1. Sources

1Taking into account the development efforts and visible changes to the city of Buffalo described in Chapter 6, this section draws on additional sources to explore more deeply the discussion around this development. The author reviewed articles tagged ‘refugee’ in the ‘local’ section of the Buffalo News from the years 2008 to 2021. Quotes sourced from local leaders in regional and national newspapers lend further perspective to the narrative and discursive practices of stakeholders in regard to resettlement. The final major source drawn on in this section was a 2015 study and series of working papers produced by the Office of New Americans (ONA). The ONA releases very few documents, so this study is the largest public piece of information to indicate the work and priorities of the Office. Based on an analysis of census data, 11 listening sessions with 185 refugee residents, and 60 interviews with service providers, these documents shed light on both the city’s frames and priorities, and the situation of refugees in Buffalo.

2The original contribution of this work is the data collected from personal interviews. 12 semi-structured interviews were carried out with interlocutors remotely. Each interviewee had different personal and professional characteristics which were drawn upon in different ways throughout the conversations. Most of the interviewees (n=8) worked with RRAs in a professional capacity, with a few exceptions. One interviewee was an employee of the ONA, and three interviewees worked for justice-oriented non-profit organisations. Each of these final three interlocutors regularly interacted both with resettlement agencies as partners, and with resettled refugees as beneficiaries, but were professionally situated outside of the resettlement ‘bureaucracy’.

3This section is organised along the themes that emerged in these conversations and in the media review. It explores both what was talked about in regard to refugees and regeneration, and how stakeholders talked about it. Building on Chapter 6, it expands on ‘the way in which city leaders position migrants or minorities within their regeneration narratives’, and the way that street-level bureaucrats navigate this positioning (Çağlar & Glick Schiller, 2018, 35).

2. Populating the city of Buffalo

4First, Buffalo has long been haemorrhaging population, and resettlement is seen to be an opportunity to repopulate the city. This is one of the most commonly noted benefits of refugee resettlement in Buffalo, across politicians’ statements and news articles. In one article, Eva Hassett, executive director of one of the resettlement agencies, explains: ‘refugees have a positive impact on the economy and on the community. If refugees aren’t coming to Buffalo, they’re also not coming to Roswell Park [cancer institute], they’re not coming to 43North [business incubator] [...] it’s something that everyone in Buffalo who depends on the economy should be concerned about. Without that incoming population, we go back to that rate of decline that Buffalo saw in the '80s and '90s’ (Drury, 2018). Thus the need for population is closely linked with a desire to uplift the local economy and offset decline. Hassett’s warning that Buffalo could ‘go back’ also recalls the ethos of disempowerment and awareness of the city’s relative loss of power.

5Population was also a key point emphasised in the ONA study. According to ONA Working Papers, much of the growth in the foreign-born population can be attributed to the city’s increasing prominence as a resettlement host community. They highlight the recent increase in populations from Burma, Somalia, Bhutan, and Iraq (City of Buffalo, 2015a).

6Gross population increase came up explicitly in only three interviews, interviewee R2 joking that without the population increase from refugees ‘Buffalo would be gone’, and R4 noting ‘the only reason Buffalo's, like not haemorrhaging population anymore is because we're getting foreign born people to move here’.

7The ONA representative was one of the interviewees who discussed population increase. Her initial answer to the role of resettlement in Buffalo reflected the statements in the media: ‘when you take a big picture approach to resettlement, it's been really good for Buffalo because Buffalo has been steadily decreasing in its native population for the last 50 years’ (Interviewee B1). However, she also described a personal conflict with this narrative: ‘I'm always conflicted because you have, that's very positive for Buffalo, right? We want them to come. But then in the same breath, you know, a refugee is coming to the United States with no real control over where, and often no control over the why. And it's not necessarily something that they had planned or foreseen or even wanted. So you kind of have this pull where it's like, yes, refugees, we want them to come. But do we? I mean, really, if they weren't in a negative circumstance, they wouldn't be in the situation of resettling. So I try to be really sensitive when I talk about population increase’ (Interviewee B1). She echoes the prevailing development logic in regard to population increase, but at the same time, she is cautious about lauding the benefits of resettlement due to her view of refugees as humanitarian subjects.

