218 HUMAN ORGANIZATION Human Organization, Vol. 78, No. 3, 2019 Copyright © 2019 by the Society for Applied Anthropology 0018-7259/19/030218-12 T he United States has the largest refugee resettlement program among the thirty-seven countries engaged in resettlement worldwide. The program, however, has drawn criticism for its conficting national policies that disconnect the program’s goals from its humanitarian com- mitment. Increased emphasis on “economic self-suffciency,” which promotes rapid employment within eight months upon refugees’ arrival, restricts self-suffciency as well as long-term social integration (GAO 2012). The Offce of Refugee Re- settlement (ORR 2012) defnes “economic self-suffciency” as “earning a total family income at a level that enables a family unit to support itself without receipt of a cash assis- tance grant.” A recent national survey indicated that during 2009 to 2011, refugee families received lower incomes than United States-born citizens, even though adult refugees were more likely to work than the latter. Forty-fve percent of the surveyed refugee households were low-income, indicat- ing that their annual incomes were below twice the federal poverty level. The length of United States residence and sociodemographic factors including experiences in refugee camps, educational attainment, and English skills impinge on refugees’ earning potential. However, these factors alone are Xiaoling Chen is a Ph.D. student of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Eloiss B. Hulsbrink, MA, is a Rate Review Stake- holder Relations Specialist at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. Barriers to Achieving “Economic Self-Suffciency”: The Structural Vulnerability Experienced by Refugee Families in Denver, Colorado Xiaoling Chen and Eloiss B. Hulsbrink Many refugees resettled in the United States do not receive adequate resources upon their arrival, causing dissonance in the humanitarian effort that drives refugee resettlement. Our study addresses how and why refugees have diffculty adjusting to life in the United States at the structural, organizational, and individual levels. While many recent studies have addressed the obstacles affecting refugee integration, there is no investigation into how these factors interact with and compound each other. Adopting the concepts of “structural vulnerability” and the “web of effects,” we argue that the vulnerability of refugees originates from their positionality in United States society and that structural and organizational barriers compound with multiple individual factors to amplify diffculties for refugees to attain economic self-suffciency. As a result, the structural forces that prevent successful and timely integration become more resistant to individual efforts and effective interventions, resulting in chronic poverty for refugees. We conclude with recommendations to improve the resettlement process and to validate the accomplishments of refugees, which can set the stage for genuine self-suffciency and integration. Key words: refugee resettlement, barriers, structural vulnerability, web of effects, economic self-suffciency not suffcient in explaining their lower incomes. For example, with a similar length of United States residence, refugees from Iraq from higher sociodemographic backgrounds refect a similar pattern of low-income status as their peers from Somalia, Burma, and Bhutan —73 versus 79, 71, and 65 percent, respectively (Capps and Newland 2015). A similar pattern of low economic status is found among refugees resettled in Colorado. Within the frst three months upon their arrival, most working age refugees fnd a job in industries such as light manufacturing (38%) and hotels and food services (32%), earning an average hourly wage of $11.79 during their frst year (CRSP 2018a). Starting from 2011, the Colorado Refugee Services Program (CRSP) began to gather longitudinal statistics on refugees, mainly from Burma and Bhutan, who arrived during 2011 to 2012. From this report, the median household monthly income was $700- $999 during the participants’ frst year in the United States, and $1,300-$1,599 during their fourth year. Although 61 percent of them thought their family income “[was] too low to cover necessary expense,” reliance on government assis- tance plummets upon their one-year mark. For example, the number of participants whose families received government assistance to pay housing costs declined from 79 percent to 13.3 percent during the second year and to 2.2 percent during the fourth year (CRSP 2016). However, Somali refugees, as the fourth largest refugee population in Colorado, are not representative in the survey due to diffcult recruitment and retention. This lack of representation makes the present study