Launch Event: Migrant Stories from Qatar
2025-11-10 13:00 - 14:00 (Asia/Qatar)
Join us for the launch of the Migrant Stories from Qatar project website!

This project brings together oral histories from migrant workers across Qatar, offering rare insight into their lived experiences and contributions to the country’s social and economic fabric. The six principal investigators will reflect on the research process, its findings, and the broader significance of archiving migrant voices in Qatar, an endeavor that seeks to reframe narratives of labor, belonging, and memory in the Gulf.

More info

On November 10, the Center for International and Regional Studies held the official launch of the Migrant Stories in Qatar project website, a digital platform dedicated to preserving and sharing the lived experiences of migrant workers in Qatar. Conceived as a long–term public resource, the project curates oral histories, testimonials, and personal narratives that illuminate the social worlds, aspirations, and challenges of the migrant communities whose labor has shaped the contemporary Gulf. It seeks to democratize knowledge production by placing migrant workers not merely as subjects of study, but as active contributors and curators of their own histories.

Zahra Babar, the project emerged from intimate exchanges with migrants and from frustration with how their voices are routinely mediated, silenced, or reduced to anonymous data points. The website functions as a counter archive that democratizes knowledge production by coproducing narratives with migrant workers themselves and making these stories accessible to migrants, their families, and wider publics.

Speakers at the launch highlighted the project’s methodological, ethical, and political stakes. Trish Kahle and Nadya Sbaiti situated the archive within broader efforts to document global south histories at a time when formal state archives remain inaccessible, arguing that migrant narratives reveal migrants not as marginal to the Gulf, but as central to its social and economic order.

Noha Aboueldahab drew attention to the global significance of these testimonies, observing that themes of law, its absence, and its uneven application recur across the interviews. She argued that oral histories offer multiple truths that complicate existing legal narratives and have important implications for fields such as international law and transitional justice. Integrating such testimonies into legal analysis, she suggested, could transform understandings of rights, accountability, and lived experience.

The project also involves extensive technical and linguistic labor. Suzi Migani, responsible for recording and editing the English–language podcasts, spoke about the logistical challenges of conducting interviews and the delicate process of editing without inadvertently shaping the narrative. She explained that the platform provides two versions of each interview: a full recording with only identifying details removed, and a shorter public podcast episode of approximately fifteen minutes. Misba Bhatti, who leads editing in hindustaani, described the complexity of translation and the responsibility to convey meaning and emotion with accuracy and integrity.

Together, these interventions articulate Migrant Stories in Qatar as both an archive and a collaborative intellectual project that reclaims authorship for migrant workers in and beyond Qatar.

CIRS Lunch Talk: Masterclass with Professor Arjun Appadurai on "Global Cultural Flows"
2025-11-11 13:00 - 14:00
In the 1990’s, the world began to see a massive growth in transnational traffic in images, ideologies and commodities, a process which popularized the term globalization. Today, almost four decades later, the world order is multipolar, highly unstable and full of obstacles to free cultural flows. How can we interpret these changes?

Hosted by CIRS, in collaboration with the Indian Ocean Studies Working Group, this masterclass brings together scholars and students for an engaging discussion on the dynamics of globalization and cultural movement. Renowned anthropologist Arjun Appadurai will reflect on how people, objects, and ideas circulate across borders, and how imagination, media, and markets shape these flows. Drawing on his influential works Modernity at Large, The Social Life of Things, Fear of Small Numbers, and Banking on Words Professor Appadurai will offer a framework for understanding disjuncture, modernity and power in the present moment.

Laboring to Keep the Dead Alive: Commemoration and Social Reproduction in the Kurdish Movement
2025-11-13 13:00 - 14:00
Speaker: Marlene Schäfers, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Utrecht University

On November 13, CIRS hosted a lunch talk in collaboration with the Critical Security Studies Hub at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University, titled “Labouring to Keep the Dead Alive: Commemoration and Social Reproduction in the Kurdish Movement.”

In this talk, Dr Marlene Schäfers explored how the Kurdish movement understands and mobilizes martyrdom as a form of labour that sustains the community. Drawing on examples of funerals, memorial ceremonies, social media tributes, and the production of “martyr albums,” she showed that these practices constitute a vital mode of reproductive labour, one that preserves continuity and identity when biological kinship cannot be relied upon.