8In the remaining interviews, interviewees referenced significant neighbourhood and street-level changes, such as the presence of businesses, and homes being bought or rented, without explicitly connecting them with gross population increase. These themes will be further explored in the following sections. While perhaps the unspoken foundation for these statements is the assumption that repopulation is necessary to drive these changes, these links were not explicitly made during our conversations.

3. Saving an abandoned neighbourhood: narratives of disempowerment, vacancy and abandonment

I’ll tell you about this neighbourhood, Josephine Bonda says. We have Italians. Across the street we have Puerto Rican people. Down the block are blacks. Anyway, one day last summer a boy outside the house is using foul language. So I go outside and have a word with him. Another boy down the block comes over and tells him to stop it. But the troublemaker says a few more choice words. So my neighbours come out on one side, then on the other. The people across the street come out and start yelling. The whole neighbourhood is in an uproar, right? The troublemaker leaves. No, he was not from the West Side. – Buffalo Courier Express 1981

9Another main theme that frequently emerged in my conversations was that of a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ within the LWS and within Buffalo’s narrative of rebirth. The ‘before’ is characterised by emptiness, abandonment, crime and insecurity. The industrial history is specifically called upon to this end: ‘there wasn’t really much going on. It was a very industrial city [...] abandoned buildings everywhere’ (Interviewee R1). This theme consistently threaded through my interviews – most respondents noted the presence of abandoned buildings as a signifier of the apparent decay and desolation characterising the city.

10Abandoned buildings were paired with a lack of people: ‘before there’s like parts of [the city] where like no one was really living or things needed to be fixed up’ (Interviewee R3). One respondent, whose Italian grandparents grew up on the LWS and thus understood it as a part of his personal identity, was careful to note that ‘there’s always been people living there [along Grant Street]’, but nevertheless, ‘the perception of the neighbourhood has changed’ (Interviewee R4). Most others, however, saw the neighbourhood as abandoned, empty, and characterised by vacancy.

11Many Rust Belt welcoming initiatives focus on vacancy and rehabilitation, identifying a point where refugees are meant to be a solution and ‘suggesting a convergence of interested between […] volags and local growth coalitions seeking to reinvigorate local property markets (Pottie-Sherman, 2018, 442). In Çağlar and Glick Schiller’s (2018) comparative analysis of three disempowered cities, they found a focus from city leadership on transforming spaces of abandonment as key to their regeneration strategy. This is in part rooted in the recognition that physical infrastructure acts as a material reminder of this memory of the city’s former glory. In Buffalo, city development efforts did identify vacancy as a key issue and priority, in 2007 announcing a plan to demolish 5,000 properties over five years. There are some narrative linkages between abandonment and immigration – for example, noting that one of the benefits of immigration is that ‘vacant houses become occupied residences’ (City of Buffalo, 2015a). However, this was not a strong link found in other policy or statements from local government. That said, it was a theme clearly carried forward in the narrative of RRA staff in their contrasting of the vacancy ‘before’ versus liveliness now of the city.

12Through this focus on abandonment, the Rust Belt ethos of disempowerment emerged consistently throughout my conversations, with migrants as an ‘alternative narrative’ (Pottie-Sherman, 2018) – the line being that the city was empty and desolate, before incoming refugees filled the empty buildings, bringing life and diversity. Again this related to Buffalo’s disempowerment: references to abandoned factories recall a time when the city was a manufacturing hub. This was carried forward in part by conversation on culture and diversity, which will be expanded on in later sections.

