Join us for the first event in our Speaker Series on Understanding Liminality and Legal Precarity, featuring Prof. Helena Zeweri. She will present her talk, “The Enduring Effects of Deterrence Border Regimes: Afghan Hazara Narratives of Social Dislocation in Australia.”
This event will be held in a hybrid format. Lunch will be served at 11:45 AM in Dodson Room. The lecture will start at 12:15 PM and wrap up at 1:45 PM.
Abstract
In Australia, deterring ‘irregular migration’ encompasses a range of mechanisms, including placing migrants who take sea routes into offshore detention and prolonged temporary legal regimes. This talk analyzes the cumulative effects of deterrence that last well after migrants who arrive via boat are granted legal recognition as refugees. It does so through centering Afghan Hazara refugees’ experiences of prolonged temporary status as a question of personhood. By centering the framework of intersubjectivity, Dr. Zeweri argue that for those who have transitioned from temporary visas to permanent status in Australia, the cumulative effects of prolonged legal precarity have irreparably damaged prospects for family reunification and, by extension, refugees’ senses of personhood. Such experiences prompt a rethinking of deterrence as a spatially and temporally expansive regime of social dislocation.
About Helena Zeweri
Helena Zeweri is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She was drawn to the field of anthropology because of its capacity to examine how people navigate relations of power in everyday life. She believes in the power of ethnography to capture the nuances of people’s multi-layered experiences of systems, institutions, and policies. Dr. Zeweri completed her doctoral studies in Cultural Anthropology at Rice University, where she conducted research on migrant-targeted social welfare policies in Melbourne, Australia, observing the everyday work of family violence prevention workers, policymakers, and migrant community leaders. Following her PhD, she spent two years as an Assistant Professor (general faculty) in the University of Virginia’s Global Studies Program. At UBC, she teaches courses on culture, power, and politics; diasporic belonging; ethnographies of Australia; and the relationship between empire and migration.
