Lifetimes of Punishment: The Imperial Feedback Loop of Anti‐Asian Violence

Abstract

As opposed to limiting the scope of anti‐Asian violence to “hate,” this article frames anti‐Asian violence as inextricable from U.S. empire. Building on Go (2020) American Journal of Sociology 125(5):1193, I theorize what I call the “imperial feedback loop” to conceptualize anti‐Asian violence within a postcolonial and transnational context. Using a series of life history interviews, I chart the pathways of two Cambodian American refugees along the migration‐to‐school‐to‐prison‐to‐deportation pipeline. I find that cyclical and intergenerational trauma, the criminalization of Cambodian youth, and refugee deportability sustains the psychological and structural violence of the imperial feedback loop. I relate these findings to Du Boisian scholarship on criminality and imperialism and Asian Americanist scholarship on refugee subjectivity. I conclude by suggesting the interruption of the imperial feedback loop through anti‐PIC and anti‐border organizing and scholarship that critiques the roots of imperial violence and builds toward abolitionist democratic futures.