Competing Faces of Citizenship Beyond Naturalization: Hmong Refugees and the Politics of Recognition in the United States After the Vietnam War

This paper explores the historical relationship between refugee administration and refugees’ negotiations over citizenship through an analysis of Hmong refugees’ experiences in the United States. During the Vietnam War, approximately 50,000 Hmong soldiers were mobilized into the CIA-backed guerrilla unit as part of US anti-communist operations. Following the communist victory in 1975, Hmong refugees from Laos fled to Thailand and were later resettled in the United States. Previous scholarship primarily focused on either the legal dimension of Hmong naturalization or their process of Americanization. Studies on refugee incorporation and military naturalization have likewise interpreted citizenship as a legal status granted by the state. However, recognition as citizens extends beyond a legal membership unilaterally conferred by the nation-state. This article instead inquires how Hmong refugees in the United States negotiated over competing forms of citizenship and social recognition after the Secret War, and how the US government selectively incorporated those claims through militarized and other conditional forms of inclusion. To answer these questions, this paper approaches citizenship as a contested arena negotiated by the state and refugees themselves. Integrating legal and social history, the analysis examines both the top-down citizenship framework promoted through the Hmong Veterans’ Naturalization Act and the bottom-up citizenship practices advanced by Hmong communities. Drawing on archival materials ranging from Congressional records to local organizational documents in Minnesota, this study shows that veterans’ organizations set the basis of belonging on their wartime sacrifice, women’s and community organizations emphasized legal protection and social reproduction, and exile organizations sustained attachments across multiple homelands. This research also demonstrates that the United States eventually recognized Hmong belonging primarily through narratives of military loyalty and geopolitical usefulness. Ultimately, this research enriches the historiography of broader immigration, citizenship, and military studies by reconceptualizing refugee incorporation as a contested process of recognition rather than a linear path to national membership, while relativizing contemporary worldviews surrounding refugee protection, immigrant soldiers, and military naturalization.