Perfectly American: Constructing the Refugee Experience

Abstract

Over the last 60 years, the United States has accepted some two million refugees for resettlement. Standard opinion polls suggest that the American response to these refugees has been mixed. Yet, despite much ambivalence about particular refugees and where they may belong in the grid of American social and cultural categories, the notion of refuge and the imperative toward support and welcome to refugees endure. As an extended example, this paper considers press treatment of refugees in Richmond, Virginia during the last quarter of the twentieth century—before security concerns and surging numbers of illegal immigrants irrevocably changed the nature of American immigration. Unlike the ambivalent response that emerges in national opinion polls and some other venues, in this case the construction of refugees is neither negative nor ambivalent, but is instead solidly positive. This positive construction extends across a broad range of racial and national-origin groups and is conditioned by a peculiarly American notion of how refugees relate to broader American categories, particularly that of ‘immigrant’. In this local story from the United States lies a broader tale of how refugees are woven into the existing social and cultural categories of the countries in which they resettle.

Keywords:

• Refugees
• Press
• Public Reaction
• Richmond
• United States

Notes

1. In 1975, the major press in Richmond comprised two papers: the morning Richmond Times-Dispatch and the afternoon Richmond News-Leader, under joint ownership and partially overlapping management. In 1992, the two papers were consolidated, becoming the Richmond Times-Dispatch. From 1975 to 1999, 124 significant articles on refugees appeared in these papers and are the subject of our analysis. Short articles (unlisted in the index or fewer than 400 words), or articles that used the term ‘refugee’ metaphorically, were excluded.