Safe Haven?

The notion of America as land of refuge is vital to American civic consciousness yet over the past seventy years the country has had a complicated and sometimes erratic relationship with its refugee populations. Attitudes and actions toward refugees from the government, voluntary organizations, and the general public have ranged from acceptance to rejection; from well-wrought program efforts to botched policy decisions.

Drawing on a wide range of contemporary and historical material, and based on the author’s three-decade experience in refugee research and policy, Safe Haven? provides an integrated portrait of this crucial component of American immigration—and of American engagement with the world. Covering seven decades of immigration history, Haines shows how refugees and their American hosts continue to struggle with national and ethnic identities and the effect this struggle has had on American institutions and attitudes.

David W. Haines received his M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies and Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University. Prior to coming to George Mason University in 1997, he had worked for the federal government's refugee resettlement program and served as a senior manager at the Virginia Workers' Compensation Commission. His teaching includes East Asia, refugees, and immigration. His publications include several edited volumes on refugees and immigrants, an alternative introductory anthropology text, a monograph on Vietnamese kinship, and numerous articles in professional journals on migration, kinship, and governance. He is a two-time Fulbright scholar (most recently in Korea), the former chair of the American Anthropological Association's Committee on Refugees and Immigrants, a three-term chair of the faculty of George Mason's College of Arts and Sciences, and the past president of the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology. He was a recipient of GMU's Teaching Excellence Award in 2003.