13The implication of focusing on vacancy is that surely ‘injecting life into the Rust Belt’ requires a city that is already dead and needs saving (Wainer, 2013). This image of the rusted factories and abandoned lots is a poignant one, often repeated in the media. In a way, the city becomes a caricature; a hollowed out urban core devoid of residents and inhabited only by snow and rust. Writing in 2009, Cope & Latcham worried that the trope of a city ‘whose glory days are behind it, whose steel plants are rusting on the waterfront […] whose young people are migrating to more prosperous regions, and whose racial and ethnic tensions are still (or perhaps more?) deeply entrenched’ erases both the challenges and the points of life/light among low-income and racialised city residents (154).

14However, in the vignette above, a 1981 newspaper article indicates it has always been a lively and diverse neighbourhood, calling it ‘possibly the most changing and the most changed of all Buffalo neighbourhoods’ (Buffalo Courier Express, 1981). Residents described a neighbourhood that was diverse and had a deep sense of community. An active community ensured eyes on the street, and a local pride strongly bounded the identity of the neighbourhood.

15Since Cope & Latcham’s (2009) article was written over ten years ago, we now see wide coverage of a ‘vibrant’ city, in part attributed to refugees. Nevertheless, this new attention still reflects the simplified, obscuring, neoliberal narrative critiqued by Cope & Latcham (2009), albeit perhaps through different frames. Indeed, although Buffalo’s population is half of what it was in 1950, disaggregated census data reveals that black and Hispanic residents have been moving in while whites move out. Instead of celebrating and encouraging this in-movement, instead planners and developers agonise over loss of white population. Black and Hispanics have ‘not been welcomed as saviours of the city’ (156). Instead, refugees have been welcomed as purveyors of diversity.

4. Culture and diversity: ‘Bringing the World to Buffalo’

I used to have to work with a lot of travel writers. [They would ask] what's the deal with Buffalo, I'd never been here before. And you know, people would just be shocked at like, what they walked into. I don't know what they expect to find – if it's just like some barren wasteland covered in snow. But… [instead they] see like these active, like bustling neighbourhoods and hear people speaking all these different languages.– Interviewee R4

Image 7 The West Side Bazaar on Grant Street, whose slogan claims to ‘Bring the World to Buffalo’ (WEDI Buffalo, n.d.).

16 My interviewees are all highly familiar with the LWS, through professional or personal interactions there, or current or past time living there. Many noted that the neighbourhood became visible when refugees started moving in – either to other city residents or those outside Buffalo. One interviewee reflected this perspective: ‘nobody would have looked at the West Side before. If it wasn’t for the refugees moving in and starting to revitalise it, I don’t think anybody would still be looking at the West Side’ (Interviewee R1). Along similar lines, another interviewee described: ‘they moved into this neighbourhood, were placed in this neighbourhood, and then all of a sudden, the rest of the city found out about it and was like this is really cool, I want to live here’ (Interviewee R4). Their presence, linked to this ‘new diversity’ gave the neighbourhood visibility, and allowed people from outside the neighbourhood to begin to see it as ‘safe and walkable and active and cosmopolitan’ (ibid.).

17Thus diversity and cosmopolitanism emerged as key concepts in many of my conversations. Interviewees now view the city as ‘cosmopolitan’, one stating ‘I moved here for the diversity’. (Interviewee R2, R4). If Buffalo ‘became cool’ as directed a decade ago (Florida, 2008), this new form of diversity is certainly a part of what makes it attractive. People from other parts of the region are starting to move to the city, those who left are beginning to move back. Local coverage highlights the attraction of new international restaurants, as well as art and cultural events such as World Refugee Day celebrations which offer attendees a chance to be ‘inspired by the refugee population in Buffalo’ (Galarneau, 2021; Buffalo Rising, 2017b). The West Side Bazaar, a food hall hosting eight refugee-owned restaurants and stalls with international clothes and souvenirs, attracts hundreds of curious eaters daily, many coming from neighbourhoods outside of the city or even New York to taste the ‘authentic’ and affordable cuisine.

18This impression is shaped in the spaces of encounter created on the streets of the LWS as well as some businesses, in which Buffalo residents can feel a part of this diversity. Interviewee R6, for example, described ‘seeing different-looking people walk down the street and passing by different food stores’ as a major draw for her in the city.

