Forced Migration, Refugees and China's Entry into the 'Family of Nations', 1861-1949

Abstract This article is concerned with the broad imperial and colonial frameworks that have shaped forced migration and human displacement in Asia. What does it mean, for example, when the international jurisprudence surrounding asylum and refuge was formulated at a time when it was widely assumed-by international lawyers and states alike-that colonial powers could do more or less as they wished with the people under their control? This article argues that such contradictions were not peripheral or incidental, but central to the historical formation of the international regimes governing refugees and forced migrants. My goal is to put the cultural/civilizing discourses of colonialism into the heart of political and economic arguments over how to categorize the movement of people. I focus specifically on China, and the experiences of Chinese migrants overseas, in order to reveal the complex interlocking of European colonialism in Asia around issues of political asylum, labour migration and a complex colonial apparatus of banishment, exile and deportation.