My research centers Southeast Asian abolitionist organizing as a site to theorize a framework of healing from refugee trauma. As Southeast Asian refugees in the United States are continually displaced by war, incarceration, and deportation, I ask: how might refugee trauma illuminate the relationships between U.S. empire and the U.S. carceral state? What embodied, epistemological practices do activists use to challenge the state structures responsible for displacement? To examine these questions, I will conduct a multi-sited ethnography of the Southeast Asian anti-deportation movement in California. My work draws from the fields of critical refugee studies, abolition feminism, and trauma and disability studies, grounded in my own organizing and deep relationships to my community.
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