What emerged clearly is that these acts of remembrance are not peripheral or decorative. They are central to how the movement reproduces itself. In contexts where traditional forms of kinship or biological reproduction cannot be relied upon, especially in guerrilla camps marked by precarity and constant threat, memory becomes a primary means of sustaining life. The speaker drew attention to the idea that narration itself becomes a reproductive act. Each story, each obituary, each ceremony extends the presence of the dead into the lives of the living. Through this narrative labour, the community cultivates what one might call descendants or extended selves, people whose identities form through their attachment to martyrs and to the struggle they represent.

A striking quote from the presentation captured this ethos: “We have learned that there are other ways of multiplying.” In other words, the reproduction of the community does not depend on producing biological offspring. Instead, it comes from producing affective ties, political commitment, and a shared sense of continuity. As one Kurdish interlocutor explained, “If you go to Kurdistan, to Rojava, and ask who Martyr Zîlan is, everyone will tell you. In this way martyrdom becomes a means of reproducing the existence of the people, and of the person herself.” Martyrs do not disappear; their memory generates new forms of political life.

The presentation also highlighted how internationalist volunteers in Rojava engage with this culture of martyrdom. For many of them, the emotional and ethical demands of this form of commemoration require a departure from liberal Western assumptions that individual life is the highest good. Instead, they are encouraged to adopt a long-term, historical view: to understand their lives as part of a continuum that includes those who fought before them and those who will continue the struggle after. This shift in orientation is both necessary and unsettling. It asks individuals to situate their grief within a broader collective horizon.

This does not mean that death becomes easy. On the contrary, participants repeatedly acknowledged that death remains bitter. One writer described rebelling against each new announcement of martyrdom, asking, “Why is there death? Are we condemned to lose our beautiful friends forever?” Even language seems insufficient. “No single word does justice to them,” another wrote. The task of writing about the dead becomes a dilemma: if one writes, the attempt feels inadequate; if one does not write, the memory risks disappearing. This tension is precisely what pushes many to take up the pen again, despite what they describe as their own lack of skill. Writing becomes a moral responsibility.

Ultimately, the speaker argued that martyrdom in the Kurdish movement is not only a political symbol. It is a mechanism of social reproduction, a way of keeping the community alive under conditions of war, displacement, and uncertainty.

Article by Maryam Daud, Administrative Assistant at CIRS

Marlene Schäfers is associate professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, voice and memory, and the politics of death and the afterlife. She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey, was published with the University of Chicago Press in 2023 and awarded the annual Book Prize of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association in 2024.

Migration Studies from the Global South: Rethinking Theory and Method Workshop
2026-01-11 08:00 - 17:00
On November 16 and 17, 2025, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar (GUQ) held a brainstorming session under its research initiative Migration Studies from the Global South: Rethinking Theory and Method. This inaugural meeting brought together scholars and practitioners of migration from the Global South to explore key themes and suggest future research directions. The main themes that emerged from collective sessions and focus groups emphasized a shift towards decolonized, context-specific, and migrant-centric approaches. Throughout the discussions, participants consistently highlighted the need to move beyond Eurocentric perspectives and established categories in migration studies.

The discussion began with a focus on “State Formation, Sovereignty, and Borders.” This session explored how state formation, sovereignty, and borders influence migration patterns. Participants examined why people undertake irregular migration, how migrants cope with challenges, and the role of solidarity and agency in navigating policy obstacles and structural inequalities. The session reimagined sovereignty as a shared concept, questioning its traditional definition, and explored a decolonial perspective on borders, including pre-state migrant political communities. Notably, the focus shifted from receiving states to origin states in migration integration, analyzing sending states’ motivations and migrants’ responses. Discussions covered the Kafala system, theories of the state from the Global South, and challenges to sovereignty through social and cultural dynamics. The session also addressed gender and borders, development finance through diaspora capital, and the complexities of regular and irregular mobilities. Participants emphasized understanding migrant operations at a micro-level, utilizing digitalization, and critically assessing knowledge production in migration studies.

