Cambodians in Long Beach,California

Abstract

Long Beach, California is home to the largest population of Cambodians outside Cambodia and is the symbolic and actual center of the worldwide Cambodian diaspora. Despite the significance of this community for both Cambodians and Long Beach, little is known about the social, historical, political, and economic processes leading to its formation. This paper situates the growth of the community within particular historical moments at both national and local levels through a chronological presentation of key events from the 1950s through the 1990s. The paper provides insights into the experiences of a largely refugee population and the new Asian immigration to the United States.     

Chapter 10. Central American Survivors of Political Violence

Abstract

Despite compelling, well-documented findings on the levels of stress and trauma among Central American refugees, this group continues to be underserved. A host of issues contributes to this underservice, ranging from macro-level imposed obstacles, such as citizenship and health insurance as determining factors for accessing social and health services, to institutional factors that impede service utilization, such as an insufficient number of translators or a cumbersome and confusing bureaucracy. This chapter adopts a human rights framework as a strategy for working with groups of Central Americans who have experienced political violence. The ongoing effects of political violence on Central Americans, as they relate to mental and physical health problems, are reviewed and a case vignette is used to illustrate how political violence affects individuals and how macro-level forces and institutions create barriers to access and use of health care and social services. Treatment approaches for helping survivors of political violence in the context of a human rights framework are suggested.     

Reviews

Book reviews: Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History Is Bought, Packaged and Sold (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow); Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (reviewed by Samuel Huston Goodfellow)     

Weaponization of the Land and Property Rights system in the Syrian civil war: facilitating restitution?

The Syrian civil war has seen the weaponization of its land and property rights system by the primary combatant groups in the country. The government is the most robust in its use of the tenure system to locate, target, destroy, confiscate, cleanse and gain revenue by way of the institutions and attributes comprising the system. Based on fieldwork with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, this article describes seven ways the Syrian government is currently using the land and property rights system in its military-on-civilian engagements. While the objective of such use is presumably to permanently prevail over opposition civilian constituencies, the article describes how this actually creates evidence usable for effective restitution of lands and properties subsequent to the war.     

The Microphysics of Participation in Refugee Research

This paper examines the involvement of refugees in the productionand reproduction of knowledge of which they are ultimately meantto be beneficiaries. By using examples from research with CentralAmerican refugees and Rwandan displaced children, it considersforced migrants’ roles as participants in research, theirposition in ‘participatory’ research, and the representationof refugees’ voices in refugee-centred research. Poweris intimately connected to the diverse ways in which participationunfolds, and the last part of the paper examines refugees’participation in research in terms of ‘power that circulates’(Foucault) to show that they are not more or less powerful butvehicles for the circulation of power, simultaneously undergoingand exercising it.     

Refugee Return Migration: Return Migration from Sweden to Chile, Iran and Poland 1973 1996

In this paper, return migration from Sweden to three sourcesof refugee immigration is analysed, with a focus on the effectof political change in 1990. Chilean immigrants reacted morestrongly to political liberalization in the home country thanPolish immigrants did, primarily due to more favourable economiccircumstances in Chile compared to Poland in the 1990s. In fact,the increase in Polish return migration propensity after 1990is not statistically different from the Iranian increase, inspite of the absence of political liberalization in Iran. Thereare significant cohort differences within the Chilean group,indicating an element of economically motivated migration withinthe last waves of Chilean refugee immigration in the late 1980s.Hence, successful implementation of schemes of voluntary returnmigration for refugees will not only be dependent on an improvedpolitical situation in the source country, but will also behighly dependent on economic circumstances.     

简论日本越南人社群的形成与社会地位

日本越南人社群是随着印支难民潮产生之后而在日本逐渐形成的新社群。对印支难民的接收开创了战后日本较大规模接收外国难民的先例。为了让越南难民更好地适应在新环境的定居生活,日本方面采取了诸多的措施。如今在日本已经基本形成了较为稳定的越南人社群,但日本越南人在总体上的社会地位还不高。这既与难民本身的特殊性有关,也是由于日本自身对外来人士的封闭性和消极性造成了难民政策措施上的一些缺陷。伴随着对日本社会的不断磨合与适应,日本越南人社群与日本主流社会的距离有望进一步拉近。     

‘I have so many successful stories’: framing social citizenship for refugees

The current US refugee resettlement system reflects the US government's agenda of having refugees acquire quick employment with low state welfare dependence and minimal fiscal and cultural disruption to the receiving communities. The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) assisting refugees hold broader goals for refugees, including feeling a sense of belonging in the USA. These goals represent a framing of social citizenship rights for refugees, and how NGOs frame social citizenship varies depending upon the NGOs contractual relationship with the US welfare state. Using data from 57 in-depth interviews, I describe how resettlement and assistance NGOs currently frame social citizenship for refugees in relation to market citizenship, and how their relationship with the federal government shapes this framing. Findings illustrate the role of NGOs in creating a discursive space for expanding the social citizenship rights of refugees and the ways such framing is highly constrained by the definitions of belonging that emerge from market citizenship.     

Population displacement in the baltic region in the twentieth century: from ‘refugee studies’ to refugee history

This article explores how Baltic migration, and particularly the experience of forced migration, relates to broader comparative and methodological issues and debates in the emerging field of refugee history. Attention is given to the impact of two world wars and their aftermath in the Baltic, with particular emphasis on the ways in which refugees from the Baltic and elsewhere have related their experiences. The article concludes by drawing attention to the multiple readings of population displacement that historians need to entertain.     

Whitehall and the Refugees: The 1930s and the 1990s

Abstract

In this paper, originally presented on the occasion of the launch of her book concerning British immigration policy towards Jewish refugees from 1933 to 1948, London compares that past with present British immigration policy and attitudes towards it. She argues, above all, that the same worry about the long-term effects of immigration—that is, that refugees would settle in the country and not return home or move on—that very much influenced the tendency to inhibit aid to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, is still very much alive today. While the legal situation of refugees and the kinds of persecution from which they seek refuge are different in the two periods in question, the 1930s and the 1990s—there are now, for instance, international conventions on refugees to which Britain is a signatory—British immigration policies of both periods are marked by many of the same priorities and many of the same attitudes towards and perceptions of refugees. In closing, she sounds a warning that an understanding of the past, crucial as it is, should not be mistakenly used to justify a lack of humanity in the present.