Introduction

This chapter deals with histories of refugees and 'family'and their intersections with aspects of memory studies - including oral history, public storytelling, family history and museum exhibitions and objects. In the social sciences and the humanities, studies of refugees in Australia have often addressed individuals and groups (ethnic or politically defined cohorts) and shared personal stories, but rarely within a family context. Perhaps because they were the first refugee cohort to highlight the need for a specific policy for refugee processing and reception in Australia, South Vietnamese refugees arriving after 1975 have been the subject of much academic study. A focus on 'family' illuminates intimate aspects of a history and the emotions it contains and enables - complicating the passive victim stereotype often applied to refugees. The break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s enabled new types of mobilities for previously immobile diasporic peoples - which in turn had implications for communicating family memories of exile.