Papers (Part 1)

• Burmese Political Refugee Returnees and Development in Myanmar Jae Hyun Park University of Sussex

  One of the solutions proposed to solve the current global refugee crisis is to regard refugees as a development issue in order to better address the protracted nature of displacement. However, many of these discussions revolve around refugee integration and searching for ways for them to contribute to development in the host country, as opposed to being a burden to the economy. What about refugees and development in their home country? How do transnational refugee returnees act as active agents of change in their home country? This paper aims to address this question through a group of Burmese political refugees who returned to Myanmar from South Korea.

  Comprising mostly the dominant Bamar ethnic group, the refugees initially came to South Korea as migrant workers but were recognised as refugees sur place for reasons of their political opinion against the military rule. Following the recent political developments in Myanmar, a few of them have returned or are planning to return to Myanmar, after about 20 years of living in South Korea. In South Korea they not only engaged in diasporic political activities but also involved in migrant labour rights movement, human rights issues of South Korea, and providing humanitarian aid to Burmese refugees in other countries. Much of this took place through close interactions with the Korean civil society.

  With concepts and theories on migration-development nexus, social remittance, and transnationalism as a background, research was conducted in South Korea and Myanmar from spring to fall 2018 with transnational refugee returnees and key stakeholders in their lives as the Korean civil society, religious groups, academia, and the government. Research methods included life story interviews using participatory approaches, reflective practice, and observations. Grounded theory was used to collect and analyse the data as well as in participatory co-analysis exercises with the participants. Participants shared stories on the choices, factors, interactions in their life trajectories that led to transitions, what they brought back to Myanmar and the links to this with what they perceive as the crucial development needs of Myanmar. A participatory approach to the methods was necessary and relevant not only in line with the research topic but also to the relationship between the researcher, a government officer, and the participants.

  Upon return to Myanmar the refugee returnees, rather than engaging in party politics in continuation of their diasporic political activities, have found other means to be politically involved through working in businesses, education and civic or community organisations, but with a strong focus on a wide range of development issues. Korean language, education, personal networks, changes in values and personalities acquired during their time in South Korea have been identified as key factors to this process. Although most changes in the returnees and the subsequent changes they brought to Myanmar were positive, an issue that had been formerly excluded as falling outside the scope of research emerged during the research process: perceptions on the Rohingya crisis. The diverging perceptions between the refugee returnees and the Korean civil society has even given rise to conflict, two groups previously thought of as having had a close exchange of ideas and values spanning over two decades.

• Creating Paradise: Development Ideas Mobilizing the Filipino Diaspora Helena Patzer Polish Academy of Sciences

  The paper analyzes the development engagement of the Filipino diaspora, focusing especially on the US migrant community and its transnational connections. It offers a two-fold perspective: first it looks at how transnational communities are mobilized by the idea of development and how migrants thus become development agents in their home countries. Secondly, it takes a closer look at the imaginaries created through such an engagement: a long-lost childhood paradise, a new model of society free of corruption, poverty, and suffering, a place which one can retire in. The paper is based on long-term research on transnational connections, development, and care in the Philippine diaspora in the US.

• From Long Distance Nationalism to Development Aid: Moluccans in the Netherlands Connecting to Their Land of Origin Fridus Steijlen Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies

  When Moluccans arrived in the Netherlands the idea was that they would only stay temporarily. Their own idea was that they would return to the Free South Moluccan Republic (Republik Maluku Selatan, RMS) in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago. This RMS, proclaimed in 1950 as a reaction to the collapse of an Indonesian federal state was the reason for the Dutch government to bring Moluccans temporarily to the Netherlands.

  Already from the beginning of their stay in the Netherlands Moluccans set up two different kind of organizations that connected them to the Moluccas. First organizations based on village of origin, used to fulfil the role of village elders in the Netherlands. Secondly organizations that supported the RMS struggle. The first 3 decades RMS politics, a form of long distance nationalism, dominated the position of Moluccans in the Netherlands and their orientation on the Moluccas as well as on the Dutch society.

