Cultural Barriers Of Refugees

Refugees is a person who is unable or unwilling to return to their home country because of a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion, or national origin.

Currently, Charlotte is home to over 17,000 refugees and former refugees from all around the world. Most recently, Charlotte has been receiving the most refugees from such countries as Nepal (folks of Bhutanese-Nepali heritage), Burma (currently called Myanmar), African nations: Eritrea, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently, Syria. The purpose of this Investigative Report was to explore the barriers of refugees encounter in resettlement to Charlotte, North Carolina.

The ability to speak the language and communicate in the country of resettlement is very important because “language and communication affect all stages of healthcare access--from making an appointment to filling out a prescription. The ability to communicate is not only important for scheduling appointments and gaining access to the system, but it is also critical for medical compliance, understanding, and accurate diagnoses.

(Language is the biggest barrier I encounter when assisting refugees. Other barriers include them: not understanding or “buying into” the American way of doing things, not understanding cultural or religious differences, not practicing “American” methods of hygiene and self-care, not understanding medical terminology, not having a “basic education” where they understand simple concepts that are taught to American children at a very early age. Not having a full knowledge of American laws is also a barrier and very scary for newly-arriving refugees. Finally, another very big barrier is the fact that refugees usually can only get low-income jobs and, therefore, their families have very limited financial resources, which makes life in America very challenging -- because everything costs money! Feeling “different” is also a pretty big barrier for refugees, especially children going

Many refugees have had limited secondary education in refugee camps, which makes staying in school increasingly difficult. A study that interviewed refugees living in Phoenix, Arizona, found that the language barrier was the single greatest impediment to successful integration in the community and the ability to be successful in school. Additional barriers exist for refugee populations that impede them from achieving their potential in school. For example, they may face academic challenges because of the lack of academic support at home, separation from their family, fear of authority figures, and inappropriate grade