UConn Reads 2017-18: ‘Nation of Immigrants or Land of Refugees?’

Campus Life – UConn Today


Though we are widely recognized as a nation of immigrants, the migration of peoples to the United States has consistently occupied a vexed place in U.S. politics, not least in the current political climate. This year’s UConn Reads selection, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s short story collection ‘The Refugees,’ affords an opportunity for the University community to reflect upon and debate the hot-button issue of immigration.
We often hear that the United States is a “nation of immigrants,” but it may be more accurate to say the country is a “land of refugees.” Refugees – individuals who are the involuntary inheritors of wartime displacements, natural disasters, and state-authorized subjection – have played a key role in American history. From the forced migration of enslaved peoples to the urgent movement of Puritans seeking freedom from religious persecution; from the involuntary relocation of Native subjects during the 19th century to the post-World War II resettlement of Holocaust survivors in the 20th; from those impacted by Cold War conflicts (in Asia and Latin America) to those escaping the realities of the ongoing War on Terror, the line between immigrant and refugee is more often than not blurred.
We often hear that the United States is a ‘nation of immigrants,’ but it may be more accurate to say the country is a ‘land of refugees.’
Although immigrants and refugees are often considered marginal in mainstream discussions of who is and is not a “true” American, their – our – stories of migration, acculturation, and assimilation are central. Many of us have in common an ancestor who traveled from “over there” to “over here,” and the histories that brought us into being as Americans, whether as refugees or immigrants, are inextricably tied to the desire to seek (voluntarily or involuntarily) a better life. Our language and literature are replete with references to “cities upon a hill,” “promised lands,” “ ...

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