Chia Youyee Vang is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she is founder and director of the Hmong Diaspora Studies Program. She is an interdisciplinary history who has given voice to marginalized groups through her studies on displaced peoples. Her research focuses on American involvement in Southeast Asia in the post-WWII era and the large flow of refugees in the aftermath of the American war in Vietnam and her teaching interests include 20th century U.S.-Asia relations, Cold War politics, Hmong/Asian American history, refugee migration, and transnational and diaspora studies. She is author of Hmong America: Reconstructing Community in Diaspora (2010) and Hmong in Minnesota (2008). Her co-edited book, Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women, was published in 2016 and her monograph, Fly Until You Die: An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in the Vietnam War is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2017.
Abstract:
Exile, Identity Formation, and Placemaking: the Hmong Refugee Experiment in French Guiana, 1977-2015
The numbers of refugees from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia risking their lives in search of safe havens in the global north have forced world leaders to reconsider how refugees are viewed and managed. Discussions about the world refugee crisis have been highly charged, in particular debates regarding security concerns, and such categories as deserving and undeserving have become ubiquitous in refugee discourse. This study explores a little-known refugee resettlement experiment in the South American jungle by French missionaries and government officials following the Vietnam War. Its outcome begs us to rethink the international humanitarian apparatus. Originally inhabited by Native Americans, its multi-ethnic population resulted from French introduction of African slaves and Asian laborers. Between 1852 and 1946, it had been used as a penal colony. It became one of France’s département d’outre-mer in 1946, but its 32,000-square mile territory remained underdeveloped and underpopulated. Refugees from agrarian background fleeing worn-torn Laos were regarded as an answer to this dilemma. Plans were made to create an intentional community where its members could survive economically and culturally. Local residents, however, regarded this installation of an Asian group as la menace d’un péril jaune. From the 507 men, women, and children in 1977, the Hmong Guianese population increased to approximately 3000 in 2015. While they represent slightly more than one percent of the French Guiana population, they provide an estimated 70-90 percent of fresh produce and fruits sold in the department. Some members describe French Guiana as a place where Hmong are free to be Hmong. Others refer to it as Hmong’s ntuj ceeb tsheej (heaven). Despite the economic gains, Hmong remain socially isolated in their homogeneous villages and some have struggled to make sense of their lives in this place that they now call home.