Breanne Leigh Grace
Biographic Data
| ID | 907665 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Breanne Leigh Grace |
| GIVEN NAMES | Breanne Leigh |
| FAMILY NAME | Grace |
| SIGNATURE | GRACE B L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Carolina |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4654-919X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
‘God’s bringing people to us’: Missional imaginaries and practices among resettlement volunteers in South Carolina
Refugee resettlement agencies in the United States have long relied upon volunteers to do the ‘work of welcome’. In the Southeastern United States, white-dominated evangelical Protestant churches were an important source of volunteers for co-sponsorship programmes created during the Biden administration amid surging refugee admissions. Drawing on qualitative research in South Carolina, this paper examines how evangelical volunteers were drawn to …
Going Rogue: Refugee Resettlement Volunteers and the Limits of Self-Sufficiency Narratives
The US refugee resettlement system revolves around the idea of self-sufficiency. Resettlement volunteers have an important role in enforcing refugee compliance with self-sufficiency mandates. Yet self-sufficiency narratives may also conflict with volunteers’ desire to provide welcome and care. Drawing on interviews and participant-observation with volunteers in South Carolina (USA), this paper describes instances of volunteers “going rogue”—that …
The violence of uncertainty: Theorizing everyday immigrant necropolitics across three cases
This article theorizes everyday forms of uncertainty that immigrant and refugee populations negotiate as a form of violence. We argue that while the state has made immigrants and refugees an explicit target on which to exercise sovereignty through detention and deportation, sovereignty also operates through a necropolitics of uncertainty where immigrants and refugees face inconsistent and spatially diffuse states of exception that target their ma…
Making 'Best interest' visible: The Role of Frontline Staff in the Care of Unaccompanied Children
Most unaccompanied children (UC) in the United States are temporarily held in government custody until a long-term placement is found for them. They often reside in shelters or temporary foster care setting which are mandated to uphold the ‘best interest’ standards outlined in the Flores Settlement Agreement, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, and state child welfare laws. Based on analyses of in-depth interviews with 65 faci…
Care under pressure: Policy contradictions of speedy release, safety, and placement suitability in ORR-contracted programs for unaccompanied migrant children
Social work, social justice and Americentrism by design: Transnationalism in United States social work education
As our world moves away from historic models of self-contained countries, toward a more integrated and connected world, research suggests transnational approaches may be advantageous for advancing social justice agendas. While social work higher education has long prioritized cultural competencies and global perspectives in practice and research, it is unknown how social work educators in the United States are globalizing curricula. Syllabi from …
Navigating the “Refugee Ecosystem” in Research at Home
In this article, we reflect upon our varied relationships—as friends, advocates, mentors, and researchers—with refugee resettlement agencies and volunteers in Columbia, South Carolina. We describe the organizational networks that support refugee resettlement in our city as a "refugee ecosystem"—a term that captures the overlapping relationships of interdependency, symbiosis, and sometimes competition among refugee activists, advocates, and servic…
Redefining refugee: White Christian nationalism in state politics and beyond
Although immigration is the domain of the federal government, recently there has been a movement to introduce anti-refugee legislation in state legislatures across the country. In 2017 and 2018 there were 86 anti-refugee state-level bills introduced to limit refugee resettlement in the US. We examine public testimony from South Carolina’s 2016 anti-refugee bill, S-997. Building upon the literature on racist nativism, we find those who sought to e…
Bureaucratic neglect: The paradoxical mistreatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the US immigration system
After release from immigrant detainment centres in the United States, a select group of unaccompanied immigrant children enter a community-based programme known as ‘post-release services’ (PRS) because of an identified vulnerability. Despite the name, post-release services do not confer actual services – only a referral for them. We use an intersectional lens to examine the tension for service providers within PRS policy between the rights of the…
The Violence of Uncertainty — Undermining Immigrant and Refugee Health
Interview with Dr. Breanne Grace on immigrant and refugee health and the effects of systematic personal, social, and institutional instability. (09:02)Download Immigrants and refugees in the United States have long faced structural violence due to unequal health care access. Now they’re being subjected to “the violence of uncertainty,” enacted through systematic instability that exacerbates inequality and generates fear.
