Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs is conducting a study to examine issues within Syracuse’s immigrant and refugee communities.

The study will focus on five major themes: housing, health, education, recreation and workforce participation. Maxwell’s Community Geography program is conducting the study. 

The study began at the end of the spring 2019 semester and is expected to conclude next summer, said Jonnell Robinson, director of the community program. She and Jamie Winders, a geography professor, are leading the study. They spent the summer assembling their research team — which consists of four undergraduate students and one graduate student — and conducting a literature review. 

“We’re at that complicated phase of taking the kinds of things that we’ve looked at and beginning to talk and interact with community stakeholders,” Winders said of the research team’s work. 

The team hopes to speak with representatives from every community in Syracuse, Robinson said. An issue with that, however, is ensuring that research materials such as surveys are distributed in the language that each respective community speaks, Winders added.

The city of Syracuse has Burmese, Bhutanese, Iraqi and Cuban immigrants and refugees, among others, Robinson said. The city has received refugees from about 20 countries within the last decade, she said.

Christine Larsen, a member of SU’s Board of Trustees, and her family are funding the study. As of June, they have contributed $110,000 to fund the study, according to a press release from Maxwell. 

Larsen was compelled to fund the study because of the growing number of refugees residing in Syracuse, according to the release. It is estimated that there are between 12,000 to 15,000 refugees in Syracuse.

Winders and Robinson hope to complete most of their key interviews by January 2020 so they can begin to go through their research and transcripts.

A part of both the study and the Community Geography program is to engage undergraduate students in the research process and allow them to learn through working with the community, Winders said. Robinson said that because of this component, the study is a learning process for all those involved.

Although they are unsure of how their final research will be published, Winders said the team’s primary goal is to share their findings with the communities they studied to help them address problems they are facing.

“We’re not just summarizing their experiences in a way that makes them go ‘well yes those are my experiences, you just wrote it down,’” Winders said. “It’s can we produce a type of knowledge that is helpful for the organization.”

Published on September 15, 2019 at 9:06 pm