Survival and integration: Kachin social networks and refugee management regimes in Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

How do refugees establish social networks and mobilise social capital in different contexts throughout a multi-stage migration process? Migrant social network literature explains how migrants accumulate social capital and mobilise resources in and between origin and destination but provides limited answers regarding how these processes unfold during refugee migrations involving protracted stays in intermediate locations and direct interaction with state agents. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Kachin refugees in Kuala Lumpur and Los Angeles, I address these gaps by comparing refugee social networks in two sites of a migration process. Distinguishing between networks of survival and networks of integration, I argue that differences in their form and functions stem from their interactions with local refugee management regimes, which are shaped by broader state regulatory contexts. In both locations, these networks and regimes feed off each other to manage the refugee migration process, with key roles played by hybrid institutions rooted in grassroots adaptation efforts yet linked to formal resettlement mechanisms. Considering the refugee migration process as a whole, I show that Kachin refugees demonstrate their possession of social capital gained during the informal social process of migration to advance through institutionalised political processes of resettlement in each context.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugees
• social networks
• resettlement
• social capital
• integration

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Aya Fabros, Ching Kwan Lee, Ruben Hernandez-Leon, Andrew Herman, Kyle Nelson, Yotala Oszkay Febres-Cordero, Kevin Shih, Roger Waldinger, participants of the Political Sociology and the Global South working group and the International Migration working group at UCLA, and two JEMS reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. While different people and institutions refer to the country by either Burma or Myanmar for political reasons, for this paper I follow the popular usage among the Kachin refugees and UN officers in the study.

2. By this I mean agents contracted by or working alongside, but not formally part of, the state apparatus.

3. All names in this paper are pseudonyms.

4. The Kachin are predominantly Christian due to American missionary activity dating back to the nineteenth century.

5. Interview with KRC president, 17 July 2015.

6. Non-refoulement is a principle of international law that prohibits sending those at risk of persecution back to where they fled from.