The Borders Crossed Us Too: Global Indigeneities, Migration, and World-Making with Khoi Nguyen, PhD

What happens when U.S. war refugees, such as Southeast Asians, fail to meet the state’s expectations of becoming model citizens?  Despite their legal resettlement process following the U.S. wars in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, Indigenous Southeast Asian refugees continue to be disproportionately targeted for deportation. “The Borders Crossed Us Too” explores the intersections of global Indigenous studies, relational race and ethnic studies, and critical refugee studies to examine the deportation of Indigenous ethnic minorities from Southeast Asia, focusing on the U.S. border regime and the prison-to-deportation pipeline. This work draws on conversations with Southeast Asian refugees in the Twin Cities and Philadelphia, acting as a counterpoint to the “good refugees” narrative. Nguyen asks how the experiences of migrants and refugees, especially those from global Indigenous communities, can deepen our understanding of militarized humanitarianism and the deportation regime, allowing us to imagine otherwise. 

Khoi Nguyen (they/he) is a 2025-2026 Panda Express Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Their research focuses on the deportation of war refugees, particularly Indigenous ethnic minorities from Southeast Asia, within broader issues of mobility injustices that challenge US exceptionalism, inciting Indigenous possibilities. Nguyen earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

This event is co-sponsored by the Asian American Studies Program, the Approaching Global Asias Collaborative, and the Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS).