Skid Row as Refugee Camp
Please note: We are currently at capacity for this event. To be added to the waitlist, please send an email to rsvp@humanities.wisc.edu with your name, title, or affiliation.
During the 1980s, a critical mass of Central American asylum seeker sought refuge in Skid Row, Los Angeles, prompting homeless advocates to dub the city’s homeless district a refugee camp. This view highlighted an expanded understanding of homelessness as Central American asylum seekers were people living not only without a fixed abode but without legal status. This Friday Lunch presentation explores how homeless advocates drew on this understanding to develop a refugee resettlement program, modeled after the federal government’s plan for Southeast Asian refugees, to mitigate the homelessness of Central American asylum seekers and resettle them in permanent affordable housing outside of Skid Row.
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Cindy I-Fen Cheng is Robinson Edwards Professor of American History and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin. She is the award-winning author of Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War and editor of The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies. Her articles have appeared in the American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Studies, and other academic journals and anthologies. She is currently working on a book project entitled, “Skid Row Refuge: Central American Asylum Seekers and the 1980s Homelessness Crisis in the U.S.”