Southeast Asian Refugees Research Articles

More Than Seeking Refuge: Analyzing Children’s Literature Representing Southeast Asian Refugee Stories

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of Asian refugee stories in children’s literature. Intersectionality is used as the theoretical framework. By drawing upon the three-dimensional narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis, the findings show that the storyline of looking for refuge was a common theme in all the books. Other important storylines included the connections to the cultural practices of protagonists that were not often portrayed in children’s books. The findings also indicate that while two picturebooks included two protagonists who were positioned as women, community leaders, and activists, these stories were atypical cases. Not many Southeast Asian women with agency and power have been represented in children’s literature. The study has implications for including diversity in children’s literature and empowering Southeast Asian refugee girls and women

Health Needs and Priorities of an Underserved Karenni Refugee Community: A Community Needs Assessment.

Southeast Asian refugee communities are frequently underserved by social and medical systems and experience profound health and health care inequities. The purpose of this study was to detail the health needs, priorities, and health care utilization of the Karenni, a Southeast Asian refugee community, in Forsyth County, North Carolina. A mixed-mode survey (i.e., online and in-person) was distributed in Kayah, Burmese, and English to Karenni adults in Forsyth County. Quantitative and qualitative questions focused on community health needs, health and public health service utilization, and social determinants of health. 101 Karenni adults completed the survey, with a total of 91 participants completing the quantitative portion (N = 91). Utilization of health care and public health services was low and impacted by individual- and contextual-level barriers, such as limited English profi-ciency and social determinants of health (e.g., lower levels of education and employment compared to state and national averages). Mental health, chronic pain, and health care access were highlighted as prominent community concerns while theh plaw theh jie (togetherness) and community organizations were described as community strengths. Data were collected using convenience sampling, and limited knowledge from the Karenni community regarding research served as a barrier to recruitment. Some sensitive questions (e.g., income) also experienced higher levels of missingness. This assessment highlights the need to increase engagement with and lower barriers to care for the Karenni community in Forsyth County, North Carolina. To produce culturally congruent and acceptable care, public health and health care systems should partner with the community to identify and address community needs and priorities, harness assets, and mitigate health and health care inequities.

Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement in Philadelphia Through the Shifting Frames of Racialization

Abstract: As the largest concentration of Southeast Asian refugees re-settled on the East Coast, Philadelphia is a case study for investigating how local administration, police, residents, and media in the 1980s and 1990s collectively shaped the framing of refugees through “interracial” urban violence. This article investigates how the public navigated and contributed to the optics and racialization of refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as boundary objects teetering between victimization and criminalization in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. These visual, affective, and discursive lenses of urban policing—both by the city and its residents—redefined the literal and metaphorical edges of US citizenship and belonging throughout the late twentieth century.

The wellbeing and support experiences of parents and caregivers from South and Southeast Asian refugee backgrounds during the First 2000 Days: A systematic review

There is growing scholarly attention concerning the wellbeing experiences of people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds, particularly in relation to antenatal and postnatal care in countries of resettlement. However, less is known about early childhood support for refugee and asylum-seeking parents during the First 2000 Days of a child's life (conception to age five). There is also little understanding of the needs of refugees and asylum-seekers from South and Southeast (S/SE) Asia for whom there may be unique cultural considerations regarding parenting and support. This systematic review therefore aimed to explore the emotional and physical wellbeing and support experiences of refugee and asylum-seeking families (mothers, fathers, and other family members with caregiving roles) from S/SE Asia during the First 2000 Days. This review was guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). We identified publications through a systematic search of six databases. Eligible papers were peer-reviewed, primary data studies published in English, conducted in middle- to high-income countries of resettlement, and included data that could be disaggregated for S/SE Asian families. Of 5,770 publications, 13 articles met inclusion criteria. While our review aimed to explore the experiences of various family members, included papers focused primarily on the experiences of refugee women. Our review found that S/SE Asian refugee parents reported various challenges to physical and emotional wellbeing during the First 2000 Days ranging from nutrition and diet concerns to feelings of anxiousness, grief, isolation, and feelings of distress in healthcare settings. Parents also expressed a level of trust and satisfaction with maternity care during resettlement, however, these experiences were challenged by a lack of culturally responsive care. Findings speak to the importance of informal social supports for S/SE Asian refugee parents, and culturally safe, formal supports where parents feel comfortable to voice their concerns.