The second session, “Decolonization, Race, and Nationalism,” investigated power modalities, resistance forms, and research methods in migration. The session examined how race and categories shape belonging and wider power structures. The discussion emphasized ‘de-exceptionalizing’ the Gulf region and examined the continuity of colonial power structures through a postcolonial lens on migration. Anti-trafficking policies were scrutinized for blurring consent, differentiating inadequately between trafficking and smuggling, and failing to account for migrants’ coping strategies with coercion. The session stressed the need for decolonizing research through alternative methods and indigenous knowledge while addressing structural inequalities and the power of negotiation. Participants emphasized that decolonization, race, and nationalism carry different meanings across contexts, highlighting the need for both intellectual and institutional decolonization. The definition of the Global South and its role as the “majority world” were also discussed, alongside global mobility, passports, and using social media to amplify migrant voices.

In the next session, “The Problem of Migration Categories,” participants critically analyzed the impact of migration categories, advocating for new vocabularies and a “demigration” of migration studies. The unit of analysis was questioned, and regional variations in existing categories were highlighted, particularly challenging the legal versus illegal distinction as unconventional. A core focus was the need for “categories from below,” advocating for local, indigenous classifications that reflect migrants’ lived experiences and agency rather than state-imposed definitions. The group critiqued white versus non-white binaries and the homogenization of categories for specific jobs. Participants also differentiated between categorization and classification, emphasizing the unstable and evolving nature of these categories and the importance of understanding their contextual meanings.

In the “Identity, Belonging, and Citizenship” session, the discussion explored how racial capitalism constructs identities, often deeming people as “surplus” and producing “hyper mobile citizens.” Participants examined race, class, and identity as intertwined characteristics of citizenship while acknowledging the complex self-identification of people on the move. The discussion included carceral migration, detailing detention tactics and prison-industrial complexes that limit movement. Participants stressed rethinking the citizenship-belonging nexus, questioning traditional notions of loyalty and civic attachment, and contrasting the perceived value of a “strong passport” with actual belonging. Migrant identity mobility, including migrant capital and onward migration, was also analyzed. The session differentiated between “desirable” and “surplus” migrants, critiqued homogeneous categories, and sought new language beyond “blue collar” terms to define migrants. Participants also addressed how migration impacts family structures, called for a post-nationalist liberal theory of citizenship, viewed remittances as a form of belonging, and highlighted the role of networks in providing safety and security.

In the session “Labor, Capitalism, and Political Economy of Migration,” participants examined theories of migration states in the Global South, including nationalization, neoliberal, and developmental approaches, and their impact on sending countries’ economies, with particular attention to the gendered dimensions of remittances. The discussion highlighted the need for better theories on return migration, focusing on reintegration and communication with policymakers. Destination imaginaries were explored, including the evolving perception of the West as a dream destination, transient migration, and alternative routes. Remittances were critically analyzed as both a politically engineered necessity that can create dependency but also as a resource with social, human, and political value. The session also addressed tracking money flows, including reverse remittances and debt circulation, and the challenges of measuring remittances, their household impacts, taxation effects, and diverse uses.

In the next session, “Unpacking Migration and Development,” participants examined the often assumed link between migration and development, labeling it Eurocentric and non-causal. They highlighted the need to rethink this nexus through social transformation and human capabilities while exploring informal economies and their bi-directional impacts. The session sought a Global South epistemology for migration and development, focusing on social processes and knowledge production. Participants highlighted remittances as crucial, often exceeding foreign direct investments, and discussed diaspora contributions to national development through various forms. Climate migration was introduced as a new development issue, linking climate change, security, and human movement. The session questioned restrictions on free movement and promoted using regional knowledge for solutions. Participants critiqued “white saviorism” in migration development and emphasized the practical application of lived experiences. The discussion aimed for a ground-up vision of development, advocating for alternative lexicons and challenging the argument that development reduces migration.

