Yến Lê Espiritu
· Distinguished Professor and ChairUniversity of California, San Diego · Ethnic Studies
Active 1988–2026
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About
Yến Lê Espiritu is associated with the Critical Refugee Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to research, teaching, and public initiatives on refugees. The collective focuses on establishing a field that traces the impact of colonialism, imperialism, militarization, and other factors on refugee movements, while integrating scholarly, policy, artistic, legal, diplomatic, and international relations interests with refugees’ everyday experiences. Their work emphasizes public engagement, community collaboration, and respect, aiming to challenge traditional paradigms of refugee research and discourse within the academy and beyond. The collective seeks to change the dehumanizing narratives surrounding refugees by fostering humane, reciprocal, and inclusive approaches that recognize refugees as fellow human beings with fundamental rights.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Sociology
- Law
- Computer Science
- History
- Mechanical engineering
- Public relations
- Engineering
- Medicine
- Pedagogy
Selected publications
Introduction: Critical Refugee Studies and Asian American Studies
Amerasia Journal · 2021 · 15 citations
1st authorCorrespondingUniversity of California Press eBooks · 2022 · 7 citations
1st authorCorrespondingDepartures supports, contextualizes, and advances the field of critical refugee studies by providing a capacious account of its genealogy, methods, and key concepts as well as its premises, priorities, and possibilities. The book outlines the field's main tenets, questions, and concerns and offers new approaches that integrate theoretical rigor and policy considerations with refugees' rich and complicated lived worlds. It also provides examples of how to link communities, movements, networks, ar…
“Livability” and “Ungratefulness”: A Refugee Critique of the Law and Humanitarianism
Social Inclusion · 2024-09-30 · 5 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingCritical refugee studies (CRS) conceptualizes refugees’ lived experience as a site of theory‐making and knowledge production with and for refugees. As co‐founders of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective (CRSC), and as scholars with refugee backgrounds, we theorize alongside our refugee partners to offer a refugee critique of refugee law and humanitarianism. Departing from the 1951 Refugee Convention definition of “refugee,” whose restrictive legal and historical framing cannot account for the…
Social and Curricular Inclusion in Refugee Education: Critical Approaches to Education Advocacy
Social Inclusion · 2023 · 5 citations
Recognizing refugee students, families, and communities as a source of knowledge and social change, this article offers two case studies of innovative, deliberative, and labor‐intensive practices toward meaningful social inclusion of refugee parents and students in education. The first example focuses on the multiyear effort by the Parent‐Student‐Resident Organization (PSRO) in San Diego, California, an education advocacy group organized and led by local parents to institutionalize social inclus…
9. Gender, Migration, and Work: Filipina Health Care Professionals to the United States
New York University Press eBooks · 2020 · 4 citations
1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 8 shared
Lan Duong
- 3 shared
Jonathan Skinner
- 3 shared
Geoffrey Hosking
- 3 shared
Lisa Lowe
Getty Research Institute
- 3 shared
Lisa Yoneyama
University of Toronto
- 3 shared
Dana Y. Takagi
- 2 shared
David Leiwei Li
The University of Texas at Austin
- 2 shared
Vijay Prashad
Awards & honors
- Eleanor Roosevelt College's Outstanding Faculty Award
- Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award
- Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Awards for Excell…
- Inaugural recipient of the Association for Asian American St…
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