![](\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/humanities\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2019\/01\/Chia-Youyee-Vang.jpg\")
Chia Youyee Vang interviews members of the Hmong community in Cacao, French Guiana. Photo courtesy of Chia Youyee Vang.<\/small><\/i><\/p>\nChia Youyee Vang interviews members of the Hmong community in Cacao, French Guiana. Photo courtesy of Chia Youyee Vang.<\/small><\/i><\/p>\n
She was 9, new to the United States, its culture, and the English language, and new to such taken-for-granted things as school.<\/p>\n
It was 1980, and Chia Youyee Vang was a Hmong refugee from Laos. Her family had been displaced for months, the result of an attack on their village during the aftermath of the U.S.\u2019s involvement in the Vietnam War. Neither her village nor her refugee camp provided a formal education. Now, in her new hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, she had classmates.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the refugee kids were piled up in these classrooms for English as a second language,\u201d Vang recalls. \u201cEven though we were 9 years old, we were still learning our ABCs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, she\u2019s a long way from ABCs. A UWM professor of history, Vang is one of the world\u2019s leading experts on Hmong refugees. She\u2019s also one of the first people of Hmong descent to become a full professor at a major research university, a position earned in 2017 after her groundbreaking efforts to document experiences within the Hmong diaspora.<\/p>\n
Vang pays particular attention to the ways different refugee populations have adjusted to their new communities and what factors affected those adjustments. \u201cI\u2019ve always been really concerned with people being displaced,\u201d Vang says. \u201cI think about not only what has happened to Hmong people \u2013 being forced from our homes and what has happened to us over 40 years \u2013 but also the millions of other powerless people around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to being deeply personal work, her research on Hmong communities informs policymakers attempting to address new refugee crises, such as those in Yemen and Myanmar. It offers lessons in how to better preserve refugees\u2019 cultural and family connections. It\u2019s an academic journey that began in earnest at St. Paul\u2019s Johnson High School.<\/p>\n
Vang was one of some 170,000 Hmong displaced to the Western hemisphere in the post-Vietnam War era. About 145,000 of those Hmong refugees found a home in the U.S., while other Hmong communities landed in France, Canada, Argentina and French Guiana in South America.<\/p>\n
Newly confident in her language and leadership skills, she was an advocate for fellow Hmong students, especially the newcomers. \u201cWhen I learned how to speak,\u201d she says, \u201cI spoke.\u201d She asked the principal to provide a room during lunchtime so more established Hmong students could help newer arrivals.<\/p>\n
Vang became a multi-sport athlete and played in the school band \u2013 all with her parents\u2019 spirited support. Her dad faithfully attended her swim meets, but he still struggled with English. He\u2019d have to wait for one of Vang\u2019s siblings to translate the announcer\u2019s commentary before jumping up to cheer for his daughter.<\/p>\n
When she was a high school senior in 1990, Hmong students organized to win a spot in the Homecoming court, and Vang was elected lady-in-waiting. When the queen was dethroned for disciplinary reasons, Vang ascended to the role.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next year, I got to go back to crown the new king and queen,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s my American story.\u201d<\/p>\n
She earned a bachelor\u2019s degree from Gustavus Adolphus College, then attended graduate school at the University of Minnesota. There, she earned a master\u2019s degree in public affairs and a doctorate in American studies. Vang joined UWM\u2019s history faculty in 2006 and established a certificate program in Hmong diaspora studies in 2009. Her current research focuses on Hmong refugee experiences in South America.<\/p>\n
Vang is joined on her South American research trips by UWM students. Through extensive interviews, they\u2019ve explored the experiences of Hmong refugee communities in French Guiana and Argentina.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only has Chia\u2019s research expanded both scholarly and popular understandings of diasporic Hmong communities,\u201d says fellow UWM historian Rachel Buff, \u201cbut she also has mentored a new generation of scholars in the field she helped invent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vang\u2019s research discovered a divergence in the former refugees\u2019 ability to build community and develop a sense of belonging, circumstances affected by political and economic conditions as well as the sizes of the Hmong population. The findings suggest that resettling people in larger groups and providing support for family connections, cultural preservation and economic stability could improve the long-term well-being of other refugees.<\/p>\n
In French Guiana, French missionaries led the resettlement of 1,000 Hmong refugees from 1977 to 1979. \u201cThey had to cut down the jungle \u2013 just like they did in Laos \u2013 and build their own homes,\u201d Vang says. Locals resisted having the refugees there. \u201cThere were protests in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
But because they are French citizens, the Hmong Guianans thrived. Hmong farmers dominate the fresh produce market \u2013 a privileged position facilitated by the French government. This relative prosperity has raised educational ambitions for the younger generations. \u201cThey don\u2019t send kids to high school in the village,\u201d Vang says.\u201cThey send them to the capital or to France.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hmong population that settled in Argentina in the late 1970s was much smaller than the Guianans, only 21 families, and new arrivals were instead dispersed as individual families to farms to work as laborers with no way to communicate. Over the years, families found each other, and some congregated in Rio Negro, a province in the country\u2019s southern region of Patagonia. \u201cThey were able to have small Hmong New Year celebrations,\u201d Vang says. \u201cThere was a little bit of social support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Family reunification has made it possible for some of the Hmong Argentines to immigrate to the U.S., French Guiana or Germany. \u201cThe rest are stuck there,\u201d Vang says, and the economic success of their Hmong Guianan counterparts has eluded them.<\/p>\n
Today, only about 100 Hmong people remain in Argentina. They are scattered across the country, living mostly as farmers on rented land or laborers in construction or other menial work. But there are other strands of their legacy. At an academic conference, Vang met a descendant of the Hmong Argentine community. She was an education undergraduate student, and on Vang\u2019s next research trip to South America, she had a new interpreter and research assistant.<\/p>\n
By Jennifer Morales, University Relations<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1980, Chia Youyee Vang was a Hmong refugee from Laos. Today, she’s a professor of history at UWM and one of the world\u2019s leading experts on Hmong refugees. \u201cNot only has Chia\u2019s research expanded… understandings of diasporic Hmong communities, but she also has mentored a new generation of scholars in the field she helped invent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n