Book cover of In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates

Book description

Robert Ferrell Book Prize Honorable Mention 2021, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History Honorable Mention 2022, Association for Asian American Studies

After the US war in Vietnam, close to 800,000 Vietnamese left the country by boat, survived, and sought refuge throughout Southeast…

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Why read it?

1 author picked In Camps as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jana Lipman examines the Vietnamese refugee camps in Guam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong in the decades after the fall of Saigon. She asks us to consider how camps function as liminal social and legal spaces where refugees forfeit rights with the hope of eventually securing membership (and rights) in a resettlement society. It is in the camps that refugees try to prove their ‘worthiness’ for admission to society, and where they navigate a cumbersome—and often hostile—bureaucracy that ignores their humanity, often with dire consequences. 

The book examines the implementation of refugee policy at the local level by local…

From Maria's list on U.S. refugee policy.

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A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

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