19 This diversity emerges as a foil to prevailing narratives about Rust Belt cities in the US. Interviewee R4 describes: ‘I remember one time we [themselves and a reporter from an out-of-town paper] were standing outside of the [West Side] Bazaar, and these women just walked by, with like groceries on their head, like, just balancing and not even touching anything, like talking a mile a minute screaming at their kids, and this writer was just like, this does not feel like a Rust Belt city’. This is not an exceptionally lengthy or intensive encounter. It is a brief passing on the street with someone who acts differently than the speaker and (the speaker assumes) the journalist. But it takes on significance due to its assumed contrast with the experience that one expects walking the street in Buffalo. As a result of this new cosmopolitanism, linked both to new diversity and to the idea of people on the street and multicultural encounter, ‘it almost feels like a city again’, awarding it global relevance (Interviewee R4).

20Therefore, multiculturalism emerges as something of value, which adds to the attractiveness of the city – a form of cultural capital. This is clearly a part of the city’s narrative efforts. If Buffalo is ‘shedding its rusty roots and experiencing a bona fide renaissance’, as a New York Times tourism guide described, perhaps this is due to the draw of the ‘the influx of immigrants from countries like Myanmar and Bhutan’ or the ‘international flavor’ (Thomas, 2018). Calling to mind Pottie-Sherman’s (2018) insights about cities in the Welcoming Economies network, through multiculturalism and rebranding as a city of diversity, Buffalo regains importance as a ‘global city’.

21When refugees emerge as a particularly valued form of ‘other’, framed in a narrative of diversity, Watson (2019) proposes that this creates new forms of participation available to immigrants, through participation in this ‘symbolic economy’ of diversity branding and cultural capital. The West Side Bazaar is here again a relevant example (Image 7). The Westminster Economic Development Initiative (WEDI) provides an opportunity for loans and business coaching for space in their business incubator, for those refugees looking to start a shop or restaurant selling international products. Nadeen, a refugee from Iraq, runs a macramé store in the West Side Bazaar. Well-spoken and a classic ‘success story’, she is a de facto spokesperson, always the first to be volunteered to reporters who come to the Bazaar. This has awarded her status as a household name: she is often consulted on projects and invited to sell her products at events – in other words, she gains access to a particular form of social capital (Nawyn, 2011).

22However, just as the frame of market citizenship boxes refugees and creates challenges for those who cannot fit this mould, the ubiquity of the diversity frame may present challenges for outsiders. What about those who present less palatable or consumable forms of diversity? Will they still be welcomed within development rhetoric?

23Another important implication is the ties that this language can have to gentrification (Watson, 2019; Stock & Schmiz, 2019). In our interviews, RRA actors expressed serious concerns about gentrification and its impacts on refugee communities, but nevertheless reified frames through their language choices. While interviewees are highly aware of challenges relating to gentrification or exclusionary development, they nonetheless use this vocabulary of cosmopolitanism, cultural capital and ‘global city’.

5. Space, geographic distribution, and housing

24It is also interesting to consider how housing, space, and geographic distribution are discussed throughout the data. Affordable housing was the primary challenge noted by every one of my interviewees, for both refugees and non-refugee residents. Activists highlighted a wholescale affordable housing crisis in the city (Interviewee A2, A3). This is due to both rent increases across the city, and increasingly limited availability of affordable units. Further, subsidised housing units have years-long waiting lists (Interviewee A2, R6). Buffalo has historically been considered affordable for both renting and homebuying, as compared to larger metropolises (Interviewee A2). This has been attributed to the population loss leaving a surplus of housing stock and lowering prices. With housing prices comparatively low, this rent gap has drawn investment, for as Interviewee R1 put it, buying property in Buffalo is ‘a great business deal’. Now, home values have skyrocketed across the board: even ‘neighbourhoods that have been traditionally kind of marginalized’ with low housing costs, are seeing ‘exponential’ price increases (Interviewee A2, A3, R1). Section 8 housing choice voucher holders are finding less and less options within their price range, and housing organisation staff described spending more and more time assisting clients with housing searches (Interviewee A2).

