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Abstract
Objective: The United Nations reported that in 2017, 258 million people were living in a country other than where they were born. The United States has the largest number of international immigrants by country at approximately 50 million. Refugees are a subset of the immigrant population, and approximately 3 million refugees have been admitted to the United States for resettlement since 1980. Meanwhile, mental health negatively affects approximately 44 million people in the United States each year. And, unemployment affected 6 million people in the United States in January 2019. There is a need for research efforts to understand the intersections of employment and mental health issues for the U.S. immigrant population, especially given the large number of international migrants living in the U.S. This dissertation study seeks to explore and answer the following overarching research questions through three individual studies: (1) What is known from the refugee literature about mental health, employment, unemployment, underemployment, and the inter-relationship between refugee mental health and employment issues? (2) What are the educational and vocational experiences of college-educated Iraqi refugees living in the U.S., many of whom find themselves underemployed? (3) Over time, are immigrants who become unemployed or remain unemployed, more likely to have mental health problems than immigrants who become employed or remain employed? Methods: Three different methodologies are used in this dissertation: literature review, qualitative (interviews), and quantitative (logistic regression). The literature review provides a practice-based introduction to the literature on refugee employment and refugee mental health. The qualitative study consists of twelve interviews with college-educated Iraqi refugees about their experiences of employment in the U.S. and the impact of employment on resettlement and life satisfaction. The quantitative study utilizes bivariate and multivariate analysis to examine the relationship between employment and mental health for the U.S. immigrant population, using the NESARC dataset. Results: Findings from each study will be presented in each corresponding chapter. Conclusion: The relationship between immigrant mental health and employment is discussed. Implications for social work practice, education, research, and policy from the three studies will be presented.