Possibilities of resistance and critique of asylum system in contemporary refugee camp narratives

截至2021年6月，联合国难民事务高级专员报告称，有8240万人被迫流离失所，其中2640万人被视为难民。长期以来，难民这个数字大体上与逃亡的经历联系在一起，逃亡被视为对国内危及生命的状况的必要和主动反应。但在过去十年中，随着全球监视文化和边境军事化的加剧，不行动和拘留已成为难民的典型经历。在世界各地，对居住在难民营中的难民的大多数描述以各种不同的表现形式在大众传播媒介中受害者-威胁的标准二元之间摇摆不定。这种非人性化的形象使得有必要转向文学描写，以对抗围绕移民和难民形象的负面话语。我的论文旨在探索在当代叙事（包括小说和非小说）中，在这种高度生物/死亡-政治空间中，挑战甚至颠覆寻求庇护者和难民的霸权化表现的可能性。通过从跨学科的角度与所选文本的接触，我打算通过将这些营地置于其特定的社会文化和殖民以及新殖民背景中来参与这些营地的空间政治。我提出的论文旨在研究虚构的，部分虚构的以及非虚构的作品，这些作品来自欧洲，澳大利亚和黎巴嫩巴勒斯坦难民的夏提拉难民营，其中不同类型难民营的空间和时间方面对叙事产生了重大影响。我的主要文本包括：莫辛·哈米德的《西方出口》（2017）、珍妮·埃尔本贝克的《去吧，去吧，去吧》（2015）、贝鲁兹·布查尼的《除了山没有朋友》（2018）、《夏提拉故事》（2018年出版，由9名叙利亚和巴勒斯坦难民撰写，由纳什瓦·戈万洛克翻译）、《丛林之声》：《加莱难民营的故事》（作者曾在加莱生活过一段时间，于2017年出版）、《安妮·霍姆斯》和《奥卢米德·波普尔拉》的《裂缝》（2016年出版）以及《难民故事》（作家与寻求庇护者和被拘留者合作，模仿杰弗里·乔叟的《坎特伯雷故事集》的形式，创作了四卷故事，讲述了他们在英国的经历，于2016年至2021年出版）。我也会尝试接触到曼彻斯特大学（University of Manchester）艾哈迈德·伊克巴尔·乌拉种族中心（Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre）提供的难民故事。此外，我对未来参加难民故事项目组织的徒步旅行很感兴趣，因为这将是一次重要的经历，可以了解难民和寻求庇护者如何将他们的叙述作为一种代理行为来要求一个富有同情心和敏感的庇护程序。

As of June 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 82.4 million people have been forcibly displaced and among them 26.4 million have been considered as refugees. The figure of the refugee has for long been by and large associated with the experience of flight which is looked upon as a necessary as well as an agential response to the life-threatening conditions back home. But with the intensification of a global culture of surveillance and militarization of borders in the last decade, immobility and detention has become the defining experience of being a refugee. Most representations of refugees residing in refugee camps in its varied manifestations around the world oscillate between the normative binaries of victim-threat in the popular media. Such dehumanizing images makes it necessary to turn towards literary depictions to counter the negative discourses around migration and the figure of the refugee. My thesis aims to explore the possibilities of challenging and even subverting the hegemonizing representations of asylum seekers and refugees in such highly bio/necro-political spaces in contemporary narratives (both fiction and non-fiction). By engaging with the chosen texts from an interdisciplinary perspective, I intend to engage with the spatial politics of such camps by situating them within their specific socio-cultural and colonial as well as neo-colonial contexts.My proposed thesis intends to engage with both fictional, partly fictional as well as non-fictional works from Europe, Australia and the Shatila Refugee