Crystalline Empowerment: Negotiating Tensions in Refugee Resettlement
通过对全球最大难民安置组织的参与式观察，研究识别了赋权过程中的三种张力（主动/被动、物质/象征、技术赋能/约束），并提出“结晶赋权”隐喻以理解难民安置中的包容与能动性。
As the number of forcibly displaced people continues to rise worldwide, humanitarian organizations are playing a growing role in finding solutions. This study investigates one of the world’s largest refugee resettlement organizations as it pilots innovative empowerment programs. With very little research regarding organizational rhetoric, discourse, and practices within resettlement agencies, there is great need for understanding the tensions that arise amid empowerment processes. This participant ethnography identifies distinct formations of empowerment and disempowerment. The analysis identifies tensions between (1) active/passive and (2) material/symbolic interpretations of empowerment, as well as (3) the enabling/constraining effects of communication technologies. The metaphor, crystalline empowerment, is introduced to connect a tension-centered approach with a view of empowerment that prioritizes organic, contingent interpretations while identifying practical opportunities for inclusion and agency in resettlement contexts.