In Focus

PhD candidate builds oral history of media’s influence on refugees

Sarah BishopIf you had never been to the United States, and the only source material you had to build your perception of the country included a handful of movies or an Internet connection, what kind of society would you believe it to be?

Would it be the abundant utopia of last-century immigrant legend, with gold-paved streets spoking outward from the Statue of Liberty? Or would it be a violent post-apocalyptic wilderness, a place you would dearly hope to avoid?

When immigrants—specifically, refugees—arrive in the United States, they carry with them the expectations and trepidations forged by the influences of whatever media they have encountered prior to their arrival. It is this intersection of communication and immigration that specifically piqued the interest of Sarah Bishop, a third-year PhD student in the Department of Communication, who is studying how refugees use media throughout their relocation experience.

Such encounters are “continually important as a way of maintaining or negotiating cultural traditions,” Bishop says.

Originally from Akron, Ohio, Bishop worked for Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City as a speechwriter and strategic communications specialist in the Office of Immigrant Affairs. It was there that she became more aware of the issues surrounding the U.S. refugee population, and when she left New York she began volunteering for a refugee-resettlement organization in her hometown. Eventually, she decided to parlay her interest into a doctoral degree. She chose Pitt because of the communication program’s well-known focus on media, audiences, and culture.

“The faculty in our department represent a wide range of diverse research interests, and their guidance has been vital to this project,” she says.

Recently, Bishop’s work was recognized by support from the Waterford Family Institute at Villanova as well as the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She traveled to New York, California, Texas, and Pennsylvania to interview 74 refugees from the top-four incoming ethnicities to the United States, as well as 10 refugee resettlement facilitators.

Her research focuses not only on popular forms of media—books, television, music, movies—but also government-sponsored cultural-orientation materials intended to give refugees more realistic expectations about American life.

Such materials often are produced at the federal level, so they are generic instead of targeting particular audiences. Bishop’s interviews with refugees revealed that resettlement materials painted a mass-produced view of the United States that is often more optimistic than what the refugees personally encounter.

For example, the orientation texts do not typically address anti-immigration views within the U.S., or ways in which refugees may encounter racism or xenophobia.

“Of course, no single book could fully prepare refugees for the diversity of experiences that they might encounter in the U.S.,” Bishop says. “But one thing that fascinates me about the government orientation media is, it kind of presupposes there are certain kinds of expectations that have a stronger correlation to reality than others.”

An Iraqi woman she interviewed told a story about walking through a Walmart. A man asked her if she was hiding a bomb under her veil before suggesting that she return to her country of origin.

What he did not know was that the woman, whose name is Fadhail, grew up in Baghdad and was displaced after her husband was kidnapped during a nighttime raid of her home. She and her children had to flee the country for safety, but Fadhail was reluctant to resettle in the United States because she had seen the Harrison Ford thriller What Lies Beneath, and was convinced that the country was too violent. She came only after being denied access to Australia, which she had believed to be a safer haven.

Other refugees Bishop interviewed believed America would be a land of opulence, but the reality they encountered upon their arrival was a far cry from the celebrity lifestyles they had seen and heard in American films, television, and music. Typically, the government provides refugees up to $1,000 per person, and requires that they reimburse the United States for their flight. They may be starting from scratch, without their belongings, their college degrees dramatically diminished in value, living in efficiency apartments in run-down neighborhoods.

Bishop will graduate from Pitt this summer. She recently accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Communication Studies at the City University of New York in Manhattan, where she plans to continue her research on communication and migration. The proliferation of media worldwide opens many possibilities for studying its effects on both immigration and on Americans’ perceptions of points abroad, she says. During the coming years, she plans to adapt her dissertation research into a book for a popular audience.

“The support I’ve received for this project at Pitt has been amazing,” Bishop says. “I feel well equipped to go on from here.”

Return to Snapshot