Extended Entrapment: Afghan Migrant Precarity, Illegality and Deportability

This was a talk by Baran Fakhri on Afghan migrant labour and the social conditions and impact of protracted displacement.

What renders Afghan migrants detainable, deportable, and exploitable labour in their displacement? What extends this position across time and space? To answer this question, Baran Fakhri draws on their ethnographic research among Afghan migrants, and follows them in their journeys from Afghanistan to Iran, Türkiye, and Europe. 

Speaker:

Baran Fakhri is a doctoral candidate and lecturer in sociology at SFU. In their doctoral research, they follow Afghan migrants in their ‘clandestine’ migration journeys from Afghanistan to Iran, Turkey, and (West) Europe, or what these migrants refer to as “the Game.” Fakhri uses ethnographic methods to explore their experiences of borders, ‘illegality’, and labour before, through the course of, and after “the Game.” Their research areas are ‘irregular’ migration and labour, refuge and asylum, and border violence with a focus on memory, refugee (political) subjectivity, and forced migration temporalities (waiting and uncertainty).

Discussant and Moderator:

Monica Yousofi is an M.A. student in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. She also received her BA in Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests lie at the intersections of diaspora and migration, digital media, gender/feminist studies, and social justice. Her master’s thesis explores digital feminist activism by Afghan female refugees in Canada and how they advocate for women’s and girls’ education rights in Afghanistan.