Blair Sackett
Doctoral Candidate, University of Pennsylvania
Blair Sackett is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she does research on how institutional policies and practices shape refugees’ access to resources and rights. She has conducted research in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya on how refugees get by with decreasing humanitarian aid. Her work suggests the importance of refugee-led organizations, such as churches and women's groups, in brokering resource exchange in the refugee camp. Blair is also the first author of the book, Seeking Refuge, Finding Inequality: Refugees Navigating Their Way, co-authored with Annette Lareau under contract with University of California Press. Based on her observations with four Congolese families and interviews with additional refugee families and aid workers in the United States, the book examines the institutional barriers resettled refugees face across an array of institutions, showing how the navigation of institutional obstacles is consequential for socioeconomic mobility. Her research has been supported by a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship, Gertrude and Otto Pollak Research Fellowship, and Teece Fellowship, and Swahili language training through U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships.