Syrian Refugees

I have been working with the Syrian refugees since last September and since I have started working with them I became more curious about the resettlement process and how they manage to integrate into the American society while at they maintain some part of their original culture. I’ve had all these questions about the integration process and how they manage to adopt to American culture. I knew how hard it is to be the foreigner (from my personal experience of being an international student in the U.S), let alone being a refugee with no knowledge what so ever about the new culture language and values…etc. I knew how the Syrians will have to adopt and learn about the American culture to be accepted and to be part of the in-group.

For one to

This what I did this semester I chose a topic initially and planned to do a qualitative study, however, before deciding on my topic I did make sure that I have a plan B and that there is enough literature to switch the question without chaining the focus of my topic. Moreover, working on my capstone topic I had to go through an extensive amount of literature whether I have used in my paper or not and that helped to learn how to speed up the reading process by skimming as much of the literature that I can to find the information that is related to my topic. I’ve also learned how to apply the existing literature on other refugees and relate it to the Syrian

Now whenever I think of a conflict whether if it was personal or in a work place I started to think of the conflict deeply and try to track its roots. As we learned in the CNCM program that the underlying issue is the reason of the conflict and in many cases, can escalate the conflict into a different issue however, in order to solve it we will need to at least acknowledge that issue. And this is something that I learned in a program too, acknowledging the issue and reaching a point where you have an open conversation about it whether if it was through a dialogue, mediation or negotiation can be the first step into finding a solution. Learning that did shape my thinking when working with refugees it did taught me not respond immediately when I’m communicating with a grumpy client, rather try to understand the reasons behind that anger to better serve them. Personally, I think the conflict management skills that I learned helped me improve my skills dealing with refugees, whom are considered to be a valuable population that needs special treatment in most of the cases. Lastly, working on these projects triggered to pursue a position with a resettlement agency working with the refugees through their resettlement process. There is a gap that I see between what is being implemented, what is in the literature and what the refugees actually go through that I would like to