Reconstructing lives, recapturing meaning : refugee identity, gender, and culture change PDF
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Reconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning Reconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning Refugee Identity, Gender, and Culture Change Co-edited by Linda A.Camino The University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S.A. and Ruth M.Krulfeld The George Washington University Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Gordon and Breach Publishers Australia • Canada • China • France • Germany • India • Japan • Luxembourg Malaysia • The Netherlands • Russia • Singapore • Switzerland Copyright © 1994 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V. Published by license under the Gordon and Breach Publishers imprint. All rights reserved. First published 1994 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Singapore. Amsteldijk 166 1st Floor 1079 LH Amsterdam The Netherlands British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Reconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning: Refugee Identity, Gender, and Culture Change I. Camino, Linda A. II. Krulfeld, Ruth M. III. Boone, Margaret IV. DeVoe, Pamela 362.87 ISBN 0-203-98564-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 2-88449-110-4 (Print Edition) (softcover) CONTENTS Preface vi Introduction viii I THE DYNAMICS OF CULTURE CHANGE AND ADAPTATION 1 AMONG REFUGEES Linda A.Camino 1 Cambodian Refugees and Identity in the United States 4 Carol A.Mortland 2 Refugee Adolescents and Their Changing Identities 24 Linda A.Camino 3 Responding to Events from Afar: Soviet Jewish Refugees 48 Reassess Their Identity Fran Markowitz II CHANGING CONCEPTS OF GENDER ROLES AND IDENTITIES 59 IN REFUGEE COMMUNITIES Ruth M.Krulfeld 4 Reinterpreting Gender: Southeast Asian Refugees in American 63 Society Janet Benson 5 Buddhism, Maintenance, and Change: Reinterpreting Gender in a 83 Lao Refugee Community Ruth M.Krulfeld 6 Old Traditions in a New World: Changing Gender Relations 110 Among Cambodian Refugees Judith C.Kulig III METHODS IN REFUGEE RESEARCH 126 Ruth M.Krulfeld 7 Life Out of Context: Recording Afghan Refugees’ Stories 130 v Patricia A.Omidian 8 Thirty Year Retrospective on the Adjustment of Cuban Refugee 154 Women Margaret S.Boone IV IMPLICATIONS FOR APPLICATION 174 Linda A.Camino 9 Constructions of Refugee Ethnic Identity: Guatemalan Mayas in 178 Mexico and South Florida Duncan M.Earle 10 Refugees in an Educational Setting: A Cross-Cultural Model of 202 Success Pamela A.DeVoe Contributors 215 PREFACE Contributors and Articles in this Volume The contributions to this volume are based on original papers. All but one were first presented at the 89th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1990. The papers by Earle, Camino, and Markowitz were presented in the invited session, “Acculturation and Refugees: Inventing and Reinventing an Identity,” organized and chaired by Linda A.Camino; those by Benson, Boone, DeVoe, Krulfeld, Kulig, and Mortland were presented in the session, “Gender and New Traditions: The Dynamics of the Refugee Experience,” organized and chaired by Ruth M.Krulfeld. The paper by Patricia Omidian was written especially for this volume. Definition of Refugees Used in this Book It should be noted that in this book the definition of “refugee” is construed broadly and not confined to particular legal terminologies, such as “entrants,” “illegal aliens,” or “undocumented migrants,” or to those drawing distinctions between economic and political refugees. We follow instead the guidelines propounded by the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1967 Protocol, and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which define a refugee as a person who has a well-founded fear of persecution; or a person who is a victim or potential victim of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or of a particular political opinion. In addition, we utilize self- or emically determined designations as “refugee.” If people believe themselves to be endangered on account of any of the criteria specified above, they are, for all intents and purposes of the studies presented here, refugees. Acknowledgements We wish to acknowledge the refugees who so generously shared their life stories and who inspired this book. Without the continued and supportive understanding of our husbands, Jacob M.Krulfeld and R.Shepherd Zeldin, this volume would vii not have been possible. They were our cheering section. Michael Krulfeld added his enthusiasm as well as his computer knowledge. We gratefully acknowledge the help of Richard Zeldin, our representative, who generously provided us with advice based on his considerable experience in the field of publishing. Last, but not least, we thank each other. We have found much overlap in our interests and values. This volume grew out of our shared intellectual and ethical concerns, as well as our friendship with each other. The latter not only inspired us but sustained us through the less creative periods of our editing work. INTRODUCTION Ruth M.Krulfeld and Linda A.Camino While interest in refugees has been a long-standing concern (the Torah, see the books “Genesis” and “Exodus”), only recently have anthropologists come to view