taxed or recorded by the government.
Many participants in the study reported that they do not have the opportunity to use their first language in the workplace. When there is opportunity to speak their native language, interviewees disclosed feeling uncomfortable. A Salvadoran woman in her late twenties mentioned that she chose not to work in a regionally specific office where Spanish was spoken due to feeling, “pigeonhole(d) into doing this role.”
Almost all participants who have yet to achieve a higher education plan to return to school at some point. Time and money are the most frequently cited hinderances of achieving this goal. Many migrants feel that they are overqualified for the profession they are in but are stuck until they can obtain a degree from an accredited institution in the United States. However, many find themselves in a catch 22: it is almost impossible to dedicate oneself to work, school and family full time. As an Afghan male in his mid-twenties noted, “Life is all about work.”
The main earning priorities indicated by participants were rent, bills, and family. This is strikingly different to the financial goals of U.S. citizens recorded from 2020 to 2021, which revealed the main priorities as increasing emergency savings and paying down debt. The primary financial concerns among immigrants and refugees are dealt with day to day. Many immigrants and refugees do not have the luxury to pay off debt or accrue savings when they are worried about whether their income will cover basic living needs, bills, and sending remittances to their family in a country that may be in a state of unrest.
A Colombian woman in her mid-twenties expressed that discrimination has grown to be an expected part of the workplace experience, and she has had to file complaints with Human Resources to create a paper trail. This should not be part of the workplace environment, and she should not have to keep a paper trail in case of something more severe than verbal discrimination. Attaining a U.S. education and being a member of the workforce is challenging, but those challenges are escalated for immigrants and refugees traveling to the DMV region due to racial, social, and economic divisions.
* Lily Tierney- student in the School of Communications ’24 at American University.
AULA Blog 