  After a radical height in the political struggle in the mid-seventies, the political orientation slowly made path for other ways of connecting to the Moluccas. Slowly starting with visiting the Moluccan islands from the mid-seventies on, more and more Moluccans became involved in development aid projects. Starting with support on village level in the form of water supply, bridges and renovation of churches, the development aid developed to a variety with (individual) projects aiming at educational support, support for disabled persons, safe homes for girls experiencing sexual harassments to structural improvement of sustainable harvest of species and annual medical visits and consultations by Dutch doctors.

  In his talk Fridus Steijlen will describe how this transformation from long distance nationalism to development aid came about. He also will argue why we can read the involvement in development aid as a continuation of the connectedness with the Moluccas that nourished the long distance nationalism in the first three decades.

Papers (Part 2)

• Negotiating Diasporic Homeland: The Homogenization and Fragmentation of Transnational Engagement of the Vietnamese Diaspora in Berlin Jessica Steinman University Leipzig

  In Berlin, after the fall of the Wall, thousands of contract workers, who are linked to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, stayed in the then reunified Germany alongside with thousands of Vietnamese boat people who are linked to the former Republic of Vietnam. Thus, Berlin became the host of two Vietnamese communities. Until today, significant tensions between two groups of Vietnamese continue to exist. Despite the emergence of a transnational community of Vietnamese, the space created by the Vietnamese in the east of Berlin is still heavily influenced by its socialist characteristics while the space created by the Vietnamese in the west of Berlin is heavily influenced by the communist/anti-communist dichotomy. The existing and ever-evolving transnational social spaces and transnational social fields also provided a structure for new migrants in the Vietnamese community. Thus, the socialist characteristic of the Vietnamese community in the east of Berlin and the anticommunist characteristic of the Vietnamese in the West of Berlin continue to have a significant role in current migrants’ transnational engagement with the home country. In this paper, through ethnographic fieldwork, I seek to understand how the homogenization and fragmentation of the Vietnamese communities in Berlin affect the way in which the Vietnamese Diaspora engage in political and social activism in regard to the home country.

• Overseas Online Publishing: A Challenging Solution for the Transnational Vietnamese Literature Hao Phan Northern Illinois University

  Since 1975, the overseas Vietnamese communities have produced a large body of literary works that is highly transnational in its nature. This literature reflects not only life experiences of the Vietnamese immigrants but also many facets of the reality in their home country, past and present. Positioning itself in the Western world, the overseas literature has better access to new literary styles and theories that it can introduce to the literature in Vietnam. Nowadays, meetings between the overseas writers and the writers living in Vietnam also take place often, both inside and outside the country. The transnational characteristics of the overseas Vietnamese literature are however most vividly reflected through its publishing activities, especially its online publishing industry. For the last decade, the overseas online publishing industry has provided an important platform for creative freedom that is much needed, given the political situation in Vietnam, to both the overseas Vietnamese writers and the writers in Vietnam. In this paper I will discuss the transnational characteristics of the overseas online publishing industry for Vietnamese literature. I will show that unlike the mainstream online publishing industry in Western countries, which are mainly driven by economic reasons, the online publishing industry of the Vietnamese immigrants exists mainly as a result of political circumstances. I will then present the advantages and disadvantages of the overseas online publishing industry with regard to Vietnamese literature.

  In writing the paper, I found the theorical framework proposed by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai in dealing with what he calls “global cultural flows” is useful. Appadurai’s concepts of “mediascapes” and “ideoscapes,” in particular, can place this study in a larger context of the complex global today. Most of the data used in this paper are based on my observations as a librarian, who is also a Vietnamese writer living in America.

• Social Media and Political Engagement of the Vietnamese Diaspora in Poland An Nguyen Huu

  Social media as a means to participate in political affairs has been recently discussed in social sciences. A number of empirical studies have shown the positive relationship between the political engagements and the usage of Facebook, which is the largest social media platform in the world. In this paper, I investigate the way in which the Vietnamese diaspora in Poland uses Facebook to engage in political life. Facebook turns out to be as an effective way for Vietnamese-origin migrants’ political engagement, which is considered as a sensitive issue in the daily life of the Vietnamese people.

Abstract

Keywords

• Migration
• Transnationalism