Driven from their homes by war and persecution, refugees from such countries as Somalia, Burundi, Bhutan, Iraq, Ethiopia, and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) have been, with great hope and some difficulty, relocating to the United States for years. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 56,000 refugees were admitted to this country in 2011. For many, their first experience of America is a night at an airport hotel.

In 2007, photographer Gabriele Stabile, then a recent transplant from Italy, undertook to document that first frightening and confusing night. For four years, he visited airports in New York, Newark, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, and reached out to the refugees he met there. Refugee Hotel, a book by Stabile and journalist Juliet Linderman, is an up-close, sometimes raw evocation of the refugee experience here, published by McSweeney’s Books as part of its Voice of Witness nonprofit wing focused on social justice issues.

For their successful 2011 Kickstarter campaign to fund the follow-up section of the book, Stabile and Linderman wrote, “Three years ago, we set out to document the experiences of refugees from around the world on their first night in the United States, as they cross the border between their pasts and their futures. We traveled to the five international ports-of-entry in the United States—New York, Newark, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles—and photographed these refugees inside the airport hotels where each spent the first hours of his or her new American life. 

“Now we want to follow up, visit the refugees we met and tell the stories—through photography and the written word—of how they’ve rebuilt their lives and communities on American soil. We are trying to fund trips to nine different cities and towns across the U.S. where they've resettled…. We aim to tell the personal stories of these refugees, as well as explore their communities and neighborhoods to investigate how they have influenced each other.”

Refugee Hotel is being launched in New York City this week, with a presentation and discussion with Stabile and Linderman at Columbia University on Thursday at 6 pm. Information. Next Tuesday, powerHouse Arena welcomes Stabile and Linderman for a talk and book signing at 7 pm. Information. The photographer and journalist will be making appearances in Pennsylvania and Virginia in March. Information.

Read an interview with Gabriele Stabile, and view images, on Lightbox.