Dairy and diaspora: postponed reform on the guangming overseas Chinese farm of Shenzhen

ABSTRACT In 1973, four cows and one bull were shipped to Guangming Farm, an agricultural production base for China to supply fresh produce to British Hong Kong. The cattle’s human caretakers included Malayan, Indonesian, and Vietnamese Chinese expelled from Southeast Asia due to local ethnonationalist policies. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Guangming was a state-directed productive space with prominent features of the planned economy, ironically installed when the rest of Shenzhen and China was embarking on market reform. The reform of Guangming Farm lagged the marketization in Shenzhen and did not begin in earnest until the early 2000s. This essay explains how the delay in reform ultimately served the state’s interests. The People’s Republic of China mobilized Southeast Asian refugee labor to grow international trade and expand state capital. In this process, the diasporic Chinese became, simultaneously, the agents and targets of Deng Xiaoping’s reform.

‘You’re a refugee, are you not?’ ‘Extraordinary bodies’, monstrous outsiders and US refugee policies in superhero comics

In the 1970s and 1980s, comic book publishing giants DC and Marvel sought to diversify their cast of superheroes to better represent their US readership. While the publishers’ increasingly diverse cast of numerous US constituencies sought to reflect a shift towards greater representation, the flow of migrants/immigrants/refugees that marked the cold war years of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s remained largely out of the pages of mainstream comics. However, Marvel’s Chris Claremont and DC’s Marv Wolfman and George Perez introduced Vietnamese refugees to two teenage teams in the early 1980s. This article seeks to examine the way these characters, Marvel’s Karma and DC’s Thunder and Lightning, reflect US political rhetoric concerning the South East Asian refugee crisis in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Marvel’s and DC’s characters represent two poles of political thought concerning refugees; Karma is depicted as a victim of communism who is rescued by the United States, while Thunder and Lightning are villains who seek to upend US patriarchal relationships with Asian nations. Using comic studies’ scholarship and current discussions in critical refugee studies, this article argues that the depictions of these refugees reflect national discourse concerning the ideals of the United States.

Elevating Poetry Writing with Southeast Asian Refugee Children's Picture Books

AbstractIn this column, we demonstrate ways to connect four commonly taught poetic genres to better explore the intersectionalities (The University of Chicago Legal Forum;140:139–167, 1989; Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 1990) in the texts and students’ own lives through two cultural insider‐created (A map into the world, 2019; Wishes, 2021) Southeast Asian (SEA) children's picturebooks about the refugee experience. In doing so, we show how students can write poetry as maps and wishes with picturebooks about the maps and wishes in the lives of SEA refugees.

China’s and Japan’s winding path to the Refugee Convention: State identity transformations and the evolving international refugee regime

AbstractIn the early 1980s, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan joined the international refugee regime. This timing similarity is puzzling due to the stark differences between the PRC as a communist and authoritarian state versus Japan as a prime example of capitalist development and democratization. Moreover, although both signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Refugee Protocol without major reservations, neither of them has fully implemented these treaties. Discussions regarding the PRC’s and Japan’s engagement with the international refugee regime tend to start with the beginning of the Indochina refugee crisis in 1975. However, this article shows that the early decades of their interaction with the international refugee regime are of crucial importance for a full understanding of the timing and form of accession to the international refugee regime. Although the Southeast Asian refugee crisis played an important role as a trigger, it was the changing character of the international refugee regime and the transformations of state identity in both countries that set the ground for the signing of the refugee-related conventions.

Toward a Politics of Care: Southeast Asian Refugee Organizing, Kinship, Care, and Reunion.

From a critical refugee studies orientation, our article redefines care within the context of myriad forms of state violence impacting Southeast Asian post-war refugee communities. Research reveals how harm is compounded at every step of Southeast Asian refugee journeys: war, forced displacement, resettlement, family separation, inherited health conditions, and generational trauma. How do we reckon with refugee trauma without conceding to it as an unchangeable fact of our lives? What knowledge might we gain by attending to the everyday work of survival in refugee communities? To answer these questions, the authors conceptualize care through (a) abolitionist organizing, (b) queer kinship and affective labor, (c) historiographic caretaking, and (d) refugee reunion.