25In fact, this supposed affordability is part of the story of what makes it a good resettlement site and a ‘preferred community’. If refugees are the perfect salve for vacancy, and a win-win because of affordability, what happens when everyone acknowledges that there is an affordability crisis? This does not come as a surprise: already in 2015, the ONA study noted RRAs complaining that the LWS was almost ‘saturated’, and therefore housing was becoming less affordable and more limited (City of Buffalo, 2015b). Similarly in Berlin, refugee resettlement takes place over a context of an existing housing crisis related to austerity urbanism, demonstrating the challenges faced by refugees when faced with a ‘free’ housing market squeezed by restructuring (Soederberg, 2019).

26Variation lay in what this means and implications going forward. For activists, this is tied to a citywide affordability crisis of which refugees are only a part. There is a repeated call for more subsidised and affordable housing from advocacy groups (PPG, 2017; PPG, 2020). For RRA staff, this is both a citywide challenge, and a specific challenge to their work/ability to do their job. Finding housing for new arrivals is one of the key R&P services to be provided by RRAs to new arrivals. Case managers have a housing checklist which mandates safety, size, and cleanliness requirements for housing, such as having smoke detectors, or enough living space for the number of people. However, the available housing stock, within the limited budget of R&P money, means that case managers struggle to do this part of their job. One case manager explained, ‘since I worked as a case manager, I have never found a matching house for our clients’, meaning one of suitable size and price (Interviewee R5). Other case managers reiterated this same challenge (Interviewee R3). While the intention is to find a house where each non-partnered adult has their own room (according to the R&P requirements), finding ‘three bedrooms for three people, which is good’ is practically impossible within the limited R&P budget. For RRA staff, then, this is tied to their ability to do their job.

27This also demonstrates some of the institutional constraints of agencies, as well as divergences between what the agencies prefer and what individual clients may prefer. RRA staff describe a challenging situation in which their hands are tied by institutional processes and financial constraints. Further, they must place clients in housing judged suitable by their volag’s requirements, or else face funding cuts for non-compliance. Just as refugees in Berlin were saddled with the near-impossible responsibility of securing housing in the midst of a housing crisis, here the RRA’s face the responsibility of securing suitable (via their funding guidelines) housing within a housing crisis, trying to navigate between these duties and the individual wishes of clients is a challenge which sometimes results in spending extra money (using a hotel), or placing clients somewhere that they will likely move away from.

28This trend is even more exaggerated on the LWS. As has been demonstrated, the LWS is the preferred neighbourhood for resettlement. This reflects both priorities of resettlement agencies and availability of community ties and resources in the LWS. However, finding affordable housing has become a major challenge. In the value judgements and responses to this challenge, however, we see a lot of divergence between conversations.

29The ONA study noted ‘[c]lustering is important for newcomers, as they seek out familiar foods, customs and traditions, and news of their homelands’ (City of Buffalo, 2016). However, they are not encouraging of this trend – the representative from the City indicated that refugees must follow market factors for supply and demand of housing: ‘[people say to us] I want to be near my family, I want to be near my community. But that's not how it works. You know, in most westernised nations, right, like, you don't get to say, well, this neighbourhood is going to be a particular ethnicity. Like, in fact, when that happens, we're not really supportive of that, you know, we want to make sure that things are open and available and accessible’ (Interviewee B1).

30In the same study they show interest in allocating resources toward supporting dispersal: citing some existing interest in the East Side, they noted that ‘the movement of immigrants and refugees into this part of the city can be complemented by strategic planning’. It is unclear what this strategic planning might involve or have involved. However, respondents were hesitant about the East Side as a feasible option. All of the refugee respondents noted that the draw of the LWS is being near community, and it is a key factor in what makes Buffalo feel like a good resettlement site, and eases the transition for newcomers (Interviewee C1, C2, R5). Bengali immigrants have increasingly bought housing on the East Side to fix up, but some RRA staff remarked that due to past negative experiences with lead paint, broken heating systems and rodents, they are afraid to place new clients on the East Side (Interviewee R3, R5).

