Understanding Afghan migration across different times and contexts Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre

11 May 2023

This symposium brings together four papers from five speakers on different aspects of Afghan migration. 

Dr María López and Prof. Louise Ryan ‘What are you doing here?’: Narratives of border crossings among diverse Afghans going to the UK at different times

Our talk presents findings of our research project on Afghan migration in the UK. We address the narratives of Afghans who arrived in the UK at different times and through different routes. Building on the emerging body of literature that uses ‘journey as a narrative’ and drawing upon our novel dataset, we analyse how diverse migrants tell their stories and present agency within contexts of extreme hazards to achieve their imagined future. As well as those evacuated from Kabul airport in 2021, we also interviewed participants who travelled via insecure routes over land and sea, often taking months or even years and involving expensive people smugglers. Moreover, applying a spatio-temporal lens, we advance understanding of the intersection of place and time in how Afghans travelling to the UK, including recent evacuees, are framed differently with resultant consequences for how border crossings are negotiated and narrated. In so doing, we complicate simplistic categories of deserving versus undeserving, genuine versus fraudulent, evacuees versus irregularised migrants. 

María López is a Reader in Sociology and Deputy Director of the Global Diversities and Inequalities research centre at London Metropolitan University. Her research looks at the dynamics of violence led by governments and state forces against migrant women and LGBTQ+ in Latin America and the UK. She is the author of Homosexuality and Invisibility in Revolutionary Cuba (2015) and Gender Violence in Twenty-First-Century Latin American Women’s Writing (with Hart, 2022), as well as journal articles and book chapters. 

Louise Ryan is a Senior Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre at London Metropolitan University. She is the author of numerous highly cited articles in journals such as Sociology, Social Networks and Sociological Review, and many books on migration, including Gendering Migration (with Webter, 2008); Migrant Capital (with Erel and D’Angelo, 2015) and most recently, Migration and Social Networks: relocations, relationships and resources (2023) 

Dr Hameed Hakimi – Exploring inter-diaspora dynamics among Afghans in the West in the aftermath of August 2021 evacuations from Afghanistan. 

Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, much of the Western discourse – both in academia and through mediums such as the media and activistic forums – has centred on the plight of Afghans both inside Afghanistan, especially women, and also those who are on the migration pathway. What is often missed from these discussions is a deeper dive into the evolving nature of inter-diasporic dynamics among the Afghans in the West, including integration, cultural norms and ethnopolitical issues. This presentation attempts to unpack some of these tensions and dynamics and emphasises the need for further critical research. 

Dr Hameed Hakimi is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House in London and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC. As a member of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, his interdisciplinary doctorate at the Department of Sociology analyses the bottom-up and subjective conceptualisations of security with a focus on migrants’ lived experiences in Europe. 

Alexander Ephrussi – Navigating Deportation – Performativity and Materiality among Afghans in Turkey. 

This talk explores practices drawn upon by migrants to avoid apprehension by the police amidst Turkey’s increasing deportation campaigns. It focuses on certain groups of “undocumented” Afghan migrants in Turkey and their use of a set of material, linguistic and embodied practices to navigate the urban landscape of Istanbul and avoid arrest and subsequent deportation. I examine the knowledge production and exchange among migrants, and particularly how it relates to their understanding of their position in Turkey’s highly politicised debate around migration and selective national (dis)belonging and Turkey’s relations to its neighbouring countries. 

Alexander Ephrussi has been a doctoral student at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, since September 2021. He holds a master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University College London, acquired in 2018 with a thesis in anthropology of migration about Afghan migrations to Germany since 2015. He completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Oxford in 2016, reading anthropology and archaeology. 

Dr Ceri Oeppen – The Lived Experience of Displacement and Mutual Support 

Afghans in Pakistan are one of the largest protracted displacement populations in the world. Based on recent mixed-methods fieldwork amongst Afghans and their neighbours in Haripur, Peshawar, and Chitral, this presentation reflects on the socioeconomic context of recent arrivals of Afghans to Pakistan (since the Taliban takeover of government in 2021). Many of these ‘new arrivals’ have been displaced before, including having previously sought protection in Pakistan. They are arriving in Pakistan and receiving minimal support from the international community, often having to rely on mutual support from co-ethnics who are themselves living precarious lives. This presentation will reflect on the many ways displacement-affected people support each other, as well as the limits to that support. 

Dr Ceri Oeppen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and Co-Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), at the University of Sussex, UK. She has done research with the Afghan diaspora for almost two decades, including ethnographic fieldwork in India, the USA, the UK and Norway. She is co-editor of ‘Beyond the “wild tribes”: Understanding modern Afghanistan and its diaspora’. The content of the presentation was developed in partnership with colleagues at the University of Peshawar – Prof. Abdul Rauf, Prof. Shahida Aman, and Dr Ayub Jan.