It is crucial to explore refugees' relationships with resettlement in San Diego, the concept of home, and how refugees have redefined the term and their relationship to it due to their lived experiences.
Many people often talk about what it means to be a refugee. When they do however, they hyperfocus on the struggles of refugees, the cycle of trauma, etc. Yet, what gets lost in the discussion is a refugee's relationship to the term home? What does home mean for a refugee? How does the refugee experience define this term? What does the concept or state of being home indeed mean? Before we determine what the idea of a home might mean to a refugee, I want to explore refugees' relationships with resettlement in San Diego and the concept of home through the art exhibit "Mapping Home: Land/Water/Place."
Refugees have had and continue to have a long history in San Diego. We see patterns of refugees resettling in San Diego for example during the Vietnam War. A large portion of Vietnamese refugees resettled in San Diego, and part of their journey included living in Camp Pendleton (military base). There is a large Middle Eastern refugee community in El Cajon due to fleeing the ongoing Syrian conflict as well as conflict in Afghanistan. However, when we look at a refugee's journey, it doesn't end once they relocate to a new place. Refugees still face many obstacles once they resettle in San Diego. Some of the critical issues that many refugees face while living in San Diego during resettlement are as follows: overcrowding in housing, unemployment, and lack of trust in our healthcare system, to name a few, according to the PANA community Report found during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These sets of issues mentioned previously demonstrate that the relationship between refugees and the concept of resettlement in San Diego is complex. When refugees are faced with so much fear from their country of origin, only to go to another country and be placed back into a state of fear, they cannot truly be resettled. And if you are met with constant fear of being deported, mistrust in healthcare, and unemployment, it should be noted again that a person is not truly resettled. Despite being met or forced into this complex relationship, when resettled in San Diego, is it at that point that they feel at home? Can they call San Diego or the U.S. their new home?
In light of resettlement, how does a refugee then define home? This art gallery in North Park called Art Produce explored this question. Art Produce hosted a collaborative effort between the Karen Organization of San Diego and the Education Studies Department Partners at Learning Programs to create an art exhibit to preserve refugee culture while centering different aspects of their journey that brought them to resettlement in San Diego. They brought refugees in San Diego together and in communities of all ages and backgrounds to define what home means. The exhibit lasted from July 28th to October 13th, 2018. The refugees in the San Diego community also created the art produced in the exhibition themselves. A person looking at the exhibit could learn from refugees like Lily, who is from Laos and fled to the U.S. with most of her family. Lily defined home (through her art) as where her family is physically. Or Ed De Grey, who often finds himself unable to pinpoint a specific physical space he calls home because he views his resettlement as a temporary place. Through the efforts of the art exhibit, the refugees who participated and produced work for the exhibition illustrated that physical space does not define a home for them. Instead, it is where a person feels most secure in their community, family, and themselves. Thus, we can see how refugees have begun redefining what home means to them and their lived experiences/journeys, which speaks to how they have faced many obstacles in their lives and redefined their story for survival.
The stories of refugees are often overlooked. People focus so much on their initial arrival to the host country that they forget to acknowledge the people behind the term refugee. They are humans who are ultimately just looking for a safe place to live, for a new home. Efforts like the collaborations that brought the exhibition "Mapping Home: Land/Water/Place" will hopefully keep the conversation centered on the refugee experience, their relationship to the concept of home, and how the efforts of a city like San Diego or a country like the U.S can make efforts to address the more significant issues that can contribute to creating a safer home for refugees post resettlement. Everyone has a right to a home—that feeling of security within themselves, their family, their community (and one day I hope in space as well).
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