UC Davis

Vietnamese refugees and immigrants in New Orleans have long endured strenuous hardships through Hurricane Katrina, illegal toxic landfill dumping, the BP oil spill, and many other environmental injustices. Outside media and academics have often portrayed this community as resilient in successfully rebuilding after hurricanes. However, this label can be harmful by overlooking the community’s daily experiences, vulnerabilities, worries, and continued government negligence. This raises the question: In what ways and to what extent does understanding how the Vietnamese community in New Orleans negotiates resilience inform a deep examination of how refugee and immigrant communities navigate injustices and inequities within and beyond the contexts of climate change?To understand the nexus of climate justice and resilience, I re-ground the meaning of resilience through a deep dive into examining refugee resilience. My use and application of refugee resilience contribute to the ongoing discourse that introduces a critical lens into how refugee and immigrant communities such as Vietnamese refugees engage in resilience and climate justice. Specifically contextualized within the Vietnamese refugee community in New Orleans, refugee resilience necessitates the acknowledgment of the strength and capacity of the community to adapt to significant disruptions while critically recognizing the challenges, vulnerabilities, and inequities that they continue to face in the context of climate change. It builds upon the theory by addressing the structural disinvestment by governmental institutions that creates a false hope of supporting the community at the surface level through small grants but neglecting to address the systemic issues that are at the root of the problem. Refugee resilience is examined through three themes that highlight the ways in which this community has been resilient: (1) social memory, (2) the role of community organizations, institutions, and local leadership, and (3) intergenerational perspectives, trauma, and care. Each of these three themes builds upon each other, as social memory informs the analysis of the ways in which organizations, institutions, and leaders engage with previous navigation of disruptions, which allows a deep understanding of intergenerational perspectives and trauma. Social memory emphasizes the importance of navigating past disturbances of war and hurricanes within the Vietnamese refugee diasporic community. The role that community organizations, institutions, and local leaders play is key in empowering and galvanizing community members to advocate for themselves while preserving a solid sense of collaboration. Lastly, listening to community members’ perspectives and relationships with trauma provides a critical analysis of the challenges that the community continues to face amidst their successful attempts to rebuild and preserve their community from disruptions. These three themes are part of a non-linear approach where each of the themes accumulates an understanding of the other themes. This research builds upon Simi Kang’s critique of resilience through a refugee resilience framework that cautions mainstream utilization of resilience but that further requires a critical analysis of how it is used and implicated for specific communities.