| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation analyzes how U.S. institutions, policymakers, and foreign aid workers confronted global refugee crises between the two World Wars. Drawing from over a dozen domestic and international archives with sources in three languages, this project follows a network of American institutions that sought to manage refugee crises overseas emerging from the collapse of multi-ethnic empires in Europe and the Middle East. Working in conjunction with the U.S. state, these organizations gained an unprecedented degree of authority in the nation-states created out of the former Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires. Through case studies in Russia, Turkey, and Greece this dissertation traces how American humanitarians shaped the lived experiences of millions of refugees left stateless after World War I. Following the three case studies, the dissertation then traces how, as regional conflict receded in the 1920s and 1930s, American humanitarians, now newly-minted experts in relief and migration, moved into the private sector or into development projects in Europe and the Middle East. From their new influential positions, American aid workers established the norms for refugee management over the following decades. These norms, however, were not dispassionate but structured by the racial, gendered, and imperial politics of the humanitarians themselves. As World War II loomed on the horizon, this earlier generation of humanitarian workers took up key positions in the U.S. government as the state prepared for war. When the United States confronted the massive refugee crises of the post-World War II world, these former aid workers drew from their previous experiences to construct the new refugee order. This dissertation shows that the refugee policies of the late twentieth century were not a response to post-WWII crises, but rather arose from an earlier set of transnational relationships developed between the U.S. state, foreign governments, and private humanitarian organizations. This narrative of U.S. refugee management offers greater insight into the complex ways in which Americans have engaged with global events, and reveals the origins of transnational systems of migration that emerged in the twentieth century. | |
