Events — McGill Refugee Research Group

Upcoming Events: Fall 2024

**A guest lecture by Prof. Christina Clark-Kazak (University of Ottawa)**

**Abstract:** Analyzing the Canadian government’s recent responses to displacement in Ukraine, Gaza, Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti and Sudan, this talk demonstrates how social age analysis provides an important lens to understand temporary migration policies formulated in response to humanitarian situations. Contextualizing these contemporary policies against the historical backdrop of temporary protection responses for Hungarians, Czechs and Ugandan Asians, I show how social age assumptions are embedded in the discretionary nature of these ad hoc policies. In particular, the different requirements for a “family anchor” and the variations in definitions of “family” highlight structural inequities, with some Canada-based family members bearing all costs of “humanitarian programs” while the Canadian government funds services for other groups. I argue that differences across the programs also indicate important normative assumptions about the conceptualization and value of family and different age categories within Canadian immigration policy more broadly.

**Fall 2024 Speaker Series**

Please note that all talks are only in-person unless hybrid format specified

**Winter 2024**
**“Safe Third Country Practices as a Tool for Containment of Human Mobility”**

**Abstract:** The “safe third country” concept emerged in the global asylum governance scene in the late 1980s as an effort to prevent secondary movement of refugees, after they flee persecution and find safety at the closest instance possible. Despite being promoted as a responsibility-sharing tool by its proponents, in reality, safe third country practices aggravate the rights violations that refugees face and obstruct their access to asylum. This talk offers a comparative analysis of safe third country practices in the EU-Turkey and Canada-USA contexts, especially in consideration of the recent amendment of Canada-USA Safe Third Country Agreement in 2023. The comparison is based on dynamics surrounding the two asylum spaces and impacts of safe third country practices on mobility trajectories. Parallel efforts in the Global North demonstrate a common pattern in the global asylum regime towards reinforced containment of human mobility.
**Speaker:** Gamze Ovacık, Steinberg Postdoctoral Fellow on Migration Law at McGill University Faculty of Law and at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism
**Discussant:** Audrey Macklin, Professor and Rebecca Cook Chair in Human Rights Law at University of Toronto Faculty of Law
**Chair:** Megan Bradley, Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University Department of Political Science and Institute for the Study of International Development, Coordinator of McGill Refugee Research Group
**Co-sponsored** by the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and the McGill Refugee Research Group
Please register at chrlp.law@mcgill.ca

**Professor Samer Abboud (Villanova University), Categorizing Absence and Return: Syria’s Repatriation Program**

**Abstract:**
How does the Syrian regime categorize Syrian displacement and absence from areas under government control? And how do these forms of categorization impact someone’s ability to return to the country? This presentation addresses these questions and how Syria’s repatriation program materializes forms of exclusion and inclusion that preclude Syrians’ return.

**Winter 2024 Speaker Series**

Please note that all talks are only in-person unless hybrid format specified

Fall 2023

Guest lecture by Prof. James Milner and Mustafa Alio (Carleton University)

“The politics and practice of refugee participation in the governance of the global refugee regime” (November 16, 12pm-1:30pm in Arts 160)

**Talk by Prof. Phillip Frowd**

**Abstract:** This paper examines the transnational politics of datafication in migration management through a case study of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Datafication, such as the automation of border processes, the use of biometrics, and the deployment of large-scale statistical techniques, is increasingly central to the management of migration. Much of the current focus on these processes for migration management is focused on state-level policies or on supranational institutions such as the EU. There is relatively little work on the role of international organizations in this area, despite their well-researched role in setting formal standards and informal expectations around migration and mobility. to make three key arguments. The first is that focusing on the global level of governance yields new insights on the promotion and diffusion of data-intensive practices of migration management. The second argument is that the emerging global context of datafication around border management fits into a broader managerial agenda in which international organizations seize agenda-setting power and act as clearing-houses for datafication projects and ideas. The third portion of the argument is that the IOM’s projects in this area reinforce its role as a service provider and consolidate its emerging role as an orchestrator of data-driven approaches to migration governance. The paper thus contributes to ongoing work on the IOM’s shifting identity as well as interdisciplinary scholarship on the role of data in migration management.

