Abstract

This study follows a former child refugee’s experience of family resettlement in Chile. Born into the Palestinian Iraqi community further imperiled by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his family fled first to the Al-Tanf refugee camp before placement in Chile. While most of the world’s refugees dwell in marginal conditions in areas neighboring conflicts, another strain of permanent settlement has been highly developed amongst some of the wealthiest countries. For countries such as Chile—by strict definition now high-income, but only newly considering a role as a haven for refugees—tentative steps toward resettlement protocols mean that case data are limited. By carefully studying a family’s resettlement and subsequent experience from a child refugee’s reflections, it is possible to sketch out and understand a range of challenges at the human scale of supporting refugees.