Creating and Contesting Refugee Spaces

Abstract

Despite a federal resettlement policy of dispersing Vietnamese refugees entering the United States after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, refugees resisted and resettled elsewhere. Within the first decade of settlement, the largest concentration of the refugees had formed in the Los Angeles area. This article identifies a number of factors in the rise of Vietnamese communities in Los Angeles, its San Gabriel Valley suburbs, and adjoining Orange County.