We are a group of undergrads taking a class in critical refugee studies to grapple with questions about what it means to be a refugee, or to be classified as such. In this class, we have learned to interrogate culturally dominant assumptions about who and where and how refugees are, in order to think through the political motives and effects of the very production of the “refugee” category.

Unpacking the concept of the “refugee” only reveals the geopolitical forces and international norms that create the need for such a category, while opening up the possibility that these forces and norms are mutable and thus not as totalizing as powers invested in their perpetuity would like us to think they are. In thinking through refugees and refugee-ness, we continue to return to the agency enacted by people who seek to define their own relationship to migration, borders, nationhood, and land.

 

This site seeks to share some of the critical frameworks this class has offered us in order to broaden our conversation beyond the bounds of the classroom. We hope that these frameworks might help people better interrogate their own situated-ness in relation to contemporary and historical geopolitical events and trends, and to the events and media featured on this site. We would love to speak to our readers about their reactions to the subject matter discussed here. Please feel free to contact us with your thoughts!