Yến Lê Espiritu
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520277700
- eISBN:
- 9780520959002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520277700.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Migration Studies (including Refugee Studies)
This chapter examines war in terms of “militarized violence.” Methodologically, it traces the most-traveled refugee route via military aircraft as a critical lens through which to map, both ...
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This chapter examines war in terms of “militarized violence.” Methodologically, it traces the most-traveled refugee route via military aircraft as a critical lens through which to map, both discursively and materially, the transpacific displacement brought about by the legacy of U.S. colonial and military expansion into the Asia Pacific region. Thus the chapter makes two related arguments: the first about military colonialism, which contends that it was the region’s (neo)colonial dependence on the United States that turned the Philippines and Guam—U.S. former and current colonial territories, respectively—into the “ideal” receiving centers of the U.S. rescuing project; the second about militarized refuge(es), which shows that refugees and refuge are mutually constituted and that both emerge out of and in turn bolster U.S. militarism.Less
This chapter examines war in terms of “militarized violence.” Methodologically, it traces the most-traveled refugee route via military aircraft as a critical lens through which to map, both discursively and materially, the transpacific displacement brought about by the legacy of U.S. colonial and military expansion into the Asia Pacific region. Thus the chapter makes two related arguments: the first about military colonialism, which contends that it was the region’s (neo)colonial dependence on the United States that turned the Philippines and Guam—U.S. former and current colonial territories, respectively—into the “ideal” receiving centers of the U.S. rescuing project; the second about militarized refuge(es), which shows that refugees and refuge are mutually constituted and that both emerge out of and in turn bolster U.S. militarism.