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Years of Separation: Vietnamese Refugees and the Experience of Forced Migration After 1975

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Remembering Migration

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies ((PMMS))

Abstract

In the two decades following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, more than two million Vietnamese left their homeland. The exodus was driven by widespread state repression in post-war communist Vietnam. This chapter explores the Vietnamese experience of forced migration and family separation. While most Vietnamese refugees arrived in Australia from first asylum camps, 46,711 resettled under the Orderly Departure Program (ODP 1979–1997). By focusing on the narratives of those who sponsored relatives to Australia as well as those who were sponsored, this chapter elucidates the delays and complexities involved in the process, and serves as a reminder of the casualties that could occur in even exceptional international emigration and resettlement programmes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vu Van Bao, interviewed by Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, 27 July 2013, Springvale South, Victoria, National Library of Australia, ORAL TRC 6525/11.

  2. 2.

    See W. Courtland Robinson, Terms of Refuge: The Indochinese Exodus and the International Response (London: Zed Books, 1998), 272 and 294–95. The number of exiled Vietnamese comes to 1.8 million, which includes 839,228 arrivals in UNHCR camps, 134,000 evacuated to the United States in 1975, 263,000 who fled to the People’s Republic of China in 1978–1979, and 623,509 who left under the ODP. An estimated 100,000 to more than a million dead of the exodus need to be added to this total.

  3. 3.

    The last Vietnamese refugee camp, Pillar Point Vietnamese Refugees Centre in Hong Kong, closed on 31 May 2000.

  4. 4.

    Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 127.

  5. 5.

    United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World’s Refugees: Fifty Years of Humanitarian Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 82.

  6. 6.

    Jacqueline Desbarats, “Human Rights: Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward?” in Thai Quang Trung ed., Vietnam Today: Assessing the New Trends (New York: Crane Russak, 1990), 60.

  7. 7.

    Desbarats, “Human Rights,” 47–64: Linda Hitchcox, Vietnamese Refugees in Southeast Asian Camps (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1990), 37–68; James M. Freeman and Nguyen Dinh Huu, Voices from the Camps: Vietnamese Children Seeking Asylum (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 7.

  8. 8.

    Desbarats, “Human Rights,” 60–64; Hitchcox, Vietnamese Refugees, 37–68; Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde, “From Dust to Gold: The Vietnamese Amerasian Experience,” in Maria P. P. Root ed., Racially Mixed People in America (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992), 144–61.

  9. 9.

    Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 50.

  10. 10.

    Quoted in Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 53.

  11. 11.

    United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, State of the World’s Refugees, 83–84.

  12. 12.

    Judith Kumin, “Orderly Departure from Vietnam: Cold War Anomaly or Humanitarian Innovation?” Refugee Survey Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2008): 104.

  13. 13.

    Kumin, “Orderly Departure,” 105.

  14. 14.

    Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 272.

  15. 15.

    See US Department of State, “Fact Sheet: US Expands Orderly Departure for Vietnamese Refugees,” US Department of State Dispatch (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1 April 1991), 225.

  16. 16.

    Barry York, Australia and Refugees, 1901–2002: An Annotated Chronology Based on Official Sources (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, Department of the Parliamentary Library, 2003), paragraph 1982.

  17. 17.

    York, Australia and Refugees, paragraph 1982.

  18. 18.

    Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 295.

  19. 19.

    Teresa Albor, “Very Heavy Going,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 12 July 1990, 54–55; Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 173.

  20. 20.

    Kumin, “Orderly Departure,” 114.

  21. 21.

    Ben Jr Bradlee, “A Plea for Indochina Refugees; Head of Aid Organization Calls on US to Admit More Immigrants,” Boston Globe, 12 February 1984, 1.

  22. 22.

    Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 179–80.

  23. 23.

    Statement of Robert Funseth and David Lambertson, Orderly Departure Program and U.S. Policy Regarding Vietnamese Boat People. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, First Session, June 28, 1989, Serial No. 29 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), 7.

  24. 24.

    See Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, South Vietnamese Soldiers: Memories of the Vietnam War and After (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2016), 50–66.

  25. 25.

    Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 174.

  26. 26.

    Nguyen Van Long, interviewed by Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, 20 August 2014, Keysborough, Victoria, National Library of Australia, ORAL TRC 6525/13.

  27. 27.

    Quoted in Robinson, Terms of Refuge, 169.

  28. 28.

    Hong, interviewed by Thao Ha, 13 October 2005, Melbourne, Victoria, Australian Research Council Project “Vietnamese Women: Voices and Narratives of the Diaspora,” digital recording in author’s possession. See Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, Voyage of Hope: Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives (Altona: Common Ground Publishing, 2005), 97–115.

  29. 29.

    See Cécile Rousseau et al., “Trauma and Extended Separation from Family among Latin American and African Refugees in Montreal,” Psychiatry 64, no. 1 (2001): 40–59; Brooke Wilmsen, “Family Separation: The Policies, Procedures, and Consequences for Refugee Background Families,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2011): 44–64; Alexander Miller et al., “Understanding the Mental Health Consequences of Family Separation for Refugees: Implications for Policy and Practice,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 88, no. 1 (2018): 26–37.

  30. 30.

    Alexander Miller et al., “Mental Health Consequences,” 26–37.

  31. 31.

    Susan S. Y. Li et al., “The Relationship Between Post-Migration Stress and Psychological Disorders in Refugees and Asylum Seekers,” Current Psychiatry Reports 18, no. 82 (2016): 1–9. It should be noted, however, that a 2002 study on the long-term effect of psychological trauma on Vietnamese refugees resettled in Australia noted that “trauma exposure was the most potent, and the only consistent, predictor of current mental illness, even when postmigration factors were taken into account.” Zachary Steel et al., “Long-term Effect of Psychological Trauma on the Mental Health of Vietnamese Refugees Resettled in Australia: A Population-based Study,” The Lancet 360 (5 October 2002), 1060–61.

  32. 32.

    Paul Antze and Michael Lambek, “Preface,” in Paul Antze and Michael Lambek eds, Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (New York: Routledge, 1996), vii.

  33. 33.

    See Nguyen Van Canh, Vietnam Under Communism 1975–1982 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), 188–225; Nghia M. Vo, The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam (Jefferson: McFarland, 2004); and Nguyen, South Vietnamese Soldiers, 139–62.

  34. 34.

    York, Australia and Refugees, paragraph 1982.

  35. 35.

    York, paragraph 1988.

  36. 36.

    York, paragraph 1988.

  37. 37.

    Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, “Introduction to Second Edition,” in Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson eds, The Oral History Reader: Second Edition (London: Routledge, 2006), ix.

  38. 38.

    Nancy Viviani, The Indochinese in Australia 1975–1995: From Burnt Boats to Barbecues (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1.

  39. 39.

    Mandy Thomas, “The Vietnamese in Australia,” in James E. Coughlan and Deborah J. McNamara eds, Asians in Australia: Patterns of Migration and Settlement (South Melbourne: Macmillan Education Australia, 1997), 275.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen

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  1. Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen
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Correspondence to Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen .

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  1. University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

    Kate Darian-Smith

  2. University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Paula Hamilton

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Nguyen, N.H.C. (2019). Years of Separation: Vietnamese Refugees and the Experience of Forced Migration After 1975. In: Darian-Smith, K., Hamilton, P. (eds) Remembering Migration. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17751-5_9

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