Toward a Sociology of Exile: A Report on an Academic Symposium

Abstract

In May of 1985, 40 scholars and representatives of a variety of public agencies and private organizations met on the campus of Smith College in North? ampton, Massachusetts to participate in the second of a series of conferences on refugees and refugee policies funded by grants from The Exxon Education Foundation. The first meeting, Working with Refugees, was held in March, 1983. Its participants addressed the politics of rescue and the process of resettlement, paying particular attention to protection, assistance, selection, admission, movement, and adaptation. (The edited proceedings have just been published by The Center for Migration Studies.) The recent symposium had a more academic focus. It was called Toward a Sociology of Exile and sought to zero in on the problems of studying and teaching about the causes and results of forced migrations, the role of international and U.S. law, and the current situation of refugees in developing countries and in the West, especially in the U.S. Toward a Sociology of Exile began with a series of working papers presented by two who had known the experience of exile at first hand: Lewis A. Coser, the well-known German-born sociologist now teaching at SUNY, Stony Brook, spoke with personal poignancy about those Georg Simmel called strangers. Hai Ba Pho, a Vietnamese political scientist affiliated with the University of Lowell, talked about how such strangers can become effective participants in American political and social life. Their remarks bracketed a presentation by John Scanlan of the Indiana University Law School and Gilburt Loescher, a political scientist from Notre Dame, who have just completed a book, Calculated Kindness, on what they see as persisting biases in American refugee admission policies. Their evocative comments and the responses of Charles Sternberg, a refugee from Czechoslovakia who recently retired as Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee, set the stage for the three-day gathering. Together they indicated the