ITS Workshop with Jennifer Riggan “My dream is so many things”: Choice, Future-Making and Precarity Amongst Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia 2016-2019

Why would a refugee migrate to another country knowing the grave risks of secondary migration? Why would a refugee drop out of university despite understanding how lucky they are to have this much-coveted opportunity? Why would a refugee reject the chance to be resettled to the United States or Europe? Much attention has been paid to stuckness, waiting, and other forms of temporal suffering experienced by refugees. But temporal suffering coexists with efforts to take agency over the future, on one hand, and what we call teleological violence—or the violence done by the false promises of progress, on the other. Drawing on research conducted for our 2024 book, Hosting States and Unsettled Guests: Eritrean Refugees in a Time of Migration Deterrence (Riggan and Poole) this talk explores how refugees take agency over the future amidst precarity to make choices when there are few good options.

 

This is a hybrid event. Please join us in-person in 455 Grace Dodge Hall, or via Zoom at https://teacherscollege.zoom.us/meeting/register/_3pY5wYwRim5GUkPLRViNw.