BOAT PEOPLE Definition & Meaning

boat people

plural noun

refugees who have fled a country by boat, usually without sufficient provisions, navigational aids, or a set destination, especially those who left Indochina by sea as a result of the fall of South Vietnam in 1975.

boat people

plural noun

refugees, esp from Vietnam in the late 1970s, who leave by boat hoping to be picked up by ships of another country

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�y��vlog History and Origins

Origin of boat people¹

First recorded in 1975–80

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

This was also a time when 800,000 mainly ethnic Chinese boat people fled the communist party's repressive actions, making perilous sea journeys across the South China Sea, eventually resettling in the USA, Australia or Europe.

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She has first-hand experience, leaving Vietnam to the US in 1980 as part of the exodus of Vietnamese boat people.

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But on Kouassi’s boat, “people died. And I was lucky to survive.”

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On Jubair’s boat, people began to wail.

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In a career that spanned five decades, she won renown for photos that captured the anguish of Vietnamese boat people on the South China Sea, the grit of a “girl boxer” from L.A.’s Eastside and the ferocity of a backboard-shattering dunk by a high school basketball player.

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