I am a Migrant

I moved for the first time with my family when I was three years old, for a typical reason often described as “economic opportunity.” This meant, in my father’s case, an editorial position at the newspaper in the city where he was born and raised -- what is known as ...
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I am a Migrant

On Refugees and Innocence

Innocence is now the key qualifier for someone who claims to be a refugee. Paradoxically, as part of this moralized regime, innocence is also claimed by those who grant asylum. The qualification that refugees must be seen as innocent can change their fate at different points. Those requesting asylum may ...
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On Refugees and Innocence

The Climate-Migration-Industrial Complex

This complex is composed of private companies who profit by securitizing nation-states from the effects of climate-related events, including migration. This includes private detention centers, border construction companies, surveillance technology consultants and developers, deportation and transportation contractors, and a growing army of other subcontractors profiting from insecurity more broadly. Every ...
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The Climate-Migration-Industrial Complex

Calais, After the Jungle

In 2016, the Jungle camp was home to an estimated 10,000 people and was largely self-built by both displaced people and volunteers working on the site, with little state or NGO intervention. Before the camp was cleared in November 2016, I had set out to explore the ways image-making practices ...
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Calais, After the Jungle

From Offshore Detention of Refugees to Indigenous Incarceration

Well before this crisis, conditions in Australia’s offshore camps were described as “torture” by medical professionals, Amnesty International, and refugees themselves. Médecins Sans Frontières reported “catastrophic effects on …mental health” that are “among the worst that MSF has ever seen.” Twelve refugees have died while held offshore. Benham Satah, a Kurdish refugee who witnessed ...
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From Offshore Detention of Refugees to Indigenous Incarceration

Climate Change and Forced Migration

People are displaced every second, and often by environmental calamities

Although most displaced people will not cross an international border, many will -- and their legal status can be precarious. Generally, they will not qualify as refugees under the Refugee Convention, which protects people with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or ...
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Climate Change and Forced Migration

Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

How States Evade their Protection Obligation

Zolberg observed that regulating migration at the port of embarkation abroad “is now so familiar that we tend to underestimate its radically innovative character and its fundamental importance in regulating world-wide movement.” In Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, I show how modern remote control has become a ...
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Remote Control of Asylum Seekers

Grassroots Asylum

Escaping the Statist Paradigm

Because the asylum framework is constructed upon such subjective criteria, and is administered by states themselves, the decisions about who receives protection are stuck within a statist paradigm. Asylum is conceived of as a gift of the state, over which the state has discretion in how requests are considered. And ...
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Grassroots Asylum

The Epistemology of the Refugee: 30 Years after Zolberg

Introduction to the Zolberg Institute Special Issue

Zolberg, Suhrke, and Aguayo’s analysis is centered around the question who is recognized as a refugee -- still a contested issue in today’s public discourse, as people arriving at the southern U.S. border are alternatively categorized as “refugees” or “economic migrants.” Although the majority of migrants at the southern border ...
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The Epistemology of the Refugee: 30 Years after Zolberg

Lockstitch Lives

Migrants in the Megacity

Yogesh is one of the people you meet in Lockstitch Lives – Migrants in the Megacity. This interactive documentary, produced by Society for Labour and Development and HELM Studio, transports you to the neighborhoods of Gurgaon, where you witness the rugged daily realities of scores of families like Yogesh’s. Using 360-degree multimedia, Virtual Reality, photography ...
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Lockstitch Lives