All events will take place virtually from 12:00pm to 1:30pm US Eastern Time.
All events will take place virtually from 12:00pm to 1:30pm US Eastern Time.
Queer Refugees/Queering Refugee Studies
This panel places queer refugee experiences and queer refugee studies at the forefront of larger discussions of political asylum, global or transnational perceptions of queerness, and overlapping systems of governance. Rather than treating queer refugees as exceptional or marginal to refugee studies, we explore how queerness is central to the formation of refugee subjects, border regimes, and state technologies.
Midnight Traveler: Uncertain Journeys to and through EU
This event will focus on the film Midnight Traveler, a 2019 documentary filmed on cell phone cameras by a family of filmmakers, whose quest for political asylum takes them from Afghanistan to Europe. This documentary is a first-hand account of displacement and border crossing, providing insights into the cruelties of border regimes and systems of refugee governance.
This panel focuses broadly on the ways that refugees and other migrants from the Middle East to Europe experience and/or respond to discrimination and exclusion. We hope to better understand how both new and old forms of racism, Islamophobia, Orientalism, and other processes of differentiation shape the experiences of migrants, and we are especially interested in new perspectives that the lens of race brings to the study of Middle Eastern migrants in the EU.
Refugees and the "Crisis" of States:
Rethinking Border Regimes and the State Technologies in the EUInstead of a refugee "crisis" that often frames refugees as the problem, this panel locates the problem with existing states and border regimes. We seek to understand the state and state-making practices through refugee experiences. We ask what we learn about the shortcomings of current systems of governance and territoriality through an examination of state-refugee interactions and state policies targeting refugee populations.
Learning, Teaching, and Community-Building with Refugees
This roundtable brings together scholars, activists, and NGO volunteers to discuss how to learn from and with refugees, teach about refugees, and engage with refugee communities. What are the strategies for resisting the racialization and marginalization of refugees and for developing an appreciation of refugee experiences, knowledge, and contributions to societies? What interventions in research, in the classroom, and in community organizing are required to promote ethical engagements with refugees and to maximize benefits flowing from these engagements to refugees and their communities?