Navigating Boundaries: "Refuge" and the State's Role in Shaping Refugee Lives | Heba Gowayed
Heba Gowayed talked about her latest book “Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential.”
Heba Gowayed is the Moorman-Simon Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University. Her research, which is global and comparative, examines how low-income people traverse social services, immigration laws, and their associated bureaucracies, while grappling with gender and racial inequalities. Her forthcoming book, Refuge, is an ethnography exploring the lives of Syrians seeking refuge in the United States, Canada, and Germany. In it she examines whether and how these countries recognize and invest in new arrivals’ humanity and potential, shaping their economic realities and feelings of belonging. As countries receive refugees through their social welfare systems, Refuge raises a mirror to how these systems (re)produce social inequality.
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