Through an engagement with asylum legislation, legal theory and ethics, this study argues that the exclusionary culture of host nations casts asylum seekers as contemporary incarnations of the infrahuman object of colonial sovereignty. The book includes readings of the work of asylum seekers, postcolonial authors and filmmakers, which are framed by the work of postcolonial theorists in order to institute what Spivak calls a 'step beyond' postcolonial studies; one that carries with it the insights and limitations of the discipline as it looks to new ways for postcolonial studies to engage with the world.