Yến Lê Espiritu is a sociologist and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. (Click photo to learn more.)
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Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es) by Yến Lê Espiritu (University of California Press, 2014)
This academic monograph initiated the field of critical refugee studies, which “conceptualizes the ‘refugee’ as a critical idea but also as a social actor whose life, when traced, illuminates the interconnections of colonization, war, and global social change” (11). The following excerpts are from chapter two, which discusses Guam as a case study for theorizing the concept of “militarized refuge(es)”:
“In all, U.S. military aircraft carriers airlifted approximately 130,000 Vietnamese citizens out of the city in the final days before the Fall of Saigon. It was only in conducting research for this chapter that I discovered that the route my mother and I took was the one most frequently used for airlifted refugees: from Vietnam to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California; over 41 percent traveled it. An additional 19 percent went from Vietnam to Guam and then on to Camp Pendleton; another 32 percent traveled to Camp Pendleton, making stops in the Philippines, Guam, or Wake Island. . . . Moving from one U.S. military base to another, Vietnamese refugees in effect witnessed firsthand the reach of the U.S. empire in the Asia-Pacific region. That few scholars, including myself, have questioned these military connections speaks to the power of the myth of U.S. ‘rescue and liberation’ to make un-visible the militarized nature of the evacuations” (25).
“In connecting Vietnamese displacement to that of Filipinos, Chamorros, and Native Americans, and making intelligible the military colonialisms that engulf these spaces, this chapter has attempted to expose the hidden violence behind the humanitarian term refuge, thus undercutting the rescue-and-liberation narrative that erases the U.S. role in inducing the refugee crisis in the first place” (48).
This academic monograph initiated the field of critical refugee studies, which “conceptualizes the ‘refugee’ as a critical idea but also as a social actor whose life, when traced, illuminates the interconnections of colonization, war, and global social change” (11). The following excerpts are from chapter two, which discusses Guam as a case study for theorizing the concept of “militarized refuge(es)”:
“In all, U.S. military aircraft carriers airlifted approximately 130,000 Vietnamese citizens out of the city in the final days before the Fall of Saigon. It was only in conducting research for this chapter that I discovered that the route my mother and I took was the one most frequently used for airlifted refugees: from Vietnam to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California; over 41 percent traveled it. An additional 19 percent went from Vietnam to Guam and then on to Camp Pendleton; another 32 percent traveled to Camp Pendleton, making stops in the Philippines, Guam, or Wake Island. . . . Moving from one U.S. military base to another, Vietnamese refugees in effect witnessed firsthand the reach of the U.S. empire in the Asia-Pacific region. That few scholars, including myself, have questioned these military connections speaks to the power of the myth of U.S. ‘rescue and liberation’ to make un-visible the militarized nature of the evacuations” (25).
“In connecting Vietnamese displacement to that of Filipinos, Chamorros, and Native Americans, and making intelligible the military colonialisms that engulf these spaces, this chapter has attempted to expose the hidden violence behind the humanitarian term refuge, thus undercutting the rescue-and-liberation narrative that erases the U.S. role in inducing the refugee crisis in the first place” (48).