this as a major focus of study.1 The study of refugees can be expected to increase in importance as major shifts of populations continue to occur internationally in response to contested political and economic terrain both within and between ethnic groups. Although the ethnic groups involved in these forced migrations may change, and may occur both within nations and between them, the problems of forced relocation, and the contributions from the study of such groups to the broader understanding of culture change remain. The Nature of Refugee Adaptation and Dynamics of Culture Change The refugee experience is a complex process involving loss and regeneration. The loss occurs in most areas of refugees’ lives. As waves of refugees are produced by political upheavals, persecution, war, and economic debacles, considerable losses are endured and traumas are suffered (for example, see the chapter by Omidian in this volume). This process usually necessitates unplanned and rapid adjustment to, sometimes interim but often long, residence in refugee camps, and always to resettlement in places with alien cultures. It should also be noted that these adjustments to changing circumstances must often be made on a continual basis, as refugees cope with and endure upheavals and exodus, flight and temporary sanctuaries, resettlement and secondary resettlement. Of recent theoretical importance has been the understanding that national boundaries can no longer operate as deterrents to population movement or continuing influence in the contemporary global arena (Glick Schiller et al. 1992). For refugees, these experiences are attended by liminality (Turner 1969), in which they are caught in positions of transition from a more orderly and predictable past to a new and as yet unpredicable future. Refugees tend to be marginalized in their new societies; that is, to suffer from feelings of alienation and, more often than not, lower status than they had in their countries of origin. In such positions of liminality and marginality, all aspects of their lives are called into question, including ethnic and national identity, gender roles, social ix relationships, and socio-economic status. Such liminality does not, however, abruptly begin at the point in which refugees leave their homes, but is rather founded in the turmoil of their lives even before flight and resettlement, continuing during the search for asylum and relocation (Krulfeld 1993b). But the process of adaptation is also a creative one, of establishing a new culture and new identities, of exploration and experimentation. In the process of losing country, community, family, status, property, culture, and even a sense of personal identity, replacements for these losses must be created for refugees’ lives to continue, as well as for adjustment to the new and changing circumstances of their lives in the places they now find themselves. Thus, refugee adaptation has far-reaching consequences affecting almost every area of their lives. Modified and newly created forms of culture must be negotiated and accepted both within the new communities as refugees establish their new existence, and in the dominant societies of the countries in which they resettle. This is a process that must take place very rapidly, and which continues as refugee culture is manipulated and renegotiated in response to changing circumstances. The study of these processes of adjustment, cultural modification, creation and re-creation, as well as negotiation, and the effects exerted on refugee ethnic and national identities can provide new insights for our understanding of the process of culture change (Harrell-Bond and Voutira 1992; Krulfeld 1993a). Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity The study of ethnicity and ethnic identity has been of interest in anthropology for some time, but has tended to wax and wane corresponding to fluctuations in political and economic global conditions (Barth 1969; Cohen 1969; Roosens 1989; Thompson 1989). In the contemporary situation in which massive population relocations occur within and outside of homeland borders, there has tended to be a renewed interest in ethnicity. In this current intellectual environment, ethnicity and ethnic identity have come to be conceptualized less in terms of cultural content per se and more in terms of process. Earlier dualistic acculturation models (e.g., that a Chinese migrating to the United States would undergo a simple transformation from Chinese to American ethnicity) have been discarded in favor of models that conceptualize ethnic identity as more fluid and flexible, created, manipulated, and negotiated (Waters 1990). With respect to refugees, it is viewed as affected not only by former identities and present influences from the host society, but as also including their current relations with their countries of origin as well as those with other exiles in their diaspora (Hirschon 1989; Krulfeld 1992). This newer focus on ethnicity is an important concern for the study of refugees. It has necessitated the framing of new questions for research on people forced to leave their homelands, often with little or no choice about their countries of resettlement or adapting to alien cultures. What happens to identity
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