**Bio:** Philippe M. Frowd is an Associate Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His research draws on critical security studies and focuses on emerging transnational forms of governance of security in the Sahel region of West Africa. His research has primarily focused on irregular migration and border control in the region and has been the focus of his latest book Security at the Borders: Transnational Practices and Technologies in West Africa (2018, Cambridge University Press). Philippe also works on the politics of non-state security provision and dynamics of militarization and intervention in the Sahel more broadly. His work has most recently appeared in Third World Quarterly, Geopolitics, and African Affairs. He is an associate editor of Security Dialogue.

**Talk + Screening**

**Thursday October 5 from 6-8pm n Peterson Hall, room 108**
Christian is an Associate Professor in Anthropology at Aarhus University (DK), where he directs the Multimodal Anthropology Lab, and a 2023-2024 Associated Research Fellow at Harvard Film Studies Center.
He will be showing work from two projects, collectively entitled: The City as a Living Archive: Assembling Urban Africa from the Periphery.

Light refreshments will precede ceremonies

**Ushiku (2021) directed by Thomas Ash**

About the documentary: The Ushiku immigration center near Tokyo mainly holds people seeking refuge in Japan. Using a hidden camera, award-winning filmmaker Thomas Ash interviewed inmates there from late 2019. His film publicly accuses Japan's uncompromising refugee policy through one of the country's biggest human rights scandals.

Make it stand out

**Fall 2023 MRRG- Sponsored Series**
**Please note that all talks are only in-person unless hybrid format specified**

Winter 2023

**Frictional Conversations: On Negotiating a Digital Depository of Photographs in Burj Al-Shamali**

Guest lecture by Dr. Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh (Wednesday April 5, 5:00-7:00pm in Peterson Hall 108)

Research Creation with Refugees: A workshop in critical and creative methods (Wednesday April 5, 10:00am-4:45pm in Peterson Hall 108 )- Registration required*

This daylong interdisciplinary workshop hosted by the McGill Refugee Research Group and the Critical Media Lab brings together artists, academics and activists to think critically and rigorously about what it means to produce knowledge with and about refugees. How might areas of inquiry be identified and explored through creative experimentation in photography, film, sound, reading, story, theatre, and archival practice? Discussion will revolve around short, pre-circulated papers that engage diverse examples of interdisciplinary research creation, in an effort to spark critical conversations around methods.

**There are still a few spots remaining, so please register here:** https://www.eventbrite.com/e/research-creation-with-refugees-a-workshop-in-critical-creative-methods-tickets-600746879087

***Panel One: Refugee Youth and Access to Higher Education***
9:45am-11:00am
Hend Alqawasma (PhD candidate, School of Social Work, McGill University) “How Do Recently Arrived Refugee Youth Make Meaning of Their Experience as Participants of the WUSC Program in Montreal? An Exploratory Research Study”
Arianne Maraj-Guitard (PhD candidate, Faculty of Education, McGill University) “Education as a Human Right: Perspectives of Young Adult Refugees in the Quebec Adult Education System”
Rachael Morgan (PhD student, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology) and Anita Kiafar (PhD student, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University) "Supporting Ukrainian Refugee Postsecondary Students’ Mental Health: What Clinicians Need to Know”
*Chair: Alexis Janssen, BA Honors, Art History and WUSC Co-Chair*

