Refugee on Trial: The Hole in the Donut
The eleventh piece in our Polity of Literature series: Concluding our trilogy about “the hole in the donut”—that rule-bound space within which our readings of others can have shared, verifiable...
Werkinstructie 2019/17 from the Dutch IND
In the Dutch asylum process, the Immigration and Naturalization Department (IND) frequently reviews and changes its working methods in response to political mandates and shifts in asylum case law. Lotte...
How the State Reads Queer Refugees
Addendum to the tenth piece in our Polity of Literature series: In Ralph Severijns’ analysis of the state’s reading of refugee stories—that is, in the crucial “free narrative” that asylum...
Curse of Geography: Kibera
“I really think it’s time to go,” our guide says as he nervously glances at his phone that glows half past five. Around us, as if on an unspoken cue,...
Medicina Cultural, Medicina Esencial: Plant-based Health Care among Dominican Women in Puerto Rico
Felicia de Jesús spends her quarantine days behind a sewing machine making reusable masks on the balcony of her home. She sells them for $3 dollars apiece, a price she...
Pagal Pagal Pagal Pagal Filmy Dunya: a film by Althea Thauberger
MIRROR | CINEMA | CITY: KARACHI CAPRI Althea Thauberger: The Capri Cinema Project By Zarmeené Shah Through a small window in a closed door, we see the world outside from...
Refugees Tell Their Stories to the State
The tenth piece in our Polity of Literature series: All refugees have a story, often an incredible one, of the events that led them to flee their homes and seek...
Translating Manus and Nauru: Refugee Writing
The ninth piece in our Polity of Literature series: From 2014 until 2018, Iranian-Australian translator, Moones Mansoubi, worked with asylum seekers imprisoned in Australia’s “Offshore Processing Centres” on Manus and Nauru...
Performing Ceremony Amidst the “Yellow Peril”
In late April the Chinese Cultural Centre in Vancouver’s Chinatown—just two blocks from where I live—was vandalized with anti-Asian racist graffiti, setting off a wave of anxiety and fear...
Prison Books in the Time of Refugees
The eighth piece in our Polity of Literature series: Books cited in this essay: Plato, Crito and Phaedo Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Relation...
Second-Hand Normalities
Second-hand Normalities is an animated short film and podcast that recounts the first days of the coronavirus outbreak in Bilbao, Spain through the eyes of a nurse and doctor working...
