Khatharya Um

Khatharya Um is a political scientist and Associate Dean of Social Sciences, and Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is Co-founder of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. Her scholarship centers on Southeast Asia and Asian diaspora studies, migration and critical refugee studies, postcolonial studies, genocide studies, peace and conflict studies, and the politics of memory.  She has published extensively on Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian diaspora. An internationally acclaimed scholar, she is widely recognized for her community engaged scholarship and for her work in and with refugee communities in the US.

The project

Title: History and Memory of Southeast Asian Migration to France

"The communist takeover of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1975 engendered a mass exodus of refugees, some 125,000 of whom were resettled in France (Lanphier 1983). Though a smaller community had existed in France prior to 1975, products of different historical moments over the course of almost one hundred years of colonization (Luguern 2007; Daum & Tran 2019; Simon 1981; Simon-Barouh 1981), the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian populations in France (heretofore referred to as “Southeast Asians”) increased exponentially with the refugee resettlement from the region in the mid-1970s-mid 1980s following the communist victory in 1975. Migrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia combined now form the largest group of Asian immigrants in France, accounting for 2.4% of all immigrant populations in France and approximately 5% if we exclude European immigrants.  The communities have also grown in complexity with the emergence of the post-refugee generations whom I define as comprised of those who are of refugee families but who were born or grew up in France. With access to higher education and native fluency in French, they are registering their presence in various sectors of French society, including politics, business, and the arts."

Hosting institution: CERI - Sciences Po

Selective Bibliography

Books

• Générations post-réfugiées : Mémoire, identité et citoyenneté des descendants de réfugiés d’Asie du Sud-est en France (2023)
• Globalization and Civil Society in East Asian Space (2023)
• Departures ( 2022)
• From the Land of Shadows ( 2015)

Recent Articles

• Um, K. “Refugee Return and Sustainable Futurity:  Politics, Possibilities, and Pitfalls of Repatriation” in Ozkuk Derya and Tamirace Fakhoury Refugee Returns, Special Issue of Geopolitics, March 2023
• Le Bail, H and Um, K. “Frayed Memories, Re-imagined Belongings. Southeast Asian Post-refugee Generations in France” in Après la migration. Trajectoires, transmission, appartenances des populations venues d’Asie du Sud-Est, Moussons 42, 2023, Paris.
• Um, K. “ Southeast Asian Mobilities and Immobilities in  East Asian Space:  Globalization, Migration and the Role(s) of Civil Society:” in Takenaka and Um Globalization and Civil Society in East Asia Space  (2022)
• Um, K. "The Wounds Of Memory:  Poetics, Pain, and Possibilities in Rithy Panh’s Exile and Que la barque se brise " in Joseph Mai and Leslie Barnes eds.  The Cinema of Rithy Panh: Everything Has a Soul, Rutgers, 2021.