Reuniting the white ox horn: Transnational aspects of Iu-Mien refugee identity

This dissertation concerns the way in which the Iu-Mien, a highland Laotian refugee group living in Portland, Oregon, have been affected by and instrumentally used transnational forces to reconstruct their ethnic identity. The main hypothesis is that refugees such as the Iu-Mien are transnational peoples who construct a new social space in relation to that of their homelands and the societies in which they are resettled. The Iu-Mien present a special case of this process because they have long had a transnational social space spanning China and Southeast Asia. Utilizing participant-observation, interviews, applied work within the refugee resettlement system, and visits to Iu-Mien communities in other states and China, continuities as well as transformations in social, political, religious, ritual, and economic relations are traced. The dissertation shows how the common themes of Iu-Mien ethnic identity, found in their traditional legends, myths, world view, language and literacy, and Chinese and Western historical records, are represented today in their lives as refugees. This discussion demonstrates how the cultural, structural and ideological aspects of Iu-Mien identity have proved adaptively useful to them for creating a common transnational social space both in Asia and in diaspora.;The main conclusions concern how the Iu-Mien developed an adaptive, transnational social space in the historical encounter with China. This social space relied on a dualistic world view which structured social, economic, and political relations in the human world as well as ritual relations with the spirit world. Both human and spirit world harmony and communication relied upon literacy in Chinese. This traditional transnational identity has been transformed by their refugee experience where the main forces for change are the refugee resettlement system which altered their economic, political, and social relations, Christian conversion and modernization which are changing ritual relations, and new forms of literacy which are forming the basis for maintaining transnational communication. The Iu-Mien themselves have manipulated these transnational forces to literally and symbolically return to the pre-Laotian source of their cultural traditions in China through cultural exchange.