31This discussion on housing is emblematic of the ‘long-standing tension between cities as places to live and cities as units of capital production’ (Cope & Latcham, 2009). In addition to physical housing, this issue takes on importance for spatial distribution and the right to the neighbourhood. The representative from the City described the harsh laws of supply and demand: ‘the West Side is full’, and so people should look elsewhere. However, refugee respondents and some non-refugee RRA staff emphasised the importance of proximity to commercial and social resources on the LWS. For RRA actors, housing challenges also interfere with their ability to do their job – finding an apartment is one of the most basic services they provide to newcomers. They struggle to balance the wish to find a suitable and desirable home for their clients with the reality that their limited institutional and financial resources are insufficient in the current housing market.

Image 8: Agencies try to save some of the R&P stipend by relying on volunteers to donate furnishings. Here, ‘home again’ volunteers move donated furnishings into an apartment for an incoming refugee family. The houses on this street are typical of the LWS housing stock (Journey’s End Refugee Services, n.d.).

6. Those left behind – challenges and criticisms of Buffalo’s development

32Another thing to note about Buffalo’s revitalisation is that many feel left behind. Indeed, Buffalo is still both extremely poor and highly unequal. This fact was emphasised by activists, in some cases framing this as shared challenges between residents, in others as unequal development with some left behind (Interviewee A2, A1, A3). One representative of a development organisation from an adjacent neighbourhood was envious of the development on the West Side, complaining that her area has been left behind in geographically ‘piecemeal’ development efforts in the city (Interviewee A1). Many respondents identified ties to challenges for all residents, such as the need for publicly funded day care (Interviewee R5), a minimum wage and public assistance amounts too low for the cost of living (Interviewees R6, R4), and housing affordability challenges in the city (all interviews).

33This complexity of responses reveals the challenges when resettlement overlays historical disenfranchisement and poverty. It highlights that resettlement needs to take into account existing conditions, both of the urban context, and of the residents already living within it. Some staff are very aware of this tension: ‘on the surface […] the intentions are all for the best […] [but] you also have to be really aware of coming in and saying this housing is substandard, and we need X, Y, and Z, but you've already got community members living there that think their housing is substandard’ (Interviewee R1). Responses clearly point to a need to match refugee support with an awareness of the needs of existing communities. Resettled refugees can be seen as ‘lucky’ to receive their small sum of R&P money, which is more than other residents receive, faced with the same housing market and employment prospects (Interviewee R4).

34Further, if the resources of the city are viewed as zero-sum, this has the potential to create competition or antagonism among current residents. Other case studies have highlighted refugees may be in competition with other low-income residents for limited housing stock (Carter & Osbourne, 2009). RRAs have to navigate this, otherwise ‘you can create some rifts within the community already if it's perceived that refugees are getting differential treatment. And they're the new kids in town’ (Interviewee R1). This speaks further to competition over the neighbourhood. Indeed, one interviewee, a refugee from Burma, described conflict in the LWS where he was resettled in 2008, where incoming Burmese refugees felt threatened by existing Hispanic gangs, forming their own gangs for protection until they eventually ‘kicked out’ the Hispanic groups (Interviewee R5).

