The researcher will investigate the relations between violence and citizenship in refugee resettlement. Violence -- whether political and physical, or unrecognized and rendered invisible -- permeates the experience of forced migrations and displacement, shaping and defining every phase of refugee resettlement processes. It is of paramount importance, therefore, to examine how violence operates in the lived experiences of citizenship as refugees resettle into host societies of asylum. This research will investigate this violence-citizenship nexus through an ethnographic study of resettlement and asks: (1) how the many and wide-ranging forms of violence refugees experience in their forced migration impacts their embodiment of citizenship; (2) how the formation and embodiment of host country citizenship might be a violent process; (3) and whether refugees articulate alternative imaginations of home, belonging and citizenship beyond the dominant confines of host country citizenship, and how.
To obtain empirical data, the researcher will employ a mixture of social science research methods during field research including semi-structured interviews, life-history interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis. This study contributes both theoretical and empirical insights into conceptions of citizenship beyond the juridical-political possessions of and claims to status and rights. It argues for a broader conceptualization that includes people's sense of belonging in the political entity and social body. Particularly, because violence permeates the experience of forced migrations shaping refugee resettlement processes, this study illuminates the active role of violence in the conception and embodiment of citizenship, and will offer insights to similar processes at work in other places where refugees are resettled within the citizen-body. This award will also support the scientific training of a promising graduate student.
