Between Exile and Resettlement: Transnational Journeys of Jewish and “White” Russian Refugees through the Philippines (1945–1953)

This dissertation project investigates how displaced persons navigated conflict, exile, and onward migration in and through a semi- and postcolonial space. Drawing on refugee history, postcolonial approaches, and concepts of social, cultural, and economic capital, this study examines approximately 1,300 Holocaust refugees who fled Nazi persecution and around 5,500 anti-Communist Russians who passed through or resided in the Philippines following the Chinese Revolution.

Drawing on a diverse array of archival sources from state authorities, aid organisations, refugee elites, and displaced persons themselves, the dissertation argues that statelessness, racial ascriptions, gender, and social position significantly influenced refugees’ mobility and exile experiences. It shows, first, how refugees, often perceived as white immigrants, could benefit from colonial power structures and postcolonial relations. Second, the thesis foregrounds women’s stories and refugees’ emotional experience of displacement in the Philippines, highlighting trauma, resilience, adaptation, and shifts in identity. Finally, it demonstrates how refugees mobilised individual and collective networks, community representation, and aid mandates to navigate restrictive migration laws, antisemitic migration barriers, and resettlement schemes within an emerging postwar refugee regime dominated by UNRRA, the IRO, and Cold War politics. The Philippines, as a place of exile and transit, thus serves as a prism through which refugeedom and the postwar refugee regime are examined from the semi- and postcolonial margins.

Lena Clara Christoph, BA MA

lena.christoph@univie.ac.at