7. The look and feel, for who?

It is good to have a beautiful environment. But if you don't change people’s lives you know like in a good way, in a positive impact, then it [means] nothing. So for example, [if] you have a very beautiful garden full of flowers, but your life is very poor, if your life is ugly, it will mean nothing. So they [the city] update parks, trees, but the houses are bad, there's no jobs, no day care programmes, anything like that. So there’s a lot of things to work on. – Interviewee R5

35What of the city’s redevelopment policies and initiatives directed at updating the ‘look and feel’ of the city? Many respondents found these activities to be irrelevant to their lives and work. City projects such as new buildings, money allocated to the waterfront and downtown area, and greening efforts are often viewed as superfluous, or directed towards outsiders. Two refugee respondents simply were unconcerned by the new builds and entertainment opportunities (Interviewee C1, C2). Similarly, Interviewee A1 noted that the development downtown didn’t affect her community and their concerns. This was contrasted with human services and social programmes, the implication being, instead of spending money on beautification, the city should allocate more money towards public assistance (which is currently too low to cover rent) or other programmes to help the daily lives of residents. On the other hand, one development activist (Interviewee A3) remained extremely concerned with any projects undertaken by the city or private actors, connecting them with possible rent hikes and exclusion in the future.

8. ‘All the “R” Words’ – navigating language and personal conflict

It's hard because you enjoy those coffee shops you enjoy going to a bar, but at the back of your mind, you're like, ‘Oh, this is changing and not everybody can access this’. So yes, it looks prettier. Yes. It's more enjoyable. There's more activities to do and places to go. But if you're conscious, then you're like, at what cost am I going to this coffee shop?– Interviewee R6

36In the face of these challenges, my interviewees demonstrated some of the prevailing narratives, while threading in and out of criticisms and contradictions. In terms of language, conversations shifted between usage of terms gentrification, development, and ‘all the R words’ (Interviewee R4): revitalisation, renewal, renaissance. The term gentrification was brought in some cases as a critique (or a critical way of describing the same process) by activists and some RRA staff. In other cases, it was considered a fact in an uncritical way, and in still others, the term took on fluid implications in the same conversation, shifting between a negative conception of forcing out, and a positive sense of development. This reflects a lack of consensus on an exact definition of gentrification, complicated by the fact that it tends to look different in different contexts (Lees, 2000). One RRA staff member called it a revival, going on to say ‘it's [the LWS] not like being gentrified, it's just difference’ (Interviewee R6).

37Gentrification can be seen by some to bring benefits: even while challenging the way that development is pursued in ‘nodes’, leaving other neighbourhoods to ‘wait their turn’, while they absorb the poverty displaced from gentrifying areas, the activist from a neighbourhood adjacent to the LWS noted that her community feels left behind, leading her to seek ways to ‘do gentrification well’ (Interviewee A1). Thus, while there are problems, gentrification can be seen to carry some desirable aspects of development for certain groups.

38Three respondents, all of whom identified as white and lived in the LWS, explicitly identified themselves as gentrifiers and ‘part of the problem’ (Interviewee R2, A3, R6). Highly aware of the rising costs through their work, they expressed guilt and the challenge of balancing this with their personal preference to live in the LWS.

9. A miracle cure?

39The trope of refugees-as-miracle-cure, while extremely simplistic, does seem attractive to politicians. This was reflected when the mayor of a nearby town, after seeing frequent media reports touting Buffalo’s ‘Refugee Renaissance’, asked where he might benefit from the same. RRA directors met with him to discuss the possibility of expanding satellite offices into his city. However, while Interviewee R1 described the mayor as well-meaning, and applauded his desire to resettle refugees, he had no idea of the groundwork that needed to be set: ‘we need housing, we need infrastructure, we need to talk to the schools, it was very obvious that they weren't ready at all to have any kind of conversations, and the housing stock was [really bad][…] Where are the ethnic grocery stores? What's your capacity to do interpreting and foreign languages? What do your schools have? There isn't anything’ (Interviewee R1).

40This anecdote highlights the risks of a simplistic narrative: it frames refugees as easy solutions to decline, who don’t require significant support. RRAs, as the ones doing the resettling, are aware of the wide infrastructure and community support that should ideally be present to facilitate resettlement. Thus, many RRA staff are actively aware of and push against the saviour narrative. However, even those who do, still speak within some of the same frames. In a way this mirrors Frazier and van Riemsdijk’s (2021) findings (albeit along a different line of questioning), wherein RRA staff, although they personally had more expansive goals and motivations, reified many aspects of market citizenship that came top-down.