***Panel Two: The Socio-Cultural, Economic and Environmental Impacts of Out-Migration and Resettlement***
11:20am-12:25 pm
Ata Senior Yeboah (PhD student, School of Social Work, McGill University) “Contextualizing the Economic, Socio-cultural and Environmental Impacts of Resettlement Projects: Insights from the Bui Hydroelectric Power Dam Project in Ghana”
Catherine Young Zambrano (BA Joint Honours, Departments of Anthropology and Political Science, McGill University) “Memories of a Landscape in San Nicola Da Crissa”
*Chair: Roda Siad, PhD Candidate in Communication Studies and MRRG Graduate Coordinator*
**Afternoon:**
***Panel Three:*** ***Refugee Agency, Protest and Legal Frameworks***
1:30pm-2:45pm
Laurence LeBlanc (BCL/JD, McGill Faculty of Law) “Taking Protests Seriously: What a Mixed Migration Protest can teach us about Global Governance”
Enkhuun Byambadorj (BA Joint Honours in Environment and International Development) “Expanding the Rights-Bearing Capacity of Undocumented Migrants: A Typology of the Interactions Among International Human Rights Law, Nation-States, and Local Governments”
Alessia Mottet (McGill’s BA Hons in International Development and minor in Social Entrepreneurship), Maria Radu (BA Honours, International Development and History), Shona Moreau (BCL/JD, McGill Faculty of Law) and Saadet Serra Hasiloglu (BA in International Development Studies & Liberal Arts) “By-and-for Refugee Inclusion in Law and Policy Making in Quebec: *The Refugee Parliament of Quebec (RPQ)*”
*Chair: Prof. Megan Bradley, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Development Studies and William Dawson Scholar*

***Panel Four: The Politics and Challenges of the Durable Solutions for Refugees***
2:50pm-3:55pm
Irmak Kurtulmus (PhD candidate, Policy Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University) “The Politics of Gender in Durable Solutions to Refugees”
Amen Ben Ahmouda (MA student, Political Science, McGill University) “Towards the Sustainable Economic Integration of Refugees: The Relationship Between the Legal and the Political - The Case of Uganda”
*Chair: Dr.* *Kazue Takamura, Senior Faculty Lecturer, Institute for the Study of International Development*

**Education in Exile: Palestinians and Postwar Regeneration, 1948- 1967**

What is education without a state, and what do the stateless make of it? In the aftermath of the Nakba, a massive infrastructure was built out for Palestinians. This study enters classrooms in the West Bank and Jordan in the early years of expulsion, and weaves everyday stories of students, teachers, administrators and bureaucrats, to show how the dispossessed navigate class mobility and anticolonial possibility. Mitigating both the poison and promise of a pedagogy that aims to erase them, this is a history of how postwar Palestinians reconfigured self and community and generated new forms of social and political capital from desperate material conditions.

Mezna Qato is Margaret Anstee Fellow at Newnham College, and affiliated lecturer in history at the University of Cambridge. She is a recipient of a Spencer Fellowship and is completing a book on the history of education for Palestinians.

**“Border Anxiety in a Globalizing World” (Friday, March 10)**

The Golden Age of globalization has reached an end in the popular and political imagination. In its place has arisen growing anxiety about state borders. What is the evidence of such a shift? What are the causes and consequences? This talk presents a rich array of physical and rhetorical evidence of growing border anxiety, on a global scale. Some anxiety is justified, but some flows from a vague sense of fear about myriad forces and threats beyond state control. When anxious border-related rhetoric seizes center stage, it can have unexpected consequences for politics and policy. Some border threats are of course real, but there should be a sober analysis of targeted approaches to deal with them.
Please note that this event is hybrid. If you would like to join via Zoom, please register here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe9lHoPFTKBzmny13SXWQwWJ6s-zA00x7Z3_XocRW03MGthog/viewform

**Pluralizing Displacement: Precarious Protection, Responsibility-Sharing, and Resettlement Experiences**

**Abstract:** Through a focus on ‘pluralizing displacement,’ this presentation emphasizes three dimensions underscoring Syrian displacement: the engagement of temporary protection regimes, the burgeoning architectures of precarity, and the complexities of remaking home in the resettlement context. It highlights the entanglements of governing regimes in promoting precarious protection and responsibility-sharing, and the prospects for expanding the protection, mobility, and resettlement pathways for displaced people.

