Having split my undergraduate years between migration-related fieldwork and the study of economic growth theory, I was fascinated by the extent to which language and geographical bias shaped social science research. My subsequent creative nonfiction Master’s at NTU explored some of the resulting gaps through a travel-based personal narrative of migrating between Kerala, Singapore, and the US. My PhD work now tries to go beyond that critique of the global as imagined out of the Anglosphere, by searching for alternative regional cosmopolitanisms. I specifically attempt to reimagine refuge through the narratives that surround oil, focusing on the experiences of the Malayali diaspora in the Persian Gulf and the Tamil diaspora in Malaya, while holding onto English as a necessary language of translation between three regions. The patterns of industrialization around the Indian Ocean region, the resulting migrations and terms of stay, and the possible consequences for those displaced by emissions-driven climate events, form the core of my critical-creative dissertation.