Family from Afar? Transnationalism and Refugee Extended Families after Resettlement
One of the unintended consequences of the US refugee resettlement program is that it separates extended families through the resettlement process. Although the Trump administration has focused on what types of familial relationships ‘count’ as family in resettlement and family reunification, extended families have long been a point of contention and difficult to navigate under US resettlement policy. The policy and consequent debates draw upon US…
Unaccompanied immigrant children: Interdisciplinary perspectives on needs and responses
Advocating for Structural Change? Exploring the Advocacy Activities of Immigrant-Serving Organizations in an Unwelcoming Policy Context
The growth of the immigrant population in the United States has prompted a recent increase in the number of restrictive immigration policies at the state and local levels. The literature on policy advocacy and social service organizations suggests that these local providers can engage in political activities that challenge the restrictive nature of these contexts. This qualitative study explored how immigrant-serving social service organizations …
Structural Barriers to Inclusion in a Latino Immigrant New Destination: Exploring the Adaptive Strategies of Social Service Organizations in South Carolina
The Right to Belong (If You Can Afford It): Market-based Restrictions on Social Citizenship in Refugee Resettlement
This article uses data from face-to-face interviews with recently resettled Burundian and Burmese refugees in Michigan to explore the concept of market citizenship. Market citizenship (Brodie 1997) is defined as the allocation of citizenship rights based on an individual’s economic power and participation in the labour market. While refugees have legal access to certain social rights, through the limitations of market citizenship, they are freque…
Falling through the cracks: The paradox of post-release services for unaccompanied child migrants
Development and the "Right to Have Rights" in Intra-African Refugee Resettlement
International migration has long been linked to development through hometown associations, remittances, and the brain drain/gain. These themes also carry over to work on forced migration where resettlement is viewed as the opportunity to obtain social and economic resources to remit to the country of origin or to those remaining in camps. Intra-African refugee resettlement seeks to invert and formalize the migration-development nexus. Instead of …
Linguistic Isolation, Social Capital, and Immigrant Belonging
A wealth of evidence points to the positive outcomes experienced by immigrants who can speak the dominant language in a receiving country. But most scholarship treats language acquisition as a variable that affects labor market opportunities, whether conceptualized as human or social capital. We argue that analyzing language as a noneconomic resource that can flow through social networks is important not only for understanding immigrant integrati…
The Right to Belong (If You Can Afford It): Market-based Restrictions on Social Citizenship in Refugee Resettlement
This article uses data from face-to-face interviews with recently resettled Burundian and Burmese refugees in Michigan to explore the concept of market citizenship. Market citizenship (Brodie 1997) is defined as the allocation of citizenship rights based on an individual’s economic power and participation in the labour market. While refugees have legal access to certain social rights, through the limitations of market citizenship, they are freque…
Linguistic Isolation, Social Capital, and Immigrant Belonging
A wealth of evidence points to the positive outcomes experienced by immigrants who can speak the dominant language in a receiving country. But most scholarship treats language acquisition as a variable that affects labor market opportunities, whether conceptualized as human or social capital. We argue that analyzing language as a noneconomic resource that can flow through social networks is important not only for understanding immigrant integrati…
Falling through the cracks: The paradox of post-release services for unaccompanied child migrants
Family from Afar? Transnationalism and Refugee Extended Families after Resettlement
One of the unintended consequences of the US refugee resettlement program is that it separates extended families through the resettlement process. Although the Trump administration has focused on what types of familial relationships ‘count’ as family in resettlement and family reunification, extended families have long been a point of contention and difficult to navigate under US resettlement policy. The policy and consequent debates draw upon US…
