Toward a Politics of Care: Southeast Asian Refugee Organizing, Kinship, Care, and Reunion

TL;DR

This paper explores how Southeast Asian refugee communities use care, kinship, and organizing to resist state violence and heal from trauma.

Contribution

The paper introduces a politics of care framework rooted in abolitionist organizing, queer kinship, and historiographic caretaking.

Findings

Refugee trauma is compounded by war, displacement, and resettlement challenges.

Everyday survival practices in refugee communities offer transformative knowledge.

Abolitionist and queer approaches to care challenge dominant narratives of refugee suffering.

Abstract

From a critical refugee studies orientation, our article redefines care within the context of myriad forms of state violence impacting Southeast Asian post-war refugee communities. Research reveals how harm is compounded at every step of Southeast Asian refugee journeys: war, forced displacement, resettlement, family separation, inherited health conditions, and generational trauma. How do we reckon with refugee trauma without conceding to it as an unchangeable fact of our lives? What knowledge might we gain by attending to the everyday work of survival in refugee communities? To answer these questions, the authors conceptualize care through (a) abolitionist organizing, (b) queer kinship and affective labor, (c) historiographic caretaking, and (d) refugee reunion.

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