This book, and indeed much of the refugee law literature, takes as its starting point that the cornerstone of refugee identity is the legal and normative framework of protection enshrined in the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 (‘1951 Refugee Convention’).2 As such, it explores ‘how that identity has been made, remade and given social and political meaning’3 by the institutions and processes which transform the 1951 Refugee Convention into lived reality. This starting point is deeply problematic when our examination turns to the meaning of refugeehood in South-East Asia, a region that has been traditionally understood as having ‘rejected’ the 1951 Refugee Convention.