**Governing the Displaced: Organized Abandonment from the Camp to the City**

**Abstract:** This talk is centered around my upcoming book *The Displaced* which examines the governance and survival of refugees in Paris and Nairobi. Using Ruth Wilson Gilmore's concept of organized abandonment, I argue that refugees face prevention and self-reliance strategies as two dominant modes of exclusion and inclusion. Based on interviews with government officials, NGOs, refugees, and other private sector actors, this talk understands refugee survival in urban centres on three prongs: shelter, work/entrepreneurship, and political belonging. In so doing, I hope to blur the boundaries between global North and South and place refugee governance in the wider context of neoliberal-led development.

Past Events:

**Spheres of Migration: A Tale of Two Empires from the Latvian Periphery**

Concerns about migration shaped Latvian resistance to Soviet-cum-Russian power for much of the 20th century and into the 21st. When the National Communists of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia tried to assert autonomy from the Communist Party in the 1950s and 1970s, they demanded less immigration of Soviet workers, functionaries, and military personnel. One of the first pieces of legislation adopted by the independent Latvian state in 1992 was a law limiting immigration and calling for the repatriation of military personnel. Having one’s own state, as many Latvians thought about independence from the Soviet Union, meant being in control of migration. But having one’s own state also meant integration into Western political and economic structures, such as the European Union and NATO. This led to a renewed loss of control over migration. Contrary to what the national-liberal elites had feared, namely immigration from the Global South, it was Latvia’s citizens who packed their bags and went to work on Irish mushroom farms, in English meat-packing factories, and on Norwegian fishing ships. In the meantime, Danish, Swedish and other western European investors bought some of the land Latvians had regained as a result of post-Soviet land restitution. In this talk, I examine the shifting patterns and regimes of migration as Latvia left the Soviet-cum-Russian sphere of influence and integrated into “the West.” I consider what these patterns of migration and struggles to control them reveal about post-Cold War geopolitical shifts and the symbolic and political efficacy of claims for sovereignty in the periphery—or on the frontline—of two global empires.

**Ta’al Bachir (Come Tomorrow): The Politics of Waiting for Citizenship**

**Abstract:** When it comes to extending citizenship to some groups, why might ruling political elites say neither “yes” nor “no,” but “wait”? The dominant theories of citizenship tend to recognize clear distinctions between citizens and aliens; either one has citizenship or one does not. Prof Lori will be discussing her book which shows that not all populations are fully included or expelled by a state; they can be suspended in limbo – residing in a territory for protracted periods without accruing citizenship rights. Her in-depth case study of the United Arab Emirates uses new archival sources and extensive interviews to show how temporary residency can be transformed into a permanent legal status. Temporary residency can informally become permanent through visa renewals and the postponement of naturalization cases. In the UAE, temporary residency was also codified into a formal citizenship status through the outsourcing of passports from the Union of the Comoros, allowing elites to effectively reclassify minorities into foreign residents.

**Upcoming Fall Speakers Schedule**

-Friday 21 October, 12:00-1:30, Leacock 429, “Ta’al Bachir (Come Tomorrow): The Politics of Waiting for Citizenship,” Dr. Noora Lori (Assistant Professor of International Relations, Boston University) (co-sponsored with CIPSS)
-Monday 7 November, 12:30-2:00, Peterson 116, “Spheres of migration: A tale of two empires from the Latvian periphery,” Dr. Dace Dzenovska (Associate Professor, Anthropology of Migration, University of Oxford) (co-sponsored with Dept of Anthropology)
-Thursday 27 November, 12:30-2:00, Arts 160 “Canadian Climate Refugees? Fire and Floods in Our Own Backyard,” Dr. Yvonne Su (Assistant Professor, Department of Equity Studies, York University) (co-sponsored with ISID)