Refugee Return, Reintegration, and Sustainable Futurity: Politics, Pitfalls and Possibilities of Repatriation in Post/Conflict Situations

ABSTRACT With conflict and displacement among the most pressing issues of our time, refugee repatriation and reintegration are integral to post-conflict development and enduring peace. Regarded by the UN as a durable solution, repatriation has come to be viewed as the most viable option given the prevailing global landscape of increased displacement and stringency of national policies towards asylum seekers. These realities have also engendered a pragmatic turn from the principle of voluntariness to an emphasis on safety and the politicisation of the humanitarian agenda that destabilise the foundational principles of the refugee protection regime. Drawing upon the experiences of the Cambodian refugee repatriation in 1992–93, the more recent repatriation of Burmese refugees1 from Thailand and insights from other instances of return, this paper examines the politics, pitfalls, and possibilities of Southeast Asian refugee repatriation following political settlements, prompted as they were by political and other exigencies rather than the restoration of peace and stability. With attention to the relationships between refugees, refugee originating and receiving countries, and the UNHCR, it underscores the predicament, ambivalence, and dismissal that undergird refugee return. It interrogates notions of voluntariness in the context of constrained choice, and of safe and dignified return, citizenship, and belonging in the context of fragile peace. It also reflects on the delimitation of accountability by the changing status of refugees when they re-crossed the border and argues for looking at repatriation and re-integration as a continuum, and for centering sustainability and the restoration of refugee futurity in the discourse of return.

Immigrant and Refugee COVID-19 Vaccination Attitudes in South Philadelphia

Immigrants and refugees have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, it is important to determine the specific factors that are promoting vaccination in the immigrant and refugee populations to develop equitable health services. This study surveys the attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination and vaccine mandates in the Southeast Asian and Hispanic immigrant and refugee populations in South Philadelphia. A questionnaire was administered to all patients receiving the COVID-19 vaccine during six clinic days from November 15th-31st 2021. Investigators asked participants about their intention behind vaccination, barriers to access, work requirements regarding COVID-19 vaccination, and attitudes toward vaccine mandates. For people receiving their booster vaccine, the most cited reasons for getting vaccinated were protecting their health (75.4%) and travel (11.0%), whereas most people receiving their first or second vaccine were most motivated by vaccine mandates at work (34.6%) and health (30.8%). Staying healthy or “health” was the most common reason for getting vaccinated among people receiving their booster vaccine (74.8%) which was significantly higher than the proportion of people getting their first or second vaccine (30.7%) (p<0.05). As people continue to get vaccinated, determining motivating factors can help promote appropriate messaging. The results of the study suggest that, in a clinical setting geared towards Southeast Asian and Hispanic immigrants and refugees, those getting their first and second dose were motivated by work mandates more than health at the time of the study, whereas those adults receiving their booster are most motivated by health and safely traveling. As we continue to aim for mass vaccination, vaccine mandates appear to be an effective method of motivating people to get their first and second dose.

Lan Xang Village: Place-making in Louisiana's Iberia Parish

Lan Xang Village:Place-making in Louisiana's Iberia Parish Davorn Sisavath (bio) In the wheelhouse, Papoose scans the two-way radio, and we overhear fishermen speaking Cajun English and French. We hear the twang of Texas oil workers heading out to offshore platforms and the exotic language of exiled Vietnamese shrimpers who've fished these waters since the 1975 fall of Saigon, drawn to America's own elaborate version of the Mekong Delta. Completing the ethnic gumbo are French-speaking Houma Indians, driven by European settlers over the centuries to the farthest ends of the bayou country where they now survive as expert fishermen.1 This passage from journalist Mike Tidwell's Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast (2003)—a regional and ecological history tracing the environmental losses occurring in Louisiana's Mississippi Delta—introduces the history of the Cajun coast and those who live along the bayous, including Texas oil workers, Vietnamese fisherfolk, Houma Indians, and Cajuns. It simultaneously sheds light on the socially and spatially uneven ways some stories are muted while others appear front-and-center.2 In fact, across Acadiana, nearly 15 percent of residents are Black, and in some parishes such as Iberia, Black residents make up at least 30 percent of the total population.3 [End Page 77] In Iberia Parish and Lafourche Parish, Latinx residents make up 4.3 percent and 4.4 percent. Building on Carl Bankston III's and Phanat Xanamane's scholarship on the stories of one such frequently overlooked group—a Lao community of about 400 people on the northern edge of New Iberia, the largest city in Louisiana's Iberia Parish—this article explores how place-making plays an integral role in belonging and experience for immigrants and refugees. Although this article focuses on how Lao immigrants negotiate their spatial practices and experiences in Louisiana, I also deliberately use data about Vietnamese and Cambodians and apply it to the Lao community under examination. This reflects both in terms of very little scholarship examining Lao immigrants in the region and as subjects of U.S. militarism and imperialism, Southeast Asian refugees experienced similar, yet different processes of displacement and resettlement to America. Set against Louisiana's coastal south landscape and local distinctiveness, Lan Xang village is home to refugees from Laos who resettled with sponsorship from the Catholic Diocese in the 1970s and 1980s, and through secondary migration after learning of federally funded job training made available. Like many newly arrived Southeast Asian refugees in the Gulf Coast, Lao refugees landed job opportunities produced by the oil boom, while others filled the demand for unskilled labor in peeling shrimp, shucking oysters, picking peppers at the Tabasco factory, and working in food processing and textile mills. As Bankston writes, "Laotians began moving into Iberia Parish during the early 1980s, the peak period of Lao resettlement in the United States. Their concentration in this area was a consequence of secondary migration in search of job opportunities.... Those who arrived in New Iberia came with little capital, often relying on the help of friends and relatives, and on the public assistance made available under the provisions of the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980."4 Today, the small community off Melancon Road consists of three residential streets and a main avenue. At the heart of Lan Xang village, a Buddhist temple serves as an ordination hall where monks are ordained, and a sanctuary and gathering center for the community. In their efforts to belong and stay, I suggest place-making practices by Lao refugees in Lan Xang village make visible their multiple displacements but also make evidence of their collective process to belong and endow their place with value and attachments in New Iberia. This practice can be seen in places where temples serve as the center of the community such as Morganton, North Carolina and Willington, Connecticut. I approach place-making as work-in-progress and as an active space imbued with purpose, identity, and meaning whose final form is always contested. This approach acknowledges the complex relationships between people and place, and the stories created and shared. In "Space and Place," Yi...

