Vietnamese boat people (or just boat people) is the term for the Vietnamese refugees that left Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam war via boats in order to find and have a better life outside the country and to escape the oppression they were experiencing. This term is the text-book definition for this topic as saying it indicated you are talking about these people, what they experienced, and they world’s reaction to them.
Economic refugees is a term for migrants who are fleeing their country purely for “economic reasons.” Some of the later stage Vietnamese refugees are referred to by this term by scholars and countries dealing with the refugees. The use of this term on the Vietnamese refugees was used to justify some of the worse treatments of the boat people as this indicates these refugees not to be “true” refugees but economic opportunists. This reason makes it especially important to know as countries who dealt with these refugees used this term including the UNHCR or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Compassion fatigue is a feeling of being compassionate or good to other people for so long that the willingness to continue to be like that wears down. Within the context of the boat people, it refers to less willingness over time for countries to take in refugees whether for temporary asylum or resettlement. Hong Kong and Malaysia both embody this, as though they willingly took on refugees at first, the endless tide of them wore down both countries and they made harsher policies over time.
The UNHCR or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was the leading organization behind organizing relief and policy to help resettlement the Vietnamese boat people. They created the Comprehensive Plan of Action in 1989 which was meant to stymie the influx of boat people into Southeast Asian countries. Their leading part in the Vietnamese boat people policy makes them an important player within this topic.
Temporary asylum is the act by which temporary asylum is given to refugees entering that country who will later then be able to leave it for true asylum/resettlement in another nation. In this context, many of the Vietnamese refugees waited in this temporary asylum in camps for long periods of time before their case could be brought before a resettlement worker. These asylum camps were usually in wretched conditions and hosted all manner of crime and hostilities for the refugees. This is important to know as this temporary asylum was the most used way for Vietnamese refugees and the filling and influx of people into this kind of asylum caused the high amounts of compassion fatigue of Southeast Asian countries which turned around this hospitality into the later 1980s.