2020-21 Global Racial Justice Series: Author Dina Nayeri & UCLA's Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi

The migrant's experience of migration
The International Institute launches its Global Racial Justice Series 2020-21 with a discussion between author Dina Nayeri and UCLA's Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi on Mon, Nov. 22, 2021.
By Peggy McInerny, Director of Communications
UCLA International Institute, November 15, 2021 - Award-winning novelist Dina Nayeri will speak about her non-fiction book, “The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You” (Catapult, 2019) at UCLA on Monday, November 22, 2021 at 9:30 a.m. The book grew out of the author’s celebrated 2017 article in The Guardian.
The virtual event will feature a discussion between Nayeri and UCLA’s Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, assistant professor of Asian American studies and an expert on Vietnamese refugee resettlement; registration is required. Jointly organized by the International Institute and the Asian American studies department, the discussion is cosponsored by an additional 11 UCLA units.
The lecture is part of the International Institute’s Global Racial Justice Series 2021-22, which builds on last year’s popular Black Lives Matter: Global Perspective Series.
“Last year, we were responding to the urgency of the political moment and trying to connect the conversations happening on campus with what social movements were doing worldwide,” said Jennifer Jihye Chun, a sociologist with a joint appointment in the Asian American studies department and the International Institute.
“One thing we sought to do this year is to feature more crossover speakers in conversation with academics,” she added. “BLM is now facing a sustained backlash and the Institute faculty organizing the series felt it was important to keep alive the conversation about systemic racism in a global context.”
As they did last year, International Institute faculty will be incorporating the webinars into their global studies and international development studies courses.
Author of the forthcoming “Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine” (UC Press, 2022), Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi joined UCLA in 2019 and has been teaching a “Critical Refugee Studies” course in the Asian American studies department for the last three years.
The course delves into the history of Jewish refugees, which informs many theoretical and philosophical works, then considers the history of refugees from Southeast Asia (Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laos) and contemporary refugee migrations. This fall, Nayeri’s memoir is part of the course curriculum.
“The field of critical refugee studies is interested in centering refugee voices and refugee stories and their outlook on the world - what we call ‘refugee epistemologies,’” said Gandhi.
“Rather than only think about refugees as objects of humanitarian aid or victims of displacement, the field broadly focuses on refugee agency and what we can learn from refugees. And part of that is to unpack the geopolitical causes of refugee displacement.
“Students are very interested in that longer context. Many of them come to this class because their families have refugee backgrounds. I also have a personal connection to this research and to the class: my mom and grandmother were refugees from Vietnam who left in 1975.
“My students’ personal connections to the topic also serve to connect to them to more contemporary refugee displacements,” adds the Asian American studies professor.