“Heaven without people is not worth going to”: Refugee resettlement, time, and the institutionalization of family separation

We examine how resettlement as an institution, shaped by temporal opportunities and constraints over the lifespan, perpetuates refugee family separation. Based on seven years of qualitative research with households resettled through Canada’s Syrian Refugee Resettlement Initiative (SRRI), we show how the forced transition to nuclear family structures left almost no families arriving with extended households intact, leading to immediate negative impacts on self-reported well-being. Over time, we observed three outcomes of prolonged family separation. First, most families remained obstructed from reunification by the state in what we term unresolved protracted separation. Second, a minority secured partial negotiated reunification within the resettlement state through private sponsorship. Finally, another small group pursued next-generation reunification by arranging marriages for older children with left-behind kin outside the resettlement state. These responses reflect refugees’ adaptation to restrictive reunification policies amid declining family and humanitarian admissions and a growing privatization of immigration policy.