This special issue of the Journal of Refugee Studies takes displacement in Asia as its focal point in order to conceptualize the multiple legal orders and organizational structures that govern the lives of forced migrants, the interfacing of such institutional processes with the experiential perspectives of forced migrants themselves and the multiplicities of displacement experiences and mobilities. The articles in this collection examine a variety of cases of human forced displacement happening in Asia as well as the links forged by those displaced from or within Asia to places outside of Asia (henceforth Asian forced migration). Scholars within refugee studies have recently argued against the Eurocentric character of international bodies and legal instruments that oversee the management of forced migration. Our special issue builds on such interventions published in JRS (e.g. special issues on Invisible Displacement in 2008, The Refugee in the Post-War World in 2012 and What Is a Refugee Camp in 2016; see Polzer and Hammond 2008; Holian and Cohen 2012; Turner 2016) and seeks to advance the epistemological and methodological perspectives that frame studies of forced migration and refugees in Asia. Our analyses focus on regions and communities within and across Asia that have been at the centre of historical and contemporary forced migrations so as to demonstrate how regional experiences can productively inform wider conceptualization of forced-migration research.