States And International Migrants

The Incorporation Of Indochinese Refugees In The United States And France

Jeremy Hein

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000313147
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Social Sciences
• Categoria: Sociology

This book focuses on the relationship between international migrants and host societies and discusses the historical uniqueness of the Indochinese refugee migration for the U.S. and France. It is more than the study of one refugee population and examines the relative importance of history.

1
Introduction: Comparing Modes of State Incorporation

Migration to avoid persecution is ancient, but during the 1970s and 1980s, mass flight became an endemic feature of the Third World (Sutton 1987; Smyser 1985). Decolonization and East-West rivalry were the underlying causes of refugee crises during the post-World War Two era (Gordenker 1987; Zolberg et al. 1989). Independence from a European power often led to ethnic conflict because colonialism used ethnic minorities as middlemen, and created national boundaries which did not match the cultural composition of the territory. Rapid political realignments also resulted from expansion by the Soviet Union into Eastern Europe and Central Asia, while human rights abuses in the former USSR created a permanent dissident population. American attempts to bolster allied regimes or subvert the political process in Asia and Latin America created acute political crises as well as long-run political instability in these regions. The Indochinese refugee crisis results from all the causes which have generated refugees during the twentieth century: decolonization, superpower conflict, and ethnic antipathies (Rogge 1985).

Since 1975, over 2 million Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese have fled their homelands, and 1.75 million subsequently resettled in other countries, 80 percent in Western Europe, North America, and Australia. By 1992, some 200,000 Indochinese refugees remained in first-asylum countries in Southeast Asia, and 370,000 Cambodians were encamped on the Thai-Cambodian border as displaced persons waiting for repatriation. Countless refugees died during their escape. In seeking to cross into Thailand, 60,000 Cambodians, 15,000 Hmong, and 5,000 Laotians perished (Wain 1981). Estimates of the deaths among Vietnamese boat people range from 30,000 (Wain 1981) to over 100,000 (U.S. Committee for Refugees 1987).

Since World War Two, resettlement has been the least-used solution to refugee crises, and the transfer of 1.5 million Indochinese to western, industrial countries is particularly unique (Stein 1986). Of these countries, the United States and France share an extensive, historical presence in Indochina. The U.S. ranks first in the total number of Indochinese refugees resettled (see Table 1.1). France ranks fourth among the western countries, although between 1975 and 1979 it was the second leading resettlement country for the refugees. For both the U.S. and France, the people of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are allied aliens.

Enemy aliens are citizens considered disloyal by their government on the basis of ancestry, such as the Japanese-Americans interned during World War Two. Conversely, allied aliens are foreigners to

Table 1.1. Admission of Indochinese Refugees to Resettlement Countries, 1975-1989.

Country	Number Admitted
United States	930,153
China	263,000
Canada	154,264
Australia	136,157
France	126,897
Germany, F.R.	32,654
United Kingdom	21,658
Hong Kong	9,985
New Zealand	9,773
Norway	9,732
Switzerland	9,181
Netherlands	8,040
Belgium	7,508
Japan	6,557
Sweden	5,767
Denmark	5,028
Italy	3,752
Austria	2,371
Finland	1,053
Spain	935
Ireland	329
Luxembourg	293
Greece	255
Other	9,857
Total	1,755,268
Total Number of Refugees From Indochina	2,217,756*

* Includes over 300,000 Indochinese, primarily Cambodians, in Thailand who are legally not refugees because they are not eligible for resettlement in third countries

Source : Refugee Reports 1989b.

whom a state extends protection because of their voluntary or coerced allegiance to the state's foreign policy objectives. Where other countries admit Indochinese refugees as part of "international burden sharing," the U.S. and France have profound political ties to the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians because of failed attempts to contain insurgency in their homelands from the 1930s to 1975.

The resettlement of Indochinese refugees in these two countries is a "natural experiment" in state responses to international migration. Both states go to extraordinary lengths to manage the refugees' economic and social adaptation, in the process creating "refugee assistance programs which assist in the effective assimilation of refugees" (U.S. Superintendent of Documents 1988, p. AIS-6). Examining these programs reveals distinctively French and American ways of placing international migrants into the host society. The demographic similarities between the two migrations mean that these different modes of state incorporation can be attributed to factors other than the refugees themselves. By holding constant the time of arrival, numbers, class, and ethnicity of the refugees, three factors emerge that explain the different actions of the American and French governments: the historical context of the migration and the structure of the welfare state and of the nation-state. In turn, these factors explain the constraints placed on the refugees' initial adaptation, particularly the function of their social networks.

