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Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (American Crossroads)
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What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement?
From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi analyzes these two cases to theorize what she calls the refugee settler the fraught positionality of refugee subjects whose resettlement in a settler colonial state is predicated on the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. This groundbreaking book explores two forms of critical first, archipelagos of empire, examining how the Vietnam War is linked to the US military buildup in Guam and unwavering support of Israel, and second, corresponding archipelagos of trans-Indigenous resistance, tracing how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected through the Vietnamese refugee figure. Considering distinct yet overlapping modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, Gandhi offers tools for imagining emergent forms of decolonial solidarity between refugee settlers and Indigenous peoples.
What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement?
From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi analyzes these two cases to theorize what she calls the refugee settler the fraught positionality of refugee subjects whose resettlement in a settler colonial state is predicated on the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. This groundbreaking book explores two forms of critical first, archipelagos of empire, examining how the Vietnam War is linked to the US military buildup in Guam and unwavering support of Israel, and second, corresponding archipelagos of trans-Indigenous resistance, tracing how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected through the Vietnamese refugee figure. Considering distinct yet overlapping modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, Gandhi offers tools for imagining emergent forms of decolonial solidarity between refugee settlers and Indigenous peoples.
284 pages, Paperback
Published April 26, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 4, 2024
Really informative look into the way refugee crises have affected & been strategically positioned against each other, and the strong historical links between Vietnam, Guam, and Israel-Palestine. Interesting questions about the changing myth of the American frontier, "immigrant desire" and the ability to claim a homeland, exile as a form of multiplicity. I wonder if the author would contend for the same idea vice verse, with multiplicity (multi-nationality within the refugee crisis, being bilingual, mixed race, etc etc) potentially manifesting as a feeling of exile. The author explains how accepting Vietnamese refugees was largely a performative act of humanitarianism to strategically position Israel as an agent of morality & Western democracy in the Middle East as opposed to a settler colony. There was a crisis with the Ethiopian Jewish population at one point, & Israeli leadership said some truly jawdropping insane things about how they were bringing freedom to Africans and they were the only country to ever do this... I have no words to describe it. The delusion.
June 22, 2025
Contrapuntal study of two historical events that form part of the Vietnamese diasphoria's search for Nước - home, country, nation - in the aftermath of the Indochinese French colonial wars and the American war.
Focuses on the idea of the refugee-settler as a relation that undermines and reveals the contraditions of both the nation-state and the colonial-settler in both Guam and Isreal-Palestine, and speculates as to what this reveals about the political injustice of exclusive refugeehood that yellowwashes the model-minority Vietnamese, who contrast against a definition of victimhood that excludes the indigenous Chamorro and Palestinians from their own land.
Examines the historical reception of these settlers at the time, the ways in which the operation to resettle these refugees was a humanitarian effort, a political maneouver and an expression of solidarity, and then goes onto to a comparative and close reading of literary texts that bring the refugee-settler to the forefront.
Niche but comprehensive look for those interested in the troubled waters that carried the Vietnamese refugees and exiles into other currents of self-determination and nationhood, ongoing to this day
Focuses on the idea of the refugee-settler as a relation that undermines and reveals the contraditions of both the nation-state and the colonial-settler in both Guam and Isreal-Palestine, and speculates as to what this reveals about the political injustice of exclusive refugeehood that yellowwashes the model-minority Vietnamese, who contrast against a definition of victimhood that excludes the indigenous Chamorro and Palestinians from their own land.
Examines the historical reception of these settlers at the time, the ways in which the operation to resettle these refugees was a humanitarian effort, a political maneouver and an expression of solidarity, and then goes onto to a comparative and close reading of literary texts that bring the refugee-settler to the forefront.
Niche but comprehensive look for those interested in the troubled waters that carried the Vietnamese refugees and exiles into other currents of self-determination and nationhood, ongoing to this day
March 4, 2024
One of the best history books I've read this semester. Great argument about the connection between Vietnam and Palestine, and thought-provoking questions as to what it means to be a refugee in a settler colonial state, thus becoming a settler.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews