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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 condition: 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 geography: 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.

About the Author

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

"This is a phenomenal book. Archipelago of Resettlement takes seriously the implication of Indigenous calls for place-based scholarship to refugee and migration studies and it ups the ante by engaging the accountabilities such calls demand. Gandhi exemplifies the possibilities of reading 'archipelagically' across Indigenous and Asian American studies, across settler colonies, and against US militarism and empire."—Jodi A Byrd, author of The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism

"Exploring with great rigor the refugee settlers' vexed relationship to Indigenous sovereignty, this strikingly original study demonstrates for us ways of knowing and connection otherwise—within, across, and beyond the incommensurable structural divides and multiple belongings. Deeply inspiring, Gandhi's archipelagic methodology elucidates compelling political possibilities for decolonial futures." —Lisa Yoneyama, author of Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes

"This brilliant book interweaves archival research, site visits, and oral interviews to map and grapple with the entangled histories of Vietnamese refugee resettlement, Indigenous displacement in Guam and Palestine, and the settler colonialism of the United States and Israel. Throughout, an archipelagic epistemology of the 'nước' is poetically articulated, an inspiring vision that calls forth refugee futurity and decolonial solidarities."—Craig Santos Perez, author of Navigating CHamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization

"Once dispersed across seemingly unconnected geographies of US empire, the aesthetic and archival sands, pebbles, and stones of the refugee settler condition are brilliantly gathered herein. The result is an archipelagic imaginary at once moved by and contributing to the confluence of today's most powerful decolonial currents."—Keith Feldman, author of A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America

"A thought-provoking and truly original way of 'seeing' Vietnamese diasporic resettlement. Gandhi convincingly juxtaposes two numerically small and seemingly marginal populations and in the process raises universal questions of interest to scholars in refugee studies and US empire."—Jana K. Lipman, author of In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates