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In his contribution to the Journal of Refugee Studies 2017 special issue on the “History of Refugee Protection,” historian Peter Gatrell used the term refugeedom to evoke the many elements that have shaped the experiences of refugees over time and around the world. Gatrell specifically defines refugeedom as “a matrix involving administrative practices, legal norms, social relations and refugees’ experiences” that has left an indelible impact on the forms of shelter, relief, and resettlement to which displaced and persecuted peoples do and do not have access.[1] Although we have not specifically used the term “refugeedom,” we have spent a great deal of time in our class discussing readings that shed light on what refugeedom has looked like for different groups of refugees at different moments in United States history. In this essay you will be expected to make an argument about which of the constitutive elements of refugeedom were most influential in shaping 1) who was and was not recognized as a “refugee” in the United States, and 2) what it has actually meant in practice for the United States to be a place of refuge. You may focus your argument on any combination of the following: law and policy, ideas about citizenship and belonging, political and social relationships, structures and institutions of oppression like settler colonialism and slavery, and the experiences of refugees we have learned about thus far. Ultimately, you will be expected to describe the forces from the nation’s founding era to the early 20th century that have struck you as the most influential in contributing to what refuge looked like in U.S. history prior to the creation of federal refugee regulation after World War II.
I can provide the 5 specific sources.
Too Tired? Too Anxious? Need More Time? We’ve got your back.