Ambivalent States: Staging Asylees and Refugees from the Asian Diaspora

This research project forms the concluding chapter of Ambivalent States: Staging Asylees and Refugees from the Asian Diaspora, a book that examines how legal systems, cultural narratives, and artistic practices shape the lives and representations of refugees and asylees. Focusing on the work of artist An-My Lê, the project explores how her photography and performance reframe landscapes marked by war, displacement, and environmental transformation. Lê’s images juxtapose beauty with histories of violence, inviting viewers to consider how spaces can simultaneously evoke refuge and destruction. Situating her work within broader debates about climate displacement, the project highlights how race, nationalism, and environmental crisis intersect in shaping who is recognized—and protected—as a refugee.

More broadly, the book investigates the legal and cultural construction of refugee identity, tracing how U.S. asylum policy and international law both enable and constrain recognition. Through case studies spanning World War II, the Vietnam War, LGBTQ asylum claims, and contemporary climate migration, the author shows how refugees are often required to “perform” legibility to the state, while certain populations are rendered disposable. By engaging artistic works alongside legal histories, the project argues for more expansive and humane understandings of displacement. The research on Lê, supported by site visits to the landscapes she photographs, emphasizes the importance of sensory and environmental experience in understanding climate refuges and challenges policymakers to rethink responses to growing global displacement.