After the US war in Vietnam, close to 800,000 Vietnamese left the country by boat, survived, and sought refuge throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific. This is the story of what happened in the camps. In Camps raises key questions that remain all too relevant today: Who is a refugee? Who determines this status? And how does it change over time? From Guam to Malaysia and the Philippines to Hong Kong, In Camps is the first major work on Vietnamese refugee policy to pay close attention to host territories and to explore Vietnamese activism in the camps and the diaspora. This book explains how Vietnamese were transformed from de facto refugees to individual asylum seekers to repatriates. Ambitiously covering people on the ground—local governments, teachers, and corrections officers—as well as powerful players such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the US government, Jana Lipman shows that the local politics of first asylum sites often drove international refugee policy. Unsettling most accounts of Southeast Asian migration to the US, In Camps instead emphasizes the contingencies inherent in refugee policy and experiences.

Vietnamese Americans have transformed the social, cultural, economic, and political life of Orange County, California. Previously, there were Vietnamese international students, international or war brides, or military personnel living in the United States, but the majority arrived as refugees and immigrants after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Although they are lumped together as "refugees," Vietnamese Americans are diverse in terms of their class, ethnic, regional, religious, linguistic, and ideological backgrounds. Their migration path varied, and they often struggled with resettling in a new homeland and rebuilding their lives. They are dispersed throughout the country, but many are concentrated in central Orange County, where three cities--Westminster, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana--have "Welcome to Little Saigon" signs. They constitute the largest population of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam and have created flourishing residential neighborhoods and bustling commercial centers and contribute to the political and cultural life of the region. This book captures snapshots of Vietnamese life in Orange County over the span of 40 years and shows a dynamic, vibrant community that is revitalizing the region.

Wave after wave of political and economic refugees poured out of Vietnam beginning in the late 1970s, overwhelming the resources available to receive them. Squalid conditions prevailed in detention centers and camps in Hong Kong and throughout Southeast Asia, where many refugees spent years languishing in poverty, neglect, and abuse while supposedly being protected by an international consortium of caregivers. Voices from the Camps tells the story of the most vulnerable of these refugees: children alone, either orphaned or separated from their families. Combining anthropology and social work with advocacy for unaccompanied children everywhere, James M. Freeman and Nguyen Dinh Huu present the voices and experiences of Vietnamese refugee children neglected and abused by the system intended to help them. Authorities in countries of first asylum, faced with thousands upon thousands of increasingly frightened, despairing, and angry people, needed to determine on a case-by-case basis whether they should be sent back to Vietnam or be certified as legitimate refugees and allowed to proceed to countries of resettlement. The international community, led by UNHCR, devised a well-intentioned screening system. Unfortunately, as Freeman and Nguyen demonstrate, it failed unaccompanied children. The hardships these children endured are disturbing, but more disturbing is the story of how the governments and agencies that set out to care for them eventually became the children�s tormenters. When Vietnam, after years of refusing to readmit illegal emigrants, reversed its policy, the international community began doing everything it could to force them back to Vietnam. Cutting rations, closing schools, separating children from older relations and other caregivers, relocating them in order to destroy any sense of stability--the authorities employed coercion and effective abuse with distressing ease, all in the name of the �best interests� of the children. While some children eventually managed to construct a decent life in Vietnam or elsewhere, including the United States, all have been scarred by their refugee experience and most are still struggling with the legacy. Freeman and Nguyen�s presentation and analysis of this sobering chapter in recent history is a cautionary tale and a call to action.

For half a century (ever since the Japanese invasion of 1942), much of Southeast Asia has been racked by war. In the last 20 years alone, some three million people fled their homes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This book is their story. It is also the story of the international community's response. Spearheading this was the United Nations agency responsible, UNHCR. It pioneered innovations like the Orderly Departure Programme, anti-piracy and rescue-at-sea efforts, and later on, ambitious reintegration projects for returnees. Today the camps in Southeast Asia are closed. Half a million people have returned home. Over two million have started new lives in the United States, Canada, Australia and France. This compelling book is the history of this modern exodus. It also takes stock and poses important questions. How did the flight of refugees and international response evolve? How do we measure the achievements and the failures of that international effort? What has been the legacy in Asia itself? And what lessons can be drawn for use in other refugee situations around the world?

Over three decades have passed since the first wave of Indochinese refugees left their homelands. These refugees, mainly the Vietnamese, fled from war and strife in search of a better life elsewhere. By investigating the Vietnamese diaspora in Asia, this book sheds new light on the Asian refugee era (1975-1991), refugee settlement and different patterns of host-guest interactions that will have implications for refugee studies elsewhere. The book provides: a clearer historical understanding of the group dynamics among refugees - the ethnic Chinese ‘Vietnamese refugees’ from both the North and South as well as the northern ‘Vietnamese refugees’ an examination of different aspects of migration including: planning for migration, choices of migration route, and reasons for migration an analysis of the ethnic and refugee politics during the refugee era, the settlement and subsequent resettlement. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of globalization, migration, ethnicities, refugee histories and politics.