Navigating Displacement: Refugee Lives under Different Legal Conditions

Principle Investigator：Yu-Shan Liu

 My current and future research develops along two interconnected lines. The first extends my earlier work on Tibetan refugees migrating from India to France and continues to follow first-generation migrants who have resettled from South Asia to Europe. I focus on the challenges they encounter in their new societies, including the implications of citizenship acquisition, their processes of social incorporation, and their roles as parents raising children in a transnational context. Particular attention will be paid to parenting across generations within migrant families, including the transmission of cultural values, language, and religious practices, as well as to how children engage in identity formation while growing up in Europe. The second line of inquiry has emerged from my recent fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia, where refugees from other countries, including Rohingya, have been received over the past decade. I will examine the legal and social precarity refugees encounter in a national context without formal refugee legislation, the roles played by local organizations, and governmental responses to refugee presence. This research aims to develop a comparative framework to explore how refugee status and lived experiences diverge across societies with and without formal legal structures.