**Screening of Oksana Karpovych's Don't Worry, The Doors Will Open**

The Critical Media Lab at McGill department of Anthropology is proud to present a screening of ***Don't Worry, The Doors Will Open*** (2020), by **Oksana Karpovych – Thursday, April 7th at 5:30 pm**, at **Peel 3475**.
The screening is generously supported by the **McGill Refugee Research Group (MRRG)** and all funds will be donated to charities in Ukraine. As we offer a limited number of seats, we kindly ask you to register for this event.
**Synopsis:** Shot over summer and winter seasons on elektrychkas, typical Soviet commuter trains that travel between the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and small provincial towns, DON’T WORRY, THE DOORS WILL OPEN invites us to share a ride with working class, mostly marginalized passengers and vendors. Following people from one grimy wagon to another, from station to station, from day to night, we are immersed in the daily struggles of their lives in a post-Soviet country. DON’T WORRY is an atmospheric and intensely human portrait of Ukrainian society on the move. Filmed during a complicated time, the film is a look at the human condition and an intimate point of view on history of independent Ukraine as it is experienced by the common people. We do not see images of war in the film but feel its presence in the air penetrating our character’s minds and hearts. Today, the trains are worn out. The windows cannot open or close. The toilets don’t work. In winter, the seats are covered with frost. Once aboard the elektrychka, there is an omnipresent fear that the vehicle will break apart. Despite the discomfort, the elektrychka is a space people love and trust because nothing can destroy this piece of Soviet iron.
Watch the film's trailer.

**Souq Stories: Reclaiming the Commons**

**Photographing Daily Life in Palestine’s Historic Markets**
**Opening on March 21, 4:30 pm**
Following the widespread uprisings and unprecedented unity sparked by the Sheikh Jarrah expulsions in East Jerusalem last spring, youth organizations across Palestine opened *Souq Stories*, a photographic installation in and about the historic souqs. *Reclaiming the Commons* is an extension of and meditation on that project, inviting us to imagine Palestine through its markets, to consider the possibilities of public space and the constitution of a body politic. In the face of ceaseless efforts to disarticulate lives spatially (in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the 1948 territories, and the diaspora) and generationally (those expelled in 1948 and those under occupation now), the materials presented here weave together a collective and distinctly Palestinian narrative. Photography is the medium of liberation, the souq the space in which it happens.
***Keynote Address Abstract***
**Infrastructures in/of Commons**
The convergence of capitalism and Israeli colonialism largely constrain and contain collective spaces, foreclose commons, and engender infrastructures of exclusion. And yet, in the face of diminishing resources, prospects, and precarious economic existence, photographs of Palestinian markets do more than just respond to the violence of such conditions, they denote some of the demands of collective life and public assemblage: the right to urban space, the right to be present, the right to be recognized. Souq Stories (the exhibit) and *souq stories* (the relation of images and markets) perform a politics of recognizability and create spaces of assertion.

**“Labour Mobility for Refugees as Complementary Pathway for Admission into the EU: A Pie in the Sky or a Feasible Option” by Dr. Zvezda Vankova**

Please join us on Monday for a guest lecture by Dr. Vankova, postdoctoral fellow at Lund University. The talk is in-person and will take place on **Monday, March 28 from 1:05pm-2:25pm** **in room 316 of the Chancellor Day Hall (McGill’s Faculty of Law).**

**“Open Borders, Local Closures: The Local Politics of Refugee Response” by Prof. Lama Mourad, Carleton University**

**(Friday March 18 from 12:00pm-1:30pm EST)**
*Abstract:* With the largest refugee population per capita in the world, Lebanon hosts at least 1.1 million refugees alongside a local citizen population of approximately four million. In light of what has been called “a policy of no policy” at the central level, municipalities in Lebanon have played an outsized role in the governance of Syrians in the country. Most prominent among municipal policies has been the adoption of discriminatory curfews targeting Syrians. Drawing on 13 months of fieldwork across Lebanon, which included in-depth qualitative case studies of four municipalities and over 120 interviews in Arabic, English, and French, this talk will shed light on how and why these policies emerged across Lebanese municipalities. Curfews, I argue, are explained primarily by local authorities’ desire to project a sense of “governing order,” and that—once in place—these policies diffuse to neighbouring areas as mayors and municipal leaders face greater pressures to act. Over time, curfews take on new ‘roles,’ most importantly as signal of local tensions, which further reinforce their utility to local leaders. This argument forms part of a larger book project, that challenges the state-centric and Global North bias in the study of migration and advances our understanding of subnational migration governance in the Global South.
This event is o-sponsored with the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS) and will
take place on zoom. To register, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/lama-mourad-carleton-university-tickets-244642170317?keep_tld=1

