Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement in Philadelphia Through the Shifting Frames of Racialization

Abstract

Abstract: As the largest concentration of Southeast Asian refugees re-settled on the East Coast, Philadelphia is a case study for investigating how local administration, police, residents, and media in the 1980s and 1990s collectively shaped the framing of refugees through “interracial” urban violence. This article investigates how the public navigated and contributed to the optics and racialization of refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam as boundary objects teetering between victimization and criminalization in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. These visual, affective, and discursive lenses of urban policing—both by the city and its residents—redefined the literal and metaphorical edges of US citizenship and belonging throughout the late twentieth century.