Historical Links Between Sending and Host Societies

The Third World is home to 95 percent of the world's refugees, and of these 16,600,000 people, 33 percent are in Africa and 59 percent in the Middle East and South Asia (U.S. Committee for Refugees 1991). Leading the list are refugees from Afghanistan and the Palestinians; their combined populations account for 51 percent of all refugees. Between 1975 and 1990, First World countries gave residence to over 2.5 million refugees and asylum seekers. Most of these political migrants came from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the same sources for the flow of immigrant workers to Western Europe during the 1960s and early 1970s, and the continuing immigration to Australia, Canada, and the U.S.

The common geographic origins and destinations of refugees and immigrants reveals that both types of migration result from the dynamics of the world system (Portes and Walton 1981). Where the internationalization of state security produces refugees, the internationalization of the division of labor produces immigrants (Enloe 1986). After the mid-1970s, when labor migration to Western Europe ended, two modes of permanent, legal entry became available to would-be migrants: family reunification and refugee status (OECD 1988; Salt 1989). During the 1980s, one asylum seeker arrived to France for every three immigrants, and Sweden had a ratio of nearly one-to-one. Canada and the U.S. admit one refugee for every five immigrants. Refugees and immigrants are different outcomes of a single relationship between core and peripheral countries.

One feature of this relationship is the flow of immigrants and refugees to host societies to which they have historical ties (Fawcett 1989). Since the 1950s, Caribbean, African, and Asian immigrants have migrated to former European colonial powers (Castles 1984; Salt 1981). Some went as laborers, such as North Africans to France (Belbahri 1982), while others went because of special immigration status, such as Jamaicans and Pakistanis to Britain (Peters and Davis 1986). Spectacular cases of post-colonial migration include the movement of Moluccans from Indonesia to the Netherlands in 1951, and the flight of Ugandan Asians to Britain in 1972.

The U.S. also receives migrants as a result of past political activities. The migration of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Mexicans took root after American "intervention undermined the social and economic fabric constructed under Spanish colonial domination and reoriented it toward the new hegemonic power" (Portes 1990, p. 162). Filipinos, Koreans, and of course Indochinese also arrive because American military intervention created pathways to the U.S. (Chan 1991). By the early 1980s, approximately 45 percent of foreigners in France were from former African and Asian colonies (Documentation Française 1982). Of the foreign born population in the U.S. (including Puerto Ricans on the mainland), about 40 percent are from countries in Asia and Latin America whose association with the U.S. began with American military intervention (U.S. Department of Commerce 1990).

These historically rooted migrations have been primarily interpreted as a unique source of cheap labor for western, industrial societies (Castles and Kosack 1985; Freeman 1979; Piori 1979; Portes and Walton 1981). The economic function of some elements of this migration is not in doubt. But migrants' political relationship to the host state is a distinct dimension of their adpatation. In the past, Asian immigrants' in the U.S. experienced better treatment if their homeland was a sovereign nation rather than a colony (Chan 1990). In France, assimilation became a major political issue in the late 1970s and 1980s when North African workers took part in strikes and the second generation began combating racism, although immigrants had been arriving since the 1850s (de Wenden 1987). Few studies have actually compared split migrations and subsequent adaptation of the immigrants in different countries (cf. Bailey 1990). Fewer still have been able to isolate the effects of political relations (cf. PedrazaBailey 1985).

The migration of Indochinese refugees to France and the U.S. provides an unusual opportunity to compare the affect of historical ties on the incorporation process. It is now recognized that international migrants invent, rather than transplant, ethnic identities in the host society. Ethnicity can be forged from class stratification (Geschwender et al. 1988), economic competition (Olzak 1989), and spatial proximity (Tomasckovic-Devey and TomasckovicDevey 1988; Yancey et al. 1979). Gender is another identity that is reshaped as men and women respond to the exigencies of migration and adaptation (Lamphere 1987). Indochinese refugees do reconstruct ethnicity and gender, but they also arrive with an identity that greatly influences their adjustment: for the U.S. and France, they are allied aliens.

In both countries, the refugees' political iden...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acronyms Used in References
• 1 Introduction: Comparing Modes of State Incorporation
• Bibliography
• Index