Revoked Refuge: How Deported Cambodian American Refugees Negotiate the Contradictions Between Citizenship and Belonging
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Since 2002, the United States has deported over 1,000 Cambodian American refugees back to Cambodia, with many of these refugees being from the 1.5 generation, having arrived in the US in the 1980s as children with few memories of Cambodia. Southeast Asian American studies scholars and immigration scholars have primarily focused on 1st and 2nd generation Southeast Asian refugees’ resettlement, incorporation into the US, and remembrance of historical trauma. This project seeks to understand the experiences of the 1.5 generation who called the US home but have now been deported back to Cambodia, the country they once fled from. How does this group understand their political and social membership to the US and to Cambodia given their deportation? Between June 2021 and January 2022, I conducted 8 one-time virtual interviews, 7 with deported Cambodian American refugees and 1 with a Laotian American refugee awaiting deportation. I asked questions about growing up in the US, life in Cambodia now, and thoughts on the criminal legal and immigrant control systems. I find themes of refugees’ continued movement between countries and internally within the US, statelessness and community exclusion, and hope in the ongoing search for a refuge. These results further our understandings of how the war in Southeast Asia, US policy, and Cambodian policy continues to impact the lives of these refugees and demonstrates the divide between political-legal and social membership to the US and Cambodia.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 16, 2022 |
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | May 23, 2022; May 16, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Pe, Joshua |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Jimenez, Tomas |
Subjects
| Subject | Cambodian Americans |
|---|---|
| Subject | Refugees |
| Subject | Deportation |
| Subject | Return migration |
| Subject | Imprisonment |
| Subject | Immigrants |
| Subject | Southeast Asia |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Pe, J. (2022). Revoked Refuge: How Deported Cambodian American Refugees Negotiate the Contradictions Between Citizenship and Belonging. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/mc789ss3087
Collection
Stanford University, Program in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Honors Theses
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...