The historic and ongoing displacement of Southeast Asian refugees, and the material and psychic consequences of exile, are critical to re-framing the public discourse on anti-Asian hate around state violence. We situate the panel in the aftermath of U.S. empire, genocide, carceral captivity, and deportation. Drawing from our scholarly commitments to social activism and public engagement, we offer three interventions to the violent ruptures within refugee subjectivity: kinship, reunion, and return. These intertwined concepts emerge from our collaborative praxis with Southeast Asian refugee communities, centering refugee epistemologies rather than state intervention.

Catherine Ho studies how anti-deportation organizers are forced to navigate violent U.S. legal structures, and wonders how refugee communities re-articulate kinship as they fight threats of family separation. In response to criminalized deportation, Sheila Sy offers the site of reunion of Cambodian deportees with their families as a radical site for potential healing. Finally, Victoria Huynh theorizes the transcendent possibilities of refugee return journeys, using Thích Nhất Hạnh's engaged Buddhist teachings to study how Vietnamese refugees reconnect to their homelands and re-define notions of home and belonging.