For the session focused on “Gendered Experiences of Migration and Mobility,” participants highlighted the lack of gender-focused policies and data, which renders female migration largely invisible. They emphasized reclaiming human trafficking as a gendered issue vital for migration studies and advocated for research beyond traditional family units. The session highlighted how reintegration often neglects female returnees’ vulnerabilities, urging policies tailored to their specific needs. Participants critiqued governance’s legal focus for overlooking the care economy and transnational care networks, challenging the assumption of women as domestic caregivers regardless of professional background. Data indicate that women send remittances more frequently and in larger amounts than men, often also serving as primary recipients in origin countries and efficiently managing household finances. However, methodological gaps persist, with insufficient data disaggregated by gender and age. The discussion also addressed phenomena such as “self-deportation” triggered by policy changes, gender disparities in digital platforms, and the role of social media in increasing visibility. Migration was considered both a form of protection from and a context for violence. The session highlighted female migrants’ life cycles, the rise of mail-order brides, and the effects of male return on women’s empowerment. It further emphasized the importance of pre- and post-departure orientation and the need to recognize diverse family structures, including single mothers.

In the last session, “Conflict and Climate Mobilities,” participants highlighted the need for community-centric solutions in conflict and climate induced mobilities while addressing citizenship and belonging during displacement. The discussion examined the 1951 Convention’s relevance, advocating for refugees’ self-definition and re-evaluating classification systems. Localized knowledge is crucial for climate mobilities, with participants acknowledging that displacement often stems from both climate change and conflict. The session highlighted trapped populations, such as those with disabilities, who cannot relocate. Participants emphasized communal efforts, in preparing for and reacting to climate events. The health consequences of climate change were also explored, stressing sending states’ and embassies’ roles in awareness and preparedness.

The discussions from this workshop will inform a series of CIRS-led projects, fostering studies and publications on migration that advance innovative theoretical and empirical approaches in and of the Global South.

To view the working group agenda, click here

To read the participants’ biographies, click here

Participants and Discussants:

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, Georgetown University in Qatar

Idil Akinci, University of Edinburgh

Haya Al Noaimi, Northwestern University in Qatar

Hessa Alnuaimi, University of Sharjah

Zahra Babar, CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar

Misba Bhatti, CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar

Maryam Daud, CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar

Denisse Delgado Vázquez, Georgetown University

Priya Deshingkar, University of Sussex

Bina Fernandez, University of Melbourne

Amanda Garrett, Georgetown University in Qatar

Noor Hussain, CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar

Neelima Jeychandran, Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar

Syed Taha Kaleem, PhD candidate at Brandeis University

Leander Kandilige, University of Ghana

Anju Mary, New York University Abu Dhabi

Themrise Khan, Independent Researcher

Hasan Mahmud, Northwestern University in Qatar

Suzi Mirgani, CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar

Laila Omar, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Linda Adhiambo Oucho, African Migration and Development Policy Centre (AMADPOC)

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Princeton University

Zarqa Parvez, Georgetown University in Qatar

Md Mizanur Rahman, Qatar University

Dina Taha, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Sabreen Taha, CIRS, Georgetown University in Qatar

Brenda S.A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore (NUS)

Meron Zeleke, University in Ethiopia

Article by Misba Bhatti, Research Analyst at CIRS

Africana Studies Across Regions: In Conversation with Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and Professor Akintunde Akinade
2026-01-22 13:00 - 14:00
In Conversation with Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and Professor Akintunde Akinade

What does Africana Studies look like depending on where it is practiced? This lunch talk brings scholars into conversation on how institutional location, disciplinary training, and regional context shape the questions, methods, and stakes of Africana Studies. The discussion considers the relationship between scholarship and community, and how recognition, accountability, and relevance vary across contexts.

On January 22nd, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, a scholar of anthropology and Africana Studies at the University of Michigan, in conversation with Professor Akintunde Akinade, Professor of Theology at Georgetown University in Qatar. The dialogue explored the intersections of theology, Africana Studies, pedagogy, and resistance within increasingly hostile academic environments. The conversation began with both scholars reflecting on their experiences teaching liberation theology and Africana Studies, with Professor Akinade sharing that after nearly 30 years of teaching, he remains passionate about doing “theology for the people” and moving students beyond Eurocentric frameworks to engage with theologies from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. He described teaching a course on liberation theologies at GU-Q and noted that students are responsive and engaged, coming to class ready to move beyond dogma and think critically.

