Skip to main content
Ethnic Studies Department Ethnic Studies
  1. HOME
  2. People
  3. Yen Le Espiritu

Yến Lê Espiritu

Distinguished Professor

Biography

Originally from Việt Nam, Yến Lê Espiritu is Distinguished Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Espiritu has served as Department Chair, President of the Association of Asian American Studies, and Vice President of the Pacific Sociological Association. She also has extensive experience working with refugee and immigrant communities in San Diego. An award-winning author and a recipient of multiple grants, Espiritu has published extensively on Asian American communities, critical immigration and refugee studies, and U.S. colonialism and wars in Asia. A founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective (CRSC), Espiritu is the co-author of Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies (University of California Press, 2022), written collaboratively by CRSC members.  Espiritu is the recipient of several UCSD teaching awards: the Eleanor Roosevelt College’s Outstanding Faculty Award; the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award; and the Chancellor's Associates Faculty Excellence Awards for Excellence in Graduate Teaching; and the inaugural recipient of the Association for Asian American Studies Mentorship Award.

Research Interests

Critical refugee studies; critical immigration studies; Asian American studies; gender and migration; U.S. militarism

Education

Ph.D., Sociology - University of California, Los Angeles, 1990
M.A., Sociology - University of California, Los Angeles, 1987
B.A., Communication - University of California, San Diego, 1985

Selected Publications

For updated CV, please see Espiritu CV.

Books

  • Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies. (co-authored with Lan Duong, Ma Vang, Victor Bascara, Khatharya Um, Lila Sharif, and Nigel Hatton). University of California Press, 2022.
  • Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es). 2014. University of California Press.
  • Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love, Second Edition.  2008. Rowman & Littlefields.
  • Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. 
Articles
  • "Loss and Found: 'Sutured Kinship' in the Aftermath of War and Displacement." English Language Notes, vol. 63, no. 1 (2025), pp. 11-26.
  • (with Ma Vang). “Livability” and “Ungratefulness”: A Refugee Critique of the Law and Humanitarianism.” Social Inclusion, vol. 12 (2024).
  • "Critical Immigration and Refugee Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach.” In Disciplinary Futures: Sociology in Conversation with American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies, edited by Nadia Kim and Pawan Dingra. New York: New York University Press, 2023.
  • (with J.A. Ruanto-Ramirez). “The Philippine Refugee Processing Center: The Relational Displacements of Vietnamese Refugees and the Indigenous Aetas.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 6.1, 2020.
  • (with Lan Duong). “Feminist Refugee Epistemology: Reading Displacement in Vietnamese and Syrian Refugee Art.” Signs 14(3): 587-615, 2018.
Digital Websites

In the News