Refuge: returning home with displaced coal communities

This article reconceptualizes refuge with coal communities in my home, Yangquan, China, and Eastern Kentucky, USA. While refugee is often addressed as a legal status, this article defines refuge as a liminal condition between leaving and returning. This liminality is demonstrated through coal commun...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCommunication and critical/cultural studies Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 260 - 278
Main Author Lv (Lyu), Junyi
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 03.04.2025
Subjects
Appalachia
China
coal communities
home
Refuge
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Summary:This article reconceptualizes refuge with coal communities in my home, Yangquan, China, and Eastern Kentucky, USA. While refugee is often addressed as a legal status, this article defines refuge as a liminal condition between leaving and returning. This liminality is demonstrated through coal communities' experiences of temporal waves of displacement, spatial navigation of industries' encroachment into private life, and affective turmoil of home. The study contributes to understanding refuge as a place of suspension and permanent precarity, while calling attention to the plight of coal communities suspended in impermanence by the structural inequalities embedded in coal production.
ISSN:1479-1420
1479-4233
DOI:10.1080/14791420.2025.2503818