Creating Politicized Spaces: Afghan Immigrant Women's Stories of Migration and Displacement

Drawing on an ethnographic study of Afghan women in metropolitan Vancouver (2002—05), this article argues that it is necessary to recognize research participants as producers of context-specific knowledge. Afghan women, a disenfranchised population, deploy particular strategies to foreground two int...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Affilia 2008-02, Vol.23 (1), p.10-21
Main Author: Dossa, Parin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Afghanistan
Ethnography
Ethnology
Females
Feminism
Human agency
Interest groups
Migration
Nation states
Policy making
Political Economy
Relocation
Social change
Social policy
Social services
Transnationalism
Women
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Description
Summary:Drawing on an ethnographic study of Afghan women in metropolitan Vancouver (2002—05), this article argues that it is necessary to recognize research participants as producers of context-specific knowledge. Afghan women, a disenfranchised population, deploy particular strategies to foreground two interrelated scripts—the political economy of migration and resettlement and the remaking of a world—that help to bridge the analytical divide between the political economy and human agency. Within this blurred space, the women bring forth three themes that speak to policy makers and stakeholders: social provision as entitlement, valorization of the women's multiple identities, and transnational networks that contain but also go beyond the unit of the nation-state. The article concludes by making a case for locally-informed policy and service provision to effect progressive change.
ISSN:0886-1099
1552-3020
DOI:10.1177/0886109907310462