The discussion outlined the challenges of teaching in the current political climate, particularly around issues of white supremacy and institutional resistance. Professor Akinade shared a powerful teaching moment from his recent class where he defined white supremacy as sin, explaining that from a theological perspective, sin is separation—separation between humanity and divinity, but in the context of white supremacy, it manifests as separation between people through hierarchies that deny our shared humanity. Dr. Abdul Khabeer added Islamic theological perspectives on this, citing scholars like Sherman Jackson who frames white supremacy as shirk, the association of partners with God that destabilizes the fundamental Islamic principle of tawhid, the oneness of God. She also mentioned feminist Islamic theologian Amina Wadud who makes similar arguments about patriarchy usurping divine authority. Both scholars emphasized that these theological framings ground their resistance to oppression in core spiritual principles.

The conversation addressed how space and place shape what can be taught and said. Professor Akinade contrasted his experience teaching in Doha, where he feels freedom to speak openly, with his previous position in High Point, North Carolina, where students were more resistant to revolutionary content. Dr. Abdul Khabeer spoke candidly about the contemporary reality of teaching in the United States, including students recording classes to try to “catch” professors saying something controversial, the need to have attorneys on standby, meticulous documentation of all interactions, and the recent elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programming at the University of Michigan where she teaches. Despite these hostile conditions, both scholars emphasized the absolute necessity of continuing the work.

A significant portion of the discussion focused on teaching the humanity of Black people and moving beyond caricatures and stereotypes. Professor Akinade grounded this in the theological concept that everyone is created in the image of God, making every person precious and important with a divine spark. Dr. Abdul Khabeer described teaching a hip-hop course where she uses albums like Biggie Smalls’ “Ready to Die” to help students understand Black humanity in three dimensions rather than one-dimensional caricatures. She explained that by analyzing songs like “Suicidal Thoughts” and Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” students learn to understand the socioeconomic contexts shaping people’s lives, recognize the community and relationships that exist, and see the solidarity and care present even in difficult circumstances. The goal is to move students beyond seeing Black people as hypersexual and hyperviolent stereotypes to understanding the fuller context of lived experiences, mental health struggles, and community support systems.

Both scholars emphasized the importance of embodiment and experience as forms of knowledge, challenging the Enlightenment paradigm’s overemphasis on reason alone. Dr. Abdul Khabeer, who is also a dancer trained in Katherine Dunham’s dance anthropology technique, explained how everyday life, how one dresses, moves through space, and physically exists, is deeply tied to history and politics. She shared an example of applying to Vassar College and discovering that the staircases were built for “women’s gaits” but her feet were too large for them, teaching her viscerally about who institutions are designed for and who they exclude. Professor Akinade connected this to his theological work, arguing that experience—particularly the experience of those raised in villages, those who have suffered, those marginalized—must be used to redefine orthodoxy and challenge monolithic paradigms. He referenced James Cone’s declaration that “God is Black” not as a statement about skin color but as an ontological connection with suffering, as Cornel West says, letting suffering speak.

The conversation highlighted the expansiveness that Africana Studies offers as an epistemology. Dr. Abdul Khabeer explained that unlike the traditional Euro-American tradition that says “you do it this way or that way and that’s it,” Africana Studies provides more options, more possibilities, and therefore more solutions. She attributed this expansiveness to the fact that Black people, particularly descendants of enslaved people, are “miracles walking” because they were not meant to survive but did survive through imagination and refusing to accept oppressive narratives as truth. This survival through creativity and alternative ways of knowing gives Africana Studies its power to envision futures and discover opportunities that dominant frameworks foreclose.

Professor Akinade challenged who gets to define rigorous scholarship, questioning why work not done at elite Western institutions like Rome, Columbia, or Yale is deemed less rigorous. He invoked Steve Biko’s book title “I Write What I Like” to assert his own approach: “I write what I like, I teach what I like, and I’m accountable, accountable to my people.” Both scholars emphasized that scholarship cannot be abstract but must be connected to life, must be life-giving, must help things grow. They discussed the danger of “dead scholarship” that exists only in ivory towers disconnected from the communities it purports to study, though Dr. Abdul Khabeer nuanced this by noting that death itself is a portal to other things in many traditions, so perhaps the better term is scholarship that is not life-giving, that doesn’t allow things to grow and flourish.

Article by Maryam Daud, Administrative Assistant at CIRS and Honore Mugiraneza, CIRS Publications Assistant

Cotton Queen | Film Screening and Panel Discussion
2026-01-26 18:30 - 21:00
Join us for the screening of Cotton Queen, register below!