**"Humanitarian Humour and the Self-Advocacy Campaign of Hassan Al Kontar” by Gada Mahrouse (CANCELLED)**
**(Thursday March 10 from 12:30pm-2:00pm EST)**

*Abstract:* This paper contributes to critical humanitarian scholarship on affective regimes of communication (Chouliaraki, 2013) by examining how certain emotional appeals and depictions produce the conditions for compassion in Western societies. Specifically, it focuses on the case of Syrian refugee Hassan Al Kontar. Al Kontar’s case raises many compelling questions about emotions vis-à-vis the politicization of humanizing narratives and their impact on public responses (Kleres, 2010). Through an analysis of the emotional content of his narrative, and drawing from an interdisciplinary analytic that brings together the fields of critical refugee studies, mobility justice studies, and critical race theories, this paper shows how he became an emblematic subject of western compassion. Moreover, using the concept of “migrant citizenships” (Nyers 2015), which emphasizes performative forms of citizenship the paper asks: (1) what types of emotion did he mobilize; (2) how did emotions impact how he was treated; (3) how did his public display of emotions help him to exercise his agency; and (4) what can be learned from the particular emotive ways that his story was circulated?

**“The Transformation of Maritime Search-and-Rescue in the Mediterranean” by Luna Vives**

*Abstract:* Migration across the Mediterranean has led to the scrutiny of search-and-rescue (SAR) logics along the southern European border. In this presentation, I will focus on the Spanish approach to maritime SAR, which has received less attention than other approaches in the region. I use administrative data, budgetary information, and qualitative interviews to discuss the evolution of SASEMAR, the civil and public Spanish SAR agency responsible for addressing emergencies at sea, which has traditionally embraced an expansive interpretation of both humanitarianism and Spain’s legal obligations to protect life at sea. I argue that, in order to seal its border and bring the Spanish SAR system in line with others across the region, the Spanish government has adopted three main strategies: the gradual dismantling of SASEMAR, the externalization of SAR responsibilities to Morocco, and the transfer of SAR decision-making powers to national, supranational, and international agencies with close links to the military. This impacts both the political geography of the Mediterranean and the safety of the people who cross it on their way to Europe.

**Shelter without Shelter: Online screening + discussion with directors Tom Scott-Smith and Mark Breeze,**
**Thursday, February 3, 4 - 5:30pm**

Shelter Without Shelter explores the hopes and challenges involved in providing temporary housing for refugees. Filmed over three years since 2015, this six-part documentary investigates how forced migrants from Syria were sheltered across Europe and the Middle East, ending up in mega-camps, city squats, occupied airports, illegal settlements, requisitioned buildings, flat-pack structures, and enormous architect-designed reception centres. Containing perspectives from the humanitarians who created these shelters as well as the critics who campaigned against them, the documentary reveals the complex dilemmas involved in attempts to house refugees in emergency conditions. Based on research at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, Shelter Without Shelter offers new insights into a universal human experience. We all need shelter, but what is it?
TO ATTEND:
1) Register at https://bit.ly/mrrgshelter for free to access the full documentary.
2) Join us on Feb 3rd at 4:00 PM (EST) for a screening of selected clips and a live discussion with the directors Mark E. Breeze and Tom Scott-Smith.

