The papers in this panel explore how genocide, nation-state building, international humanitarianism, and colonial logics shaped contemporary refugee laws and administration. With expertise encompassing the experiences of refugees in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide of 1915; the 1923 Greco-Turkish population exchange and its regional impacts; the resettlement of Polish nationals in and from Britain’s Indian Empire in the 1940s; and American policy towards Chinese asylum seekers in the 1990s—the scholars of this panel analyze how legal and bureaucratic frameworks, processes of racialization, and economic and moral discourses on labour and resource distribution played a role in defining refugee status and access to asylum. The papers collectively ask a range of questions: what are the implications of categorizing displaced people as economic migrants rather than refugees? How do racial and ethnic categories affect the experiences and treatment of refugee groups across historical colonial contexts? How was the concept of “partial sovereignty” used to create offshore detention centers and exclusionary immigration practices? How have empires and their successor states shaped the categorization and resettlement of refugees?

By shifting the analytical focus from nation-states to empire, this panel interrogates how colonial governance, racial hierarchies, and shifting definitions of sovereignty have shaped historical and contemporary refugee policies. Rather than viewing modern refugee law as a product of the postwar international order, these papers reveal how imperial legacies–through legal infrastructures, geopolitical strategies, and labor control–continue to inform contemporary asylum practices. This perspective nuances conventional narratives of state sovereignty and highlights the enduring influence of Empire on global refugee governance.