From the ‘boat people’ of Vietnam from 50 years ago to today, are we forgetting our place in refugee history?

Back in 2011, I was embedded as a filmmaker with the Royal Marines Commandos in Nad-e Ali North, a particularly dangerous part of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. Every day from our remote Forward Operating Base, the Marines went out on deadly patrols, risking IEDs and almost certain ambushes in order to protect the local farming population from the rampaging Taliban.

With us was a courageous young Afghan interpreter called Ali. Not only did he risk his life like everyone else on those relentless patrols, but he knew that if captured, he faced torture and execution for having served the foreign “infidel”.

He could have run, hidden somewhere in Afghanistan, or crossed into Pakistan, but his deep sense of duty and loyalty to the British soldiers ensured he stayed at our side. “I love these marines like brothers,” he told me. “I salute them for helping my people and will do all I can to help defend them as they defend me.”

I often wonder what happened to Ali and whether he escaped Afghanistan after it finally fell to the Taliban. When I watch the news, I look out for him in the pictures of the boats crossing the Channel. I know his first choice of asylum would be the UK, because he knew the language and had fought by our side.

I wonder too what he would think of the self-proclaimed patriots and their “courage” painting roundabouts while covering their faces. What would he make of the angry mobs or of those spitting at foreign NHS workers in parks because they’ve decided that all asylum seekers are illegal migrants? How would he feel, cast as a public enemy who should be sent back to “where he came from”?

Misinformation floods social media and shouty radio phone-ins. Much of this nasty-edged rhetoric is being rubber-stamped by mainstream politicians, propelled by Reform – a party never slow to promote its own brand of electioneering patriotism. And yet how many people really understand the distinction between illegal migrants, economic migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees?

In acute situations, people claiming a “well-founded fear of persecution” may cross a border spontaneously, en masse, and without paperwork. Technically, therefore, they are “illegal migrants” by default until their claims can be officially assessed. If asylum is granted, they are awarded “formal” refugee status with all the associated rights. But in some situations, there are also likely to be “informal refugees” – those who do not declare themselves and instead melt into the local host population. Demographically, a refugee stream is nothing if not complicated.

History shows this. After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands fled Indochina. Also referred to as “boat people”, many escaped by sea, enduring perilous journeys in overcrowded vessels, facing storms, piracy, and dehydration. Their aim was to reach southeast Asian refugee camps and resettle in countries such as the UK and the US. Some 800,000 made it to safety, but it is estimated by the UNHCR that up to a quarter of a million perished at sea.

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The UK, initially cautious, eventually joined the international resettlement effort, taking in some 19,000 Vietnamese refugees between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Many arrived traumatised, with little English or recognised skills, and faced isolation. Yet over time, they built businesses, community organisations, and many second-generation British Vietnamese have gone into higher education and professional careers.

Elsewhere, during the Seventies and Eighties, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tigray, Congo, Angola, and Mozambique, internecine war and famine prompted over two million to cross borders in search of asylum. Those who crossed borders counted as refugees; millions more displaced inside their countries did not. The definition was narrow, Eurocentric, and excluded many from relief or resettlement.

But whether bona fide refugees or displaced people, a common assumption was made about them all. They were seen as helpless victims – a lumpen mass of useless, broken people with little to offer save their tears and fears.

But my experience suggests otherwise. In 1975, I lived with the Acholi tribe in southern Sudan, as they rebuilt after the 17-year civil war. The first to seek refuge in Uganda tended to be younger and of lower status, but they were also the more adventurous and ambitious. Many of those who had fled then returned educated, literate, and skilled. They brought back expertise in cash-cropping (tobacco and cotton), helping to transform their homeland’s economy.

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Sadly, war was to return to the southern region before it gained independence from Sudan, which today has its own burgeoning refugee crisis. The current civil war between rival military factions has displaced an estimated 12 million people since April 2023.

Asylum seekers bidding for refugee status are responding to a range of push and pull factors: some “kinetic”, like the need to escape bombs and bullets, and some “dynamic”, like the desire to better themselves economically and socially.

My research has shown that refugees are often driven by a desire to succeed and can be dynamic agents of social and economic change. Our DNA as Britons is made up of strands from multiple waves of migrants over millennia – and most would have arrived in boats. This hybrid vigour is what makes us British.

The Union Flag, at present such an emotive symbol of nationhood, represents the plethora of races that define us as a people. The vile “go home” messaging has echoes of an era when people chanted, “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack, send the ba****** back.” But this too is the flag of the 2012 Olympics, when the country felt proud and united in all its diversity. It is also the flag for which much Black blood has been spilled in its defence – from the Somme and Normandy to the Falklands and Helmand Province.

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It is absolutely the case that processing claims for asylum needs to be much quicker and more comprehensive, for everyone’s sake. More must be done to eliminate perilous sea crossings and the criminal gangs profiting from them. The challenge of managing the backlog and dismantling a broken asylum system – which Keir Starmer has inherited from the Tories – is enormous.

The UN definition of a refugee, formulated in 1951, is long past its sell-by date. It needs to be reassessed for a modern era of war, persecution and widespread natural disasters, many related to global warming that are resulting in drought and famine and grinding poverty. The distinction between economic migrant and refugee is, therefore, becoming increasingly blurred but that is part of the new world order - or disorder. Consequently, there needs to be more international resettlement agreements so no one nation is seen to be taking more than their fair share of the growing 'population' burden.

I believe that most people in the UK are sensible and far-sighted enough to call out those who are actively using the migrant hotel crisis as a fig leaf for barely concealed racism. They are not the best of us. As a nation, we are better than that, and we can demand better from our government too.

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There are huge swathes of the country who feel disenfranchised and abandoned by the system. There are not enough houses, and our education and health systems are in need of urgent attention. We need joined-up thinking and coherent policies because no amount of jingoism is going to provide the detailed solutions we need to put society right. How much of our crumbling infrastructure is the fault of migrants fleeing desperate situations? How much of the summer of rage is simply desperate people blaming other desperate people for their lot? We need to take back control and favour reality over rhetoric.

Traditionally, we are at our most powerful and confident when we wear our nationhood lightly and with understated pride. I will not forget the humanity we felt 10 years ago at the sight of the lifeless body of two-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish shore as he and his family fled war in Syria. I will not ignore the statistic that by the end of 2024, approximately 49 million children will have been forced to flee their homes – the highest number ever recorded.

I remain hopeful that Ali will one day step off one of those boats onto our shores. Of course, there’s a chance he already has. Maybe right now he’s sitting in the Bell Hotel, Epping, looking out sadly at the signs saying they want him gone and at the Union Flags being brandished as weapons – just like the one Ali once wore on his shoulder when marching alongside British Royal Marines in the killing fields of Afghanistan.

Chris Terrill is an anthropologist, geographer, and filmmaker