Questions to Ask Refugees
Questions for volunteers, hosts, teachers, and neighbors talking with people who have recently resettled. The focus is practical needs, work, school, and language, and the guide covers what not to ask about.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How long have you been here, and where were you living before this?
Why ask it
Time here and the route taken shape everything else, since someone six weeks off a plane has different needs than someone three years in with a lease ending. Ask about places rather than reasons, and let the answer stop wherever they choose.
What language do you feel most comfortable in, and would you rather use an interpreter?
Why ask it
People often manage in a second language out of politeness and lose accuracy doing it, especially with medical, legal, or financial words. Offering the interpreter yourself removes the need for anyone to admit difficulty.
How do you say your name, and am I saying it correctly?
Why ask it
Names get shortened and mispronounced constantly, and correcting people repeatedly is wearing. Asking once, then using it properly, does more than most gestures of welcome.
How are the practical things going: housing, transport, paperwork?
Why ask it
Logistics are usually where things are actually going wrong, and they are easier to discuss than feelings. You may surface something fixable, such as a bus route or a missing document, within a minute.
What has been the most confusing thing to figure out here?
Why ask it
Confusion points at systems rather than at the person: insurance forms, credit history, school enrollment, how appointments work. Most answers are things you can explain or resolve with one phone call.
Who do you go to when something goes wrong?
Why ask it
You learn whether there is a real support network, a caseworker, a relative, a congregation, or whether someone is managing alone. If the answer is nobody, that is the most important thing you will hear all conversation.
What did you do for work or study before, and what would you like to be doing here?
Why ask it
Many people arrive with degrees and trades they are not currently able to use, and asking treats them as more than a case file. The gap between the two answers is usually about licensing rather than ability.
Is anything holding up your work permit or the recognition of your qualifications?
Why ask it
Authorization timelines, credential evaluation, and language requirements are specific and often navigable with help. A general feeling of being stuck normally breaks down into two or three concrete blockages.
Is there anyone you are trying to reach or bring here?
Why ask it
Separated family is common and is often the reason someone cannot concentrate on anything else, but it belongs to them to raise. Ask once, plainly, and accept a short answer without following up.
How are your children finding school?
Why ask it
School is where settlement succeeds or fails first, and parents often notice problems they have no route to report. Language support, bullying, and wrong grade placement all tend to surface here.
What do you cook when you want to feel at home?
Why ask it
Food is an easy subject that carries real information about home and family. It also surfaces what cannot be bought locally, which is a practical thing you can help with.
Is there something you used to have that you cannot get here?
Why ask it
Asking about the unavailable keeps the answer concrete instead of inviting grief. Answers range from a spice to a profession to a way of greeting people in the street.
Where do you go when you want to be around people who speak your language?
Why ask it
Existing community ties matter more to settlement than most formal programs, and their absence is worth knowing about. Do not assume a shared nationality means a shared community, since divisions travel with people.
What do people here get wrong about you or about where you are from?
Why ask it
This lets someone correct the story told about them, which is rarely offered. Expect corrections about their country, their education, their religion, or the assumption that they arrived with nothing.
What has been easier than you expected?
Why ask it
Asking what has gone well balances a conversation that otherwise catalogs difficulty. It also identifies which local services actually worked, which is useful if you help someone else later.
What would genuinely help this month, rather than in general?
Why ask it
The word month forces something actionable: a ride to an appointment, help reading a lease, a winter coat in a specific size. Open offers of help usually produce a polite deflection.
Is there something you are good at that nobody here has asked you about?
Why ask it
People get placed in whatever work is available and rarely asked about anything else. The answer sometimes turns into paid work, teaching, or a role in a community group.
How would you like to be described when people talk about you?
Why ask it
Words like refugee, migrant, and asylum seeker carry legal meanings and personal weight, and people differ on which they accept. Asking is the only way to avoid labeling someone in public with a term they reject.
What are you working toward over the next year or two?
Why ask it
Forward-looking questions treat someone as a person with plans rather than a history. The answer usually points at where help would matter, such as a licensing exam, a driving test, or a course.
Is there anything you would like to ask me?
Why ask it
Handing over the last question evens out a conversation that has run one way. It is also how you learn what they were too polite to raise.
Talking With People Who Have Resettled
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Have the Conversation
Do Not Ask Why They Left
The journey and the reasons for it are what people are asked about most and want to discuss least, often because retelling it is required of them repeatedly in official settings. If they raise it, listen without questions. Otherwise stay on the present and the future.
Use a Professional Interpreter for Anything That Matters
Children and other family members should not interpret medical, legal, or financial conversations, both for accuracy and because it puts them in an impossible position. Ask which language and dialect, and arrange a trained interpreter for appointments.
Offer Something Specific, Not Availability
Let me know if you need anything is almost never taken up. I can drive you Tuesday morning, or I can sit with you and read that letter, gets a yes or a no you can act on.
Let Short Answers Stand
A brief answer is often a decision rather than a language problem. Move on instead of rephrasing the same question, and do not treat reluctance as something to work around.
Follow Through on Small Things
People are promised a great deal during resettlement and receive some of it. Doing one concrete thing you said you would do builds more trust than any conversation, and failing to do it costs more than you would expect.
Practical Things Worth Knowing About
- Whether a caseworker or resettlement agency is involved, and how to reach them
- Which language and dialect, and whether reading and writing in it is comfortable
- Whether work authorization has been granted, and when it expires
- Whether qualifications from home can be recognized locally, and who evaluates them
- How they get to appointments, school, and work
- Whether school-age children are enrolled and receiving language support
- Whether there is health coverage and a registered doctor or clinic
- Which community, religious, or language groups they are already connected to
- What documents are outstanding, and which deadlines are approaching
Common Mistakes
Treating Someone as a Story
Requests to speak at a church, a school, or a fundraiser put people back in the worst part of their lives for an audience. Ask only if they have raised it themselves, make refusal easy and consequence-free, and never record or photograph without explicit permission.
Assuming Poverty or a Lack of Education
Many people arrive with degrees, businesses, and professional careers interrupted by circumstance. Assuming otherwise is the complaint raised most often about well-intentioned helpers.
Asking About Immigration Status in Front of Others
Status has legal consequences and is nobody's business in a group setting. If you need to know for a practical reason, ask privately and explain why.
Expecting Gratitude
Framing help as something to be thanked for turns a relationship into a debt. Offer what you can offer, accept a plain no, and drop the subject.
Speaking Louder Instead of Simpler
Volume does not help comprehension. Shorter sentences, one idea at a time, written numbers and dates, and a pause for questions all do.