In partnership with the UCLA African Studies Center and Refugee Worlds, Refugee Lives: In & Out of Africa

UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies contributes to this initiative by sponsoring a myriad of public programs including colloquiums, speaker series, workshops and conferences to raise awareness about Southeast Asian refugee issues. Moving forward, UCLA CSEAS remains dedicated to collaborating on projects that address refugee crises globally and its impact on the region, in the hopes of furthering discussion, advocacy and change.

  Campus Resources  

Critical Refugee Studies Collective
Funded by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), the Critical Refugee Studies Collective is a four-year initiative (2017-2020) that seeks to make the University of California the premier institution for critical research, teaching, and public initiatives on refugees. The CRSC promotes and funds innovative projects that trace the impact of colonialism, imperialism, and militarization on refugee movements and that integrates scholarly, policy, and artistic interests with refugees’ everyday concerns.

  Past Events  

Academic Year 2020-2021

•  Sharing the Stories of Hope, Survival and Resilience: Colloquium with Tracey Nguyen Mang (Founder of Vietnamese Boat People Podcast)
  Read: Family stories documented and shared through the Vietnamese Boat People Podcast
  
  
• In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates: Book Talk with Jana K. Lipman (Tulane University)
  Read: Understanding the politics behind Vietnamese refugee narratives


•  Hmong Refugee Epistemologies: Secrecy, Fugitivity, and Refusal: Colloquium with Ma Vang (UC Merced)
  Read: A Critical Approach to Understanding Hmong Refugee Realities

Academic Year 2019-2020

• David Nishida and Tina Yamano Nishida Distinguished Lecture & Keynote Speaker for SEASON 2020: Viet Thanh Nguyen (USC)
  Read: We need thousands of stories about us – Viet Thanh Nguyen on activism
  
  
• Southeast Asian Students for OrgaNizing Conference 2020
  SEASON Conference offered advocacy training workshops and coalition building activities for Southeast Asian students and allies to strategize campus-based actions to effectively advocate for their community
  
  
• Making Life in the Aftermath of War in Lao PDR: Colloquium with Davorn Sisavath (CSU Fresno)
  Davorn examined how cluster bomb metals from the US war in Laos are currently being circulated and consumed, and how such actions shape life-making practices in the war’s aftermath.
  Read: U.S. War in Laos - How Communities Sustain Life Today
  
  
• Preventing Mass Atrocities: Using Technology to Empower Communities: A Discussion and Round Table with the Sentinel Project - Christopher Tuckwood and John Otunga
  From South Sudan, to Iraq, to Myanmar, how can we effectively utilize early warning systems and cooperation with at-risk communities to prevent human rights violations, displacement, and genocide? 

Academic Year 2018-2019

• Southeast Asian Deportation Forum: featuring Jenny Srey & Montha Chum (Release Minnesota 8), Sheila Sy (Khmer Girls in Action), Somdeng Danny Thongsy (Asian Prisoner Support Committee), and Houth Billy Taing (Asian Pacific Islander Reentry & Inclusion through Support & Empowerment)
  The forum centered the voices of Southeast Asian refugees who are facing deportation and discussed topics such as U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, the refugee resettlement process, the criminalization of refugees, and policies that lead to the deportation of refugees.
  Read: ‘Week of action’ promotes Southeast Asian solidarity with campaigns, forums

• Stanley Kwok Lau and Dora Wong Lau Distinguished Guest Lecture - Mother of Exiles: featuring Mae Ngai (Columbia University)
  Lecture compared the politics surrounding cold war refugees from Europe, China, Cuba and Vietnam, and consider the contemporary recasting of Central American asylum seekers as undocumented migrants.

• Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory: Book Talk with Long T. Bui (UC Irvine)
  Returns of War examines the legacy and memory of wartime South Vietnam through the eyes of Vietnamese refugees. The book outlines the many perspectives and experiences of Vietnam War veterans and Vietnamese refugees as captured in the oral histories and archives spread across the country and situated issues of refugee memory and wartime history within continued debates within international studies on the Vietnam War.
  Read: U.S. archives on Vietnamese refugees fail to tell a balanced history

Academic Year 2017-2018 

• Rohingya Genocide Awareness Panel: featuring UCLA faculty Aliza Luft, Amjad Mahmood Khan, Geoff Robinson and Ko Ko Naing (Los Angeles Rohingya Society)
  UCLA faculty spoke at a panel to raise awareness about continued violence against the Rohingya and shed light on the historical background of the ethnic conflict and violence, issues of international and refugee law, the extent of human rights violations and activism within and beyond the country.
  Read: Rohingya crisis -- Genocide in real time demands a response

• Read: Refugee Re/Enactment
  Performance and panel discussion centered on exploring the condition of displacement and displaced peoples, with refugees as a launching point, seeking to build critical discourse that makes use of memory, stories of lived experiences, and fictional acts to make sense of histories and experiences of people who have been forced to leave their homelands or countries because of war, persecution, and global violence.

• Panel on Southeast Asian Refugee Issues: featuring UCLA Common Book author Thi Bui, Victor Bascara, Jolie Chea, and Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo
  Panelists discussed the consequences and ramifications of Southeast Asian refugee movements in the 1970s and 1980s after the Vietnam War and its implications for immigrant families and US diplomatic relations with the region today.
  Read: “The Best We Could Do”: Confronting unspoken trauma through storytelling