Effects of Trauma and Postmigration Stress on Refugee Women's Health: A Life Course Perspective.

Trauma exposure and postmigration stress are associated with adverse health outcomes among refugees, yet the relative effect of these factors for subgroups of refugees and those resettled long-term remains unclear. Drawing on life course theory, this study evaluated the associations between war trauma, postmigration stress, and health among Southeast Asian refugee women in the United States, and whether these patterns differ across the life span. A community sample of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugee women aged 30-72 years (N = 293) reported mental and physical health outcomes, conflict-based trauma exposure, and postmigration measures of discrimination and community violence. Both trauma exposure and discrimination were associated with mental and physical health problems, with the relative effect of each stressor varying across specific health outcomes; community violence was associated with poorer mental health. Age moderated the effect of trauma exposure across health outcomes, with stronger associations between trauma and health for older women in particular. Findings provide support for the influence of trauma exposure and the importance of postmigration stressors on health across the life span for refugees. Attending to age group differences in the effects of these stressors, and to subgroups such as women, has implications for interventions addressing the long-term health of refugee populations.

Addressing Gendered Trauma, Identity, and the Crime-to-Deportation Pipeline Among Southeast Asian Men

Deportation continues to be a pressing concern for the Southeast Asian community. Since 1998, more than 17,000 Southeast Asians have received orders of removal, and over 1,900 have been deported. Notably, the majority of these deportation orders result from old convictions of "aggravated felony" crimes, and the majority of those facing deportation are men. This suggests not only an entrenched crime-to-deportation pipeline, but that Southeast Asian men may face specific issues that predispose them to crime, and for those without U.S. citizenship, deportation. An analysis of Southeast Asian refugee experiences and their intersection with the U.S.' deportation and carceral systems reveals that Southeast Asian men navigate a complicated system of generational and refugee-related trauma, institutional racism, gender disparitites, and socioeconomic inequality. Though these men do retain agency in their actions and choices, these factors often position them towards crime, and ultimately deportation. In recognition of these findings, this Note discusses the potential for community-based education on crime and deportation as a beneficial solution for Southeast Asian men and youth.

Addressing Gendered Trauma, Identity, and the Crime-to-Deportation Pipeline Among Southeast Asian Men

Deportation continues to be a pressing concern for the Southeast Asian community. Since 1998, more than 17,000 Southeast Asians have received orders of removal, and over 1,900 have been deported. Notably, the majority of these deportation orders result from old convictions of "aggravated felony" crimes, and the majority of those facing deportation are men. This suggests not only an entrenched crime-to-deportation pipeline, but that Southeast Asian men may face specific issues that predispose them to crime, and for those without U.S. citizenship, deportation. An analysis of Southeast Asian refugee experiences and their intersection with the U.S.' deportation and carceral systems reveals that Southeast Asian men navigate a complicated system of generational and refugee-related trauma, institutional racism, gender disparitites, and socioeconomic inequality. Though these men do retain agency in their actions and choices, these factors often position them towards crime, and ultimately deportation. In recognition of these findings, this Note discusses the potential for community-based education on crime and deportation as a beneficial solution for Southeast Asian men and youth.