Register Here

Cotton Queen is a 2025 internationally co-produced drama written and directed by Suzi Mirgani in her feature directorial debut. Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan, the film follows Nafisa, a young woman raised on her grandmother’s stories of resistance against British colonial rule. When a businessman arrives with a development scheme centered on genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa finds herself at the heart of a quiet but fierce power struggle that exposes the entanglements of land, memory, gender, and exploitation.

The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2025 and has since received wide international acclaim, including the Golden Alexander Award for Best Feature Film at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. With a haunting score by Amine Bouhafa and striking cinematography by Frida Marzouk, Cotton Queen is a powerful meditation on resistance, inheritance, and the cost of so-called progress.

CIRS Monthly Dialogue: Asian Migration in a Global Context
2026-02-09 18:00 - 19:00
This public panel brings together scholars to examine how migration categories are produced, governed, and contested within Asia and across transnational flows from the Global South to the Global North. Moving beyond fixed labels such as migrant, refugee, skilled worker, or trafficking victim, the discussion explores how state policies, visa regimes, and labor markets shape mobility in practice.

On February 9th, the Center for International and Regional Studies CIRS hosted a public panel featuring scholars from the workshop Rethinking Migration Categories from the Global South. The discussion brought together three panelists, Brenda Yeoh, Payal Banerjee, and Bina Fernandez, to examine how migration regimes classify, control, and at times constrain those who move across borders, with particular attention to perspectives from the Global South.

Brenda Yeoh opened by mapping the dominance of temporary migration regimes across Asia, where pathways to permanent residency or citizenship remain structurally inaccessible for low skilled workers. She critiqued Western centric paradigms in migration studies, highlighting how mechanisms like enclavisation and enclosure, the spatial segregation of migrants and the use of borders as instruments of discipline, function to contain rather than include. Her central provocation was this: how do states design systems explicitly not to integrate migrants, and how should scholars study migration not as states define it, but as migrants actually experience it?

Payal Banerjee drew on her research into Indian IT workers in the United States to examine the mechanics of status dependence, the way a migrant’s legal and economic existence becomes tethered to a single employer. This produces structural vulnerability, including precarious legal standing, limited labor mobility, and chronic anxiety. She connected these individual experiences to broader global asymmetries, arguing that employer sponsored visa regimes are not incidental but deliberate, and that the Indian tech sector’s deep reliance on Western markets reflects wider patterns in which Global South economies remain structurally dependent on Global North capital and labor demand.

Bina Fernandez challenged Eurocentric framings by repositioning Australia within the Asia Pacific region and introducing the concept of “uninvited migrants and settlers” to foreground colonial histories. She critiqued Australia’s offshore detention regime as a calculated deterrence strategy while also noting more hopeful developments, such as the Australia Tuvalu bilateral agreement offering climate linked mobility pathways. She identified three migration regimes deserving particular critical attention: forced deportation regimes, climate and disaster induced displacement, and statelessness.

The panel’s discussion surfaced several cross cutting themes. Participants examined how migration governance increasingly treats human movement as a problem to be managed, with administrative categories serving as tools of state control that generate waiting, anxiety, and unequal power. The rise of AI, biometrics, and surveillance technologies was described as double edged, enhancing border enforcement while also enabling migrants to build digital networks and transnational communities. Panelists also interrogated the politics of labeling itself, noting that categories like “refugee” or “skilled worker” carry colonial and racial histories, and that the global skills hierarchy reframes exclusion through the language of merit. Finally, feminist perspectives on social reproduction highlighted how migrant domestic workers effectively labor for two households simultaneously, with migration redistributing care work globally along gendered and racialized lines.

Article by Maryam Daud, CIRS administrative Assistant and Haala Qamar CIRS Student Assistant

Speakers:

Brenda S.A. Yeoh FBA is Distinguished Professor, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Migration and Mobilities Cluster, at NUS’ Asia Research Institute. She was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize for outstanding achievements in Geography in 2021 for her contributions to migration and transnationalism studies. Her research interests in Asian migrations span themes including social reproduction and care migration; skilled migration and cosmopolitanism; and marriage migrants and cultural politics.

