His research is based on two data sets: one about the resettlement experiences of refugees in North Carolina and another about the solidarity networks that support the entrepreneurship of Ethiopians and Eritreans in Washington D.C.
Mussa Idris, assistant professor of cultural and applied anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has published two new peer-reviewed journal articles related to immigration.
One titled “A microenterprise initiative among newly resettled refugees in a city of the U.S. South: Challenges, successes, and lessons learned” was first published in August in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Anthropological Practice, which is published by the American Anthropological Association. The article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12129.
The second article is titled “Solidarity and social networks: The invisible backbone that Ethiopians and Eritreans in Washington D.C. used to transform Adams Morgan and U Street,” and it was first published this October in the Journal of Refugee and Immigrant Studies, which is published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. The article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2019.1677973.
Both research projects are based on ethnographic research conducted in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., respectively. Research for the first article involved interviews and participant observation with recently arrived refugees from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to North Carolina, as well as caseworkers at a resettlement agency. The second is based on field notes and interviews conducted with entrepreneurs in Washington D.C. who migrated from Ethiopia and Eritrea and have successfully established small businesses in the U.S. Capital.
Annals of Anthropological Practice is an official publication of the American Anthropological Association, the preeminent association in Anthropology. This journal is ranked by SCImago Journal & Country Rank as a Q2 (Quartile 2, Top 50%) journal in Anthropology.
Journal of Refugee and Immigrant Studies is also a highly regarded journal in the social sciences. This journal is ranked by SCImago Journal & Country Rank as a Q1 (Quartile 1, Top 25%) journal in Demography and also as a Q1 journal in Geography, Planning & Development.
Idris has taught at Elon as an assistant professor since Fall 2014. He has one additional journal article and two additional book chapters, all peer-reviewed. He has been recognized at Elon as a committed mentor for students in domestic and international contexts, and he received the 2019 Faculty Excellence Award in Mentoring from Elon College, the College of the Arts and Sciences, on Aug.19, 2019.