This special issue of positions claims Southeast Asian/American studies as a unique site for scholarly engagements with U.S. empire and its professions of liberal humanism, as well as its practices of neoliberal violence. Dissolving the disciplinary distinctions between Southeast Asia area studies and Asian American studies, the contributors construct transnational analytic methods to examine new assemblages of nations and states, refugees and residents, migrations and returns. The contributors represent a new generation of scholars, some of whom are themselves migrants and refugees, who seek to reinvent the study of displaced populations and their diasporas. One essay considers the historical production of the refugee soldier during the "secret wars" of Laos. An ethnography of post-9/11 protests by Southeast Asian American youth reveals how neoliberal rationalization of "personal responsibility" created a context for both deportation and the youth movement against it.
Several contributions explore concepts of exile, belonging, and the nation-state via media representations of masculinity and the erotic, including the Hmong actors who appear in Clint Eastwood's film Gran Torino, campy pan-Asian boy bands, and Vietnam Idol, a reality show that, like its British and American counterparts, illustrates specific cultural imaginations and national ambitions.