Table Of ContentReconstructing 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.
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First published 1994
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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
