Suchergebnisse

Tamsin Barber addresses the experience of the British-born Vietnamese as an overlooked minority population in 'super-diverse' London, exploring the emergence of the pan-ethnic 'Oriental' category as a new form of collective consciousness and identity in Britain.

The Vietnamese refugee experience in the UK has been characteristically different from the broader international flows of Vietnamese 'boat people' to the West. With no pre-existing Vietnamese community in the UK, largely composed of the rural poor from northern Vietnam, this numerically small community has remained largely invisible in British society. London houses over half of the UK Vietnamese population and the London Vietnamese communities are notoriously heterogeneous, fragmented, and divided according to political ideology, refugee wave, social class, ethnicity, geographical location, and social origins. These factors have translated into differential access to/proximity to local ethnic and co-ethnic labour markets and services, opportunities for self-employment, ethnic and transnational networks, political representation, community organization, public service provision, and belonging. This article explores how these various layers have worked together to produce divergent outcomes for these population fragments across London. Attention is paid to variation across areas of higher population concentration in East London (Lewisham and Hackney) and the more dispersed North and West London populations. In addition to exploring socioeconomic features of integration, this article also reflects upon how the broader social status of Vietnamese refugees in British society has offered both opportunities and constraints for their success.

The plight of Vietnamese migrants in the UK has featured prominently in recent media and public policy debates on modern slavery, illegal border crossings, and labour exploitation. Yet little attention has been paid to their subjective experiences of border crossings, nor the wide range of categories they pass between. Vietnamese migrants coming to the UK in search of work face a complex array of decisions surrounding the respective costs and risks related to a chosen migration route which must be weighed against personal and collective expectations. These complex decisions are compounded by a shifting and highly stratified immigration and borders regime which renders migrants more vulnerable through restricting rights and increasing surveillance. This chapter explores the experiences and imaginaries of the UK border among migrants who have crossed the UK border, as well as those who intend to make the journey. We explore the contrast between the expectations and realities of UK borders through in-depth interviews with Vietnamese migrants. We argue, notwithstanding knowledge of the risks involved in border crossings and the hostile border enforcement regime, imaginations of opportunities for transforming local livelihoods remain powerful and deep-seated political and cultural narratives for Vietnamese migrants.

What are the building blocks of the new societal architectures after COVID-19? What are the evolving lifestyle patterns, social connections and relationality, and what can biographical research bring to explore these unprecedented societal circumstances? This first book in a new series Advances in Biographical Research focuses on the place of biographical research in analysing and shaping social futures characterized by physical distancing and isolation, social fragmentation, trauma and vulnerability, including breaks in biographical trajectories. Written by experienced and early career researchers, it demonstrates how biographical research responds to new societal architectures: theoretically and empirically