Bina Fernandez is Professor in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne. She obtained PhD and MPhil degrees at the University of Oxford and has held academic positions at the University of Leeds, the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, the University of Oxford and the University of Oxford-Brookes. Bina’s research focuses on migration and social policy, analysed through the feminist lens of social reproduction. For over a decade, she has conducted multi-sited research on Ethiopian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East; key themes have been the conditions of work, the care needs of migrants, migrant mothers and their children at risk of statelessness. She has also undertaken research on Ethiopian refugees in Kenya and Australia. Current research on ‘Diaspora Humanitarians’ investigates the regenerative contributions of Australia-based migrant and refugee diasporas to the social reproduction of their homeland communities during times of crisis.

Payal Banerjee is Professor of Sociology at Smith College, USA. Her research focuses on the political economies of migration, globalization, and the role of policies in structuring labor incorporation, migrant categories, and status displacement. Banerjee’s work on Indian IT workers in the US has appeared in International Migration, Critical Sociology, Race, Gender, and Class, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Irish Journal of Anthropology, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Social & Public Policy Review, Man in India, and in several edited volumes. Banerjee’s publications on Chinese minorities in India have appeared in Security and Peace, China Report, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, Huaqiao Huaren Lishi Yanjiu (Overseas Chinese History Studies, in Mandarin), and in the book Doing Time with Nehru. As a Borders Studies Group member, she co-published India China: Rethinking Borders and Security. Banerjee served as a research fellow at the BRICS Policy Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and, taught at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School in New York City, and in India at Sikkim University in Gangtok and at FLAME in Pune, as visiting faculty.

Moderator:

Waleed Ziad is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar. His research interests lie at the intersection of social history, religious studies, and anthropology. Professor Ziad’s scholarship examines the historical and philosophical foundations of Muslim revivalism and mysticism in South and Central Asia and Iran. In this endeavor, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in over 140 towns across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. He is the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard Press, 2021), which won the prestigious Albert Hourani Prize given by the Middle East Studies Association of North America as well as the American Institute for Pakistan Studies 2022 Book Prize. His most recent book In the Treasure Room of the Sakra King: Votive Coinage from Gandharan Shrines (American Numismatic Society, 2022) builds on his long-standing research into numismatics and material culture of the Indo-Iranian borderlands. His forthcoming book, Sufi Masters of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and Her Sacred Networks (Harvard Press), is a continuation of his core research on the development of Sufi networks, spanning modern-day Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India, China, and Russia. He has also written extensively on historical and ideological trends in the Muslim world, his work appearing in The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, and The Hill.

CIRS Book Talk: Halfway to Freedom: The Struggles and Strivings of African American in Washington, DC by Maurice Jackson
2026-04-13 13:00 - 14:00
In Conversation with Professor Maurice Jackson

The book, set to be published next year, traces the struggles of African Americans for equality and human rights from 1780 to 2020. Through the history of Washington DC, it shows how Black lived experiences, political mobilization, and resistance mirror broader national struggles. By centering the city as both a symbolic and material site of power, the book tells the history of the United States through Black Washingtonians.

Maurice Jackson teaches in the History and African American Studies Departments and is Affiliated Professor of Music (Jazz) at Georgetown University. Before coming to academe, he worked as a longshoreman, shipyard rigger, construction worker and community organizer. He is author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism, co-editor of African-Americans and the Haitian Revolution, of Quakers and their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause,1754-1808 and DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC. Jackson wrote the liner notes to the 2 jazz CDs by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones, Steal Away: Spirituals, Folks Songs and Hymns and Come Sunday. He has recently lectured in France, Turkey, Italy, Puerto Rico, and Qatar. He served on Georgetown University Slavery Working Group. A 2009 inductee into the Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame he was appointed by the Mayor and the DC Council as Inaugural Chair of the DC Commission on African American Affairs (2013-16) and presented “An Analysis: African American Employment, Population & Housing Trends in Washington, D.C.” to the Mayor and elected leaders of the D.C. government in 2017. He is completing work on Halfway to Freedom: The Struggles and Strivings of African American in Washington, DC to be published by Duke University Press. His next books will be We Knew No Other Way: The Many-Sided Struggle for Freedom and Black Radicalism: A Very Short Introduction.
