For this dissertation, to investigate Sudanese refugee political activities, I utilize a specific form of institutional analysis: policy feedback theory. This lens provides ample theoretical and practical insight primarily because it is less vague
35 than the previous institutional analytics. It focuses on how policy designs impact mass politics (or the political activities of “ordinary” people) (Mettler 2002; Pierson 1993; Schneider and Ingram 1993). This analytic’s added value is that it connects specific policy design attributes to the subsequent political behavior of those who are direct recipients of the policy – it is in many ways a political policy analysis. It makes the claim for what makes common sense: that policies are a fundamental part of a policy recipient’s political experience. It is at the level of policy and its
implementation where government and individuals who are governed interact. The design of policy will therefore influence the political activities of those individuals who are impacted by it. The policy feedback analytic offers a pointed analysis of the institutions that play such important roles in the newcomers’ lives. The policy feedback model thus differs from the Political Opportunity Model8, which takes on far too much of the context at once, rather than specifically focusing on critical aspects of the institutional context. Policy feedback scholars analyze the attributes of policy design and examine each policy’s political effects in terms of the policy’s resource and interpretative influences (described earlier in this chapter) on recipients.
Utilizing this model of analysis has many advantages. First, it is a theory about context, but it targets a critical aspect of the context. Second, it asks scholars to examine unintended consequences of policies, to effectively look beyond the policy.
8 Much institutional analysis implicitly or explicitly falls into the political opportunity model theoretical camp. These models argue that contextual factors create opportunities or barriers to political activities for migrants, or citizens, depending on the research subject. The institutional scholarship in this chapter has primarily ascribed to this model (Koopmans 2004, Ireland 1994, Østergaard-Nielsen 2003 for example).
36 Third, it highlights two distinct ways or mechanisms through which policies have these second-order effects: through interpretative and material effects.
By examining how particular government policies influence the political activities of the policies’ beneficiaries this model focuses our awareness. Take for example several policies in the history of the United States that have been studied using the Policy Feedback Theory. It was found that the U.S. G.I. Bill increased the political participation of military veterans (Mettler 2002). The introduction of Social Security benefits resulted in an increase in the political activity of the elderly (Campbell 2002). On the other hand, recipients of welfare benefits in the US were more likely to experience government in ways that lowered their political
engagement (Soss 1999). None of these policies were designed with the intention of producing such effects. Despite the relatively apolitical goals of these policies and programs, they proved to have political effects on their recipients.
Such unintended consequences characterize refugee settlement policy as well.
Political sociologist Irene Bloemraad has found that the high levels of naturalization among migrants in Canada relative to similar communities in the US are due to the presence of policies and settlement service apparatuses that mobilize migrant communities toward these ends (2006). The types of political activities in which refugees engage in are not only a result of their individual characteristics or goals. As policy feedback scholars pronounce, they are also due to the “interactions between institutions and citizens” (Wichowsky and Moynihan 2008; Mettler and Soss 2004).
37 Bloemraad’s work, what she calls a Structured Mobilization approach, uses an institutionalist account but identifies specific contextual factors that are far narrower than traditional Political Opportunity Structure models. She argues that immigrant (or newcomer) political incorporation is a social process that is nested in, or structured by government interventions including bureaucratic procedures,
settlement policies, and strategies to managing diversity such as multicultural policies. This social process is one in which immigrants learn about and are mobilized to engage in political activities (or not). Learning and mobilization
happens through ethnic and host country intermediaries, including ethnic leaders and community-based organizations. The symbolic and material resources provided by government interventions, put into motion particular learning and mobilization dynamics. These policies send messages about how immigrants should view and value citizenship and political engagement. Through instrumental means, vis-à-vis organizations and programs, government intervention also directly impacts
newcomer mobilization and political participation. She finds that for Portuguese immigrants the US system, which does not promote citizenship, nor provide substantive amounts of funding to immigrant communities, promotes newcomer political apathy and alienation. In contrast, the Canadian system, which includes a lively system of citizenship education and mobilization including funding for ethnic communities, encourages political integration. Additionally, she finds that due to greater degrees of services for Vietnamese refugees (due to more substantive settlement services for refugees as compared to immigrants) in the United States,
38 they are more likely to have received messages and resources that encourage political participation (2006).
My work utilizes Bloemraad’s framework but asks a slightly different question. Rather than focusing on quantity of political participation (more or less political incorporation across these two countries), I ask: do settlement policies and policy implementers influence the direction of Sudanese political activities – toward their home country or toward their host country.
In Australia, the system to settle refugees seeks to ensure full access to the Australian welfare state. Thus the system builds refugee skills for an extended period before expecting them to be self-sufficient. To this end, the country provides more extensive social services including language services, employment skill training and job seeking services, healthcare and longer access to financial assistance. Ethnic community capacity building programs help refugee communities mobilize together, form organizations and help themselves. From this more organized place, these communities are encouraged through various consultative channels to be apart of the policy-evaluating and policy-making processes in Australia. As I demonstrate in Chapter 6, these greatly influence the domestic-focused trajectory of southern Sudanese political activities in Australia.
In the United States, economic integration and self-sufficiency of refugees is emphasized. The program does not systematically include migrant organizational development programs. The underlying assumption of this settlement model is that refugees who are on their feet financially will be able to meet other integration goals,
39 such as physical and financial security, healthcare and connection with citizens and host country institutions. These programs, while present in the United States are not prioritized. Thus, many refugees do not receive government-support to create organizations. One unintentional effect of this lack of management of refugee political organization in the United States is that refugee leaders are free to do what they want with the organizations that they create, so long as they are able to get them off the ground.
Across these receiving country contexts, the nature of actors engaged in settlement services and their relationship with the national government also varies.
Australian and Canadian settlement service providers are primarily secular non-governmental organizations that have historically-rooted institutional and
contemporary financial connections to the national government, thus providing real and perceived barriers to autonomy in settlement practices. In contrast, the U.S.
sector is comprised overwhelmingly by religious organizations, with social networks, funding streams and mandates that expand beyond the purview of the national
government (Nawyn 2006). It is possible then, that these organizations (relative to their Australian and Canadian counterparts) may be more open to reconstruction and development goals of refugees. These specific policy and policy implementer
attributes will be explored in this dissertation. In the following section, I detail two sets of specific research questions that guide the project.