Helena Zeweri is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and Faculty Affiliate at the UBC Centre for Migration Studies where she coordinates the Borders Research Group. Helena’s first book, Between Care and Criminality: Marriage, Citizenship, and Family in Australian Social Welfare (2024, Rutgers University Press) is an ethnography of how family violence prevention becomes framed as an immigrant problem in Australia.

My research investigates the lived experiences of forcibly displaced people as they navigate contemporary border regimes, with a particular focus on Australia and the United States. My work examines how Muslim immigrant communities and Afghan refugees in particular experience the intersection of displacement, empire, and the global securitization of borders. My first book Between Care and Criminality: Marriage, Citizenship, and Family in Australian Social Welfare (2024, Rutgers University Press) examined the intersection of social welfare, securitized borders, and the criminal justice system through Muslim immigrant communities’ experiences of a recent forced marriage prevention law and policy. My new book project analyzes the colonial histories, geographies and entanglements of migration deterrence in Australia and the United States. Across these projects, I also examine Afghan diasporic political life through the lens of empire and securitized borders, focusing on how diasporas navigate their status in imperial regimes, and the political possibilities that emerge therein.