Doctoral Dissertation Research: Maintaining Social Relationships through Periods of Protracted Insecurity in Refugee Communities

被迫移徙造成的全球流离失所目前处于历史高位。这些难民中有许多人经历了数十年的暴力和不安全，因此很难维持关系。研究人员已经确定，强大的社区、亲属和网络关系对社会和政治稳定至关重要。该项目培养了一名研究生的经验、科学数据收集和分析方法，探讨了这些关系在长期不稳定时期是如何维持的。调查结果将分发给管理和制定有关难民重新安置政策的组织。这项研究还促进了国际科学合作，扩大了一个代表性不足的群体在科学领域的参与。玛丽亚姆·巴纳西在约翰·霍普金斯大学的维娜·达斯博士的指导下，将探讨在长期不安全和危机时期，亲属关系是如何形成的，以及情感关系是如何维持的。该研究将在欧洲最大的阿富汗社区所在地德国汉堡进行，并将采用数据收集的人类学工具，如参与者观察、结构化和半结构化访谈、非正式的开放式对话、预算调查、家谱图和家庭预算。尽管构成了世界上最大的难民群体之一，移民和难民研究在很大程度上忽略了阿富汗人和阿富汗人。此外，阿富汗人的亲属网络概念认为，亲属关系不仅包括直接的血缘关系，而且还包括更大的种族、语言、部落、宗教和民族社区。通过调查阿富汗人在冲突、损失和死亡中建立关系的做法和努力，这项研究将有助于建立有关暴力和长期不安全的理论，因为它们影响着家庭。此外，通过关注阿富汗家庭，本研究将探讨经常被忽略的冲突后果，以调查德国难民亲属关系和穆斯林社区。最后，这项研究将通过教学和出版物促进对阿富汗学术研究的更大兴趣，并鼓励与移民社区接触的各种行动者之间的合作伙伴关系。

Global displacement due to forced migration is currently at historically high levels. Many of those refugees have experienced decades of violence and insecurity, making it difficult to maintain relationships. Researchers have established that strong community, kin, and network relations are essential to social and political stability. This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, explores how these relationships are maintained during extended periods of precarity. Findings will be disseminated to organizations that manage and develop policy related to refugee resettlement. The research also fosters international scientific cooperation, and broadens the participation of an underrepresented group in the sciences.Mariam Banahi, under the supervision of Dr. Veena Das of The Johns Hopkins University, will explore how kinship is conceived and affective relationships are maintained in the face of both protracted insecurity and periods of crisis. The research will be conducted in Hamburg, Germany, home to the largest Afghan community in Europe, and will employ anthropological tools of data collection, such as participant-observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, informal, open-ended conversations, budget surveys, genealogical charts, and household budgets. Though comprising one of the largest refugee groups worldwide, migration and refugee studies have largely ignored Afghans and Afghanistan. Also, Afghan conceptions of kin networks conceive of relatedness as both inclusive and beyond immediate blood relationships to larger ethno-linguistic, tribal, religious, and national communities. By investigating the practices and labors through which Afghans forge relations in spite of conflict, loss, and death, this research will contribute to theories on violence and chronic insecurity as they affect the families. Moreover, by attending to the Afghan family, this research will explore the often elided consequences of conflict to investigate refugee kinship and Muslim communities in Germany. Lastly, this research will foster greater interest in the academic study of Afghanistan through teaching and publications, as well as encourage collaborative partnerships between diverse actors engaged with emigrant communities.