Navigating the “Refugee Ecosystem” in Research at Home
In this article, we reflect upon our varied relationships—as friends, advocates, mentors, and researchers—with refugee resettlement agencies and volunteers in Columbia, South Carolina. We describe the organizational networks that support refugee resettlement in our city as a "refugee ecosystem"—a term that captures the overlapping relationships of interdependency, symbiosis, and sometimes competition among refugee activists, advocates, and servic…
Bureaucratic neglect: The paradoxical mistreatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the US immigration system
After release from immigrant detainment centres in the United States, a select group of unaccompanied immigrant children enter a community-based programme known as ‘post-release services’ (PRS) because of an identified vulnerability. Despite the name, post-release services do not confer actual services – only a referral for them. We use an intersectional lens to examine the tension for service providers within PRS policy between the rights of the…
Structural Barriers to Inclusion in a Latino Immigrant New Destination: Exploring the Adaptive Strategies of Social Service Organizations in South Carolina
Advocating for Structural Change? Exploring the Advocacy Activities of Immigrant-Serving Organizations in an Unwelcoming Policy Context
The growth of the immigrant population in the United States has prompted a recent increase in the number of restrictive immigration policies at the state and local levels. The literature on policy advocacy and social service organizations suggests that these local providers can engage in political activities that challenge the restrictive nature of these contexts. This qualitative study explored how immigrant-serving social service organizations …
The violence of uncertainty: Theorizing everyday immigrant necropolitics across three cases
This article theorizes everyday forms of uncertainty that immigrant and refugee populations negotiate as a form of violence. We argue that while the state has made immigrants and refugees an explicit target on which to exercise sovereignty through detention and deportation, sovereignty also operates through a necropolitics of uncertainty where immigrants and refugees face inconsistent and spatially diffuse states of exception that target their ma…
Unaccompanied immigrant children: Interdisciplinary perspectives on needs and responses
Linguistic Isolation, Social Capital, and Immigrant Belonging
A wealth of evidence points to the positive outcomes experienced by immigrants who can speak the dominant language in a receiving country. But most scholarship treats language acquisition as a variable that affects labor market opportunities, whether conceptualized as human or social capital. We argue that analyzing language as a noneconomic resource that can flow through social networks is important not only for understanding immigrant integrati…
Development and the "Right to Have Rights" in Intra-African Refugee Resettlement
International migration has long been linked to development through hometown associations, remittances, and the brain drain/gain. These themes also carry over to work on forced migration where resettlement is viewed as the opportunity to obtain social and economic resources to remit to the country of origin or to those remaining in camps. Intra-African refugee resettlement seeks to invert and formalize the migration-development nexus. Instead of …
Falling through the cracks: The paradox of post-release services for unaccompanied child migrants
The Right to Belong (If You Can Afford It): Market-based Restrictions on Social Citizenship in Refugee Resettlement
This article uses data from face-to-face interviews with recently resettled Burundian and Burmese refugees in Michigan to explore the concept of market citizenship. Market citizenship (Brodie 1997) is defined as the allocation of citizenship rights based on an individual’s economic power and participation in the labour market. While refugees have legal access to certain social rights, through the limitations of market citizenship, they are freque…
The Violence of Uncertainty — Undermining Immigrant and Refugee Health
Interview with Dr. Breanne Grace on immigrant and refugee health and the effects of systematic personal, social, and institutional instability. (09:02)Download Immigrants and refugees in the United States have long faced structural violence due to unequal health care access. Now they’re being subjected to “the violence of uncertainty,” enacted through systematic instability that exacerbates inequality and generates fear.