‘Swallow medicine, eat rice, pray about health’: health, health care and health-seeking experiences of South-East Asian older refugees

AbstractSouth-East Asian refugees have lived in the United States of America for nearly four decades, with early refugee immigrants experiencing ageing and later life within the refugee context. As refugees age, health concerns of this older population grow, highlighting the need for ongoing assessment of refugee health and health-seeking behaviours. This study builds on previous literature that assessed the health and health-seeking patterns of South-East Asian refugees in the early years following resettlement, exploring how health and health-seeking is understood among older refugees 40 years after immigration. This paper includes a subset of 37 older refugees from a larger, community-based participatory, mixed-methods intergenerational study of Cambodian and Laotian refugee families conducted over four years (quantitative N = 433; qualitative N = 183). Thematic analysis of 34 semi-structured interviews with these older refugees in coastal Alabama revealed trends in health and health-seeking practices. Older refugees reported high rates of diabetes and hypertension within their generational cohort, and indicated a shift in health-seeking behaviours, whereby Western biomedicine is sought first for such chronic concerns, followed by traditional medicines for mild ailments such as headaches or colds. Older refugees underscored barriers of language, finances and transportation as limiting access to Western health care. Implications for engaging in community health practices and incorporating services to specifically meet the needs of the ageing refugee population are discussed.

Critical Juxtaposing of War and Migration: A Content Analysis of Southeast Asian Refugee Children’s Literature

Using critical refugee studies as a theoretical lens, I analyzed Southeast Asian refugee children’s literature to identify its pedagogical values and limitations for critical teaching about the Vietnam War. The findings suggest the children’s literature can help challenge the dominant narratives of the Vietnam War as exclusively an American tragedy and of the Southeast Asian refugees as simply helpless victims by centering Southeast Asian experiences of the war. Yet the children’s literature largely remained silent about the refugees’ complex personhood and the U.S. role as a violent aggressor generating the refugee crisis in the first place. The implications for teaching practice are suggested.

“I Just Couldn’t Relate to That Asian American Narrative”: How Southeast Asian Americans Reconsider Panethnicity

Asian American panethnicity was conceptualized to unify ethnic groups and represent their sociopolitical interests. Increasingly however, scholars have questioned whether panethnicity accurately reflects the diversity of different ethnic groups’ experiences and identities. In mainstream culture, “Asian American” has become synonymous with East Asian Americans and stereotypes—albeit biased ones—of their affluence, thus erasing the realities of working-class, South, and Southeast Asian Americans (SEAAs). I focus on the last group and join other scholars in emphasizing how ethnic groups’ unique historical relationships with the United States differentially impact their racial identities and attachments to panethnicity. Using 62 interviews with Southeast Asian refugees and service providers in North Carolina, I explore how a term I call “quiet neglect”—the U.S. institutionalized silence around the Vietnam and Secret Wars that has led to an erasure of SEAAs’ needs—shape their connections to Asian American panethnicity and decision to align with alternative identities. At stake in this study is our capacity to recognize individuals’ agency to challenge racial boundaries and assert identities that they find meaningful. In addition, I examine how SEAAs situate themselves within our broader racial structure and harness their identities to connect with other people of color.

Radiofrequency ablation in Brugada syndrome.

Radiofrequency ablation in Brugada syndrome.

Impacts of political and social contexts on refugees’ experiences: A comparison between Southeast Asian refugees arriving in France in the 70’s and recent refugee migration

ABSTRACT The influx of refugees into France since 2015 has been framed as a crisis and marked by a restrictive turn in arrival and asylum policies. By comparison, in the 1970s Southeast Asian refugees fleeing from communist regimes were welcomed warmly in the country. This article compares two in-depth case studies of refugees, analysed using the biographical policy evaluation method, to retrace how the policies and collective representations of these two different historical moments affect the experiences of refugees over time. It shows that policies play a significant role in shaping refugees’ experiences in respect of their access to papers, housing, language courses and work, thus impacting, but not determining, their possibilities of reconstructing life in exile. The comparison also raises the question of how personal experiences of arrival, viewed as a rejection or a welcome, influence refugees’ life courses.