When Boat People were Resettled, 1975–1983

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Becky Taylor, Karen Akoka, Marcel Berlinghoff, Shira Havkin

   Pages 1-46

3. France: Boat People Brought by Plane

   • Karen Akoka

   Pages 47-77

4. Germany: ‘Refugie-surprise’: The Unlikely Reception of Indochinese Boat People in Germany

   • Marcel Berlinghoff

   Pages 79-108

5. ‘Our Most Foreign Refugees’: Refugees from Vietnam in Britain

   • Becky Taylor

   Pages 109-143Open Access

6. The Netherlands: ‘Boat People’ as Changemakers in the Dutch Refugee System

   • Julia Kleinschmidt

   Pages 145-176

7. Israel: Asylum Without Refugee Status: Israel’s Reception of Vietnamese Exiles

   • Shira Havkin

   Pages 177-211

8. Back Matter

   Pages 213-239

   PDF

This book traces the reception and resettlement of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Israel during the 'boat people' crisis of 1975–79.  These years saw hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the emergence of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and political instability across south-east Asia. Using a comparative historical approach, the authors demonstrate the multiple ways in which refugees were contested, accepted, received and resettled across different national contexts. This episode is held up today as an example of European generosity. Yet this book illustrates how the reception of boat people in Western Europe and Israel was shaped by the Cold War, and by specific national preoccupations over international prestige, immigration, labour supply and the place of foreign-born strangers in their increasingly diverse societies. While the post-2015 refugee crisis in Europe has often been construed as a new challenge requiring an unprecedented coordinated international response, this book shows the longer history of such dilemmas.


Chapter 4 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

• Refugee crisis
• International response
• UN Refugee Agency
• France
• UK
• Germany
• Israel
• Netherlands
• Vietnam
• Cambodia
• Laos
• Resettlement policy
• Diversity

• School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

  Becky Taylor

• Institute for Political Social Sciences (ISP), Paris Nanterre University, Paris, France

  Karen Akoka

• Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany

  Marcel Berlinghoff

• CERI/Sciences-Po, Paris, France

  Shira Havkin

Becky Taylor is Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia, UK. 


Karen Akoka is an Associate Professor in Political Science, Paris Nanterre University, France, a researcher at the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique and a Fellow of the Institut Convergences Migrations. 



Marcel Berlinghoff is a senior researcher and member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), Osnabrueck University, Germany 


Shira Havkin is an affiliated researcher at Sciences-Po CERI, France, and a fellow of the Institut Convergences Migrations.

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