**MRRG Sponsored Speaker Series (January - April 2022)**

**February 3, 4:00pm-5:30pm**
Mark E. Breeze and Tom Scott-Smith (Oxford).
**February 17, 12:30-2:00pm**
Luna Vives (University of Montreal)
“The Transformation of Maritime Search-and-Rescue in the Mediterranean”
**March 10, 12:30pm- 2:00pm**
Gada Mahrouse (Concordia)
**Humanitarian Humour and the Self-Advocacy Campaign of Hassan Al Kontar**
This paper contributes to critical humanitarian scholarship on affective regimes of communication (Chouliaraki, 2013) by examining how certain emotional appeals and depictions produce the conditions for compassion in Western societies. Specifically, it focuses on the case of Syrian refugee Hassan Al Kontar. Al Kontar’s case raises many compelling questions about emotions vis-à-vis the politicization of humanizing narratives and their impact on public responses (Kleres, 2010). Through an analysis of the emotional content of his narrative, and drawing from an interdisciplinary analytic that brings together the fields of critical refugee studies, mobility justice studies, and critical race theories, this paper shows how he became an emblematic subject of western compassion. Moreover, using the concept of “migrant citizenships” (Nyers 2015), which emphasizes performative forms of citizenship the paper asks: (1) what types of emotion did he mobilize; (2) how did emotions impact how he was treated; (3) how did his public display of emotions help him to exercise his agency; and (4)what can be learned from the particular emotive ways that his story was circulated?

**March 18, 12:00pm-1:30pm**
Lama Mourad (Carleton)
**March 22, Event details TBA**
Exhibition opening at the School of Architecture + panel discussion with Helga Tawil-Souri (New York University)

MRRG October 7 Talk.jpg — **MRRG Talk “Afghanistan Now and Beyond: Refugees and Displacement after the US Withdrawal” (Thursday, October 7 from 3:00-4:30pm EDT)**

This session will feature the research of McGill graduate and post-graduate researchers from the Afghan community. Their respective work deals with a range of issues currently facing the country, including the use of biometrics and the challenges around identification for asylum seekers, the role of women in peacebuilding in a post-Taliban society, and what the recent events mean for women’s rights as well as Canada’s role in responding to the humanitarian crisis and facilitating the settlement and integration of Afghan refugees. Please note this talk will be virtual, and a zoom link will be sent in the newsletter (and made available on the MRRG website).
**Speakers**
Ali Karimi (Postdoctoral Fellow, UPenn), “The Failure of the Biometric State: Digital Identification in Afghanistan”
Safia Amiry (PhD Student, McGill), “20 years of progress for Afghan women: What now?”
Narjes Hashemi (PhD Student, McGill), “Where are Afghan refugees going and how to help with their settlement and integration?”

https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/87391509505?pwd=cnVod1lxY1d4MjF3TG0xdGg4d2hyZz09

MRRG Sponsored Talks September- December 2021

Elizabeth Ellis (Assistant Professor, History, NYU), “The Borders Crossed Us Too: Migrant Justice and Border Crossing in Indigenous North American Communities,” 12:30-2:00, Thursday Sept 23 (co-sponsored with ISID, virtual)

Hiba Bou Akar (Assistant Professor, Columbia), “Sedimented Futures: On Housing and War Displacement in Beirut,” 12:30-2:00, Monday October 25 (co-sponsored with the department of Anthropology, virtual)

Lucy Mayblin (Associate Professor, Sociology, Sheffield), “Channel Crossings: Offshoring Asylum and the Afterlife of Empire in the Dover Strait,” 12:30-2:00, Thursday November 25 (co-sponsored with ISID, virtual)

Deniz Duruiz (visiting researcher, McGill), “Racializing Skill: Kurdish Farmworkers and Syrian Refugees in Turkey,” 12:30-2:00, Thursday December 2 (co-sponsored with ISID, virtual)

Winter 2021:

Humanitarian Boundaries? Theorizing Disruptive Institutional Change and Governance During Response to the War in Syria - Featuring by Emily Scott, March 26, 2021, 12:00-1:30 pm—In partnership with the Center for International Peace and Security Studies. More information can be found on their website.
Screening of Cathy Crane's Crossing Columbus - Monday, February 15, 2021 - 12:30 - 14:30 pm, co-hosted with the Department of Anthropology at McGill.
Presentation by Sawsan Abou Zainedin, Syrian architect and urban planner, on Syrian refugee returns. – Friday February 12, 2021 – 10:00 am, co-hosted with ISID at McGill.
January 20 & 23, 2021: An online talk and simulation with Matthew Stevens of Lessons Learned Simulations and Training.
- To watch a recording of the talk, click here.