Family from Afar? Transnationalism and Refugee Extended Families after Resettlement
One of the unintended consequences of the US refugee resettlement program is that it separates extended families through the resettlement process. Although the Trump administration has focused on what types of familial relationships ‘count’ as family in resettlement and family reunification, extended families have long been a point of contention and difficult to navigate under US resettlement policy. The policy and consequent debates draw upon US…
Unaccompanied immigrant children: Interdisciplinary perspectives on needs and responses
Advocating for Structural Change? Exploring the Advocacy Activities of Immigrant-Serving Organizations in an Unwelcoming Policy Context
The growth of the immigrant population in the United States has prompted a recent increase in the number of restrictive immigration policies at the state and local levels. The literature on policy advocacy and social service organizations suggests that these local providers can engage in political activities that challenge the restrictive nature of these contexts. This qualitative study explored how immigrant-serving social service organizations …
Structural Barriers to Inclusion in a Latino Immigrant New Destination: Exploring the Adaptive Strategies of Social Service Organizations in South Carolina
Redefining refugee: White Christian nationalism in state politics and beyond
Although immigration is the domain of the federal government, recently there has been a movement to introduce anti-refugee legislation in state legislatures across the country. In 2017 and 2018 there were 86 anti-refugee state-level bills introduced to limit refugee resettlement in the US. We examine public testimony from South Carolina’s 2016 anti-refugee bill, S-997. Building upon the literature on racist nativism, we find those who sought to e…
Bureaucratic neglect: The paradoxical mistreatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the US immigration system
After release from immigrant detainment centres in the United States, a select group of unaccompanied immigrant children enter a community-based programme known as ‘post-release services’ (PRS) because of an identified vulnerability. Despite the name, post-release services do not confer actual services – only a referral for them. We use an intersectional lens to examine the tension for service providers within PRS policy between the rights of the…
Social work, social justice and Americentrism by design: Transnationalism in United States social work education
As our world moves away from historic models of self-contained countries, toward a more integrated and connected world, research suggests transnational approaches may be advantageous for advancing social justice agendas. While social work higher education has long prioritized cultural competencies and global perspectives in practice and research, it is unknown how social work educators in the United States are globalizing curricula. Syllabi from …
Navigating the “Refugee Ecosystem” in Research at Home
In this article, we reflect upon our varied relationships—as friends, advocates, mentors, and researchers—with refugee resettlement agencies and volunteers in Columbia, South Carolina. We describe the organizational networks that support refugee resettlement in our city as a "refugee ecosystem"—a term that captures the overlapping relationships of interdependency, symbiosis, and sometimes competition among refugee activists, advocates, and servic…
Care under pressure: Policy contradictions of speedy release, safety, and placement suitability in ORR-contracted programs for unaccompanied migrant children
The violence of uncertainty: Theorizing everyday immigrant necropolitics across three cases
This article theorizes everyday forms of uncertainty that immigrant and refugee populations negotiate as a form of violence. We argue that while the state has made immigrants and refugees an explicit target on which to exercise sovereignty through detention and deportation, sovereignty also operates through a necropolitics of uncertainty where immigrants and refugees face inconsistent and spatially diffuse states of exception that target their ma…
Making 'Best interest' visible: The Role of Frontline Staff in the Care of Unaccompanied Children
Most unaccompanied children (UC) in the United States are temporarily held in government custody until a long-term placement is found for them. They often reside in shelters or temporary foster care setting which are mandated to uphold the ‘best interest’ standards outlined in the Flores Settlement Agreement, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, and state child welfare laws. Based on analyses of in-depth interviews with 65 faci…
‘God’s bringing people to us’: Missional imaginaries and practices among resettlement volunteers in South Carolina
Refugee resettlement agencies in the United States have long relied upon volunteers to do the ‘work of welcome’. In the Southeastern United States, white-dominated evangelical Protestant churches were an important source of volunteers for co-sponsorship programmes created during the Biden administration amid surging refugee admissions. Drawing on qualitative research in South Carolina, this paper examines how evangelical volunteers were drawn to …
Going Rogue: Refugee Resettlement Volunteers and the Limits of Self-Sufficiency Narratives
The US refugee resettlement system revolves around the idea of self-sufficiency. Resettlement volunteers have an important role in enforcing refugee compliance with self-sufficiency mandates. Yet self-sufficiency narratives may also conflict with volunteers’ desire to provide welcome and care. Drawing on interviews and participant-observation with volunteers in South Carolina (USA), this paper describes instances of volunteers “going rogue”—that …
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Immigration (11 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (10 works) · Refugee (10 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (9 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Psychology (6 works)