28 - Refugees, Statelessness, and the Disordering of Citizenship

Summary

American responses to refugee dilemmas in the decades following the Cold War in many ways mirrored the country’s broader and often ambivalent attempts to redefine itself as an enduring global hegemon over that period. During the Cold War, American refugee advocates within and outside of government had promoted refugee assistance as an important tool for advancing US influence internationally, part of the country’s “arsenal of peace” and “strategy of freedom” as one government official put it. Such initiatives purportedly heralded to global and American audiences alike the country’s commitment not only to such soft-power principles of international humanitarianism and an American way of life that welcomed immigrants into a prosperous land of freedom; they were additionally designed to signal America’s prudent, hard-nosed concern with promoting international stability and US national interests, especially in the struggle against communism. As Americans considered what role the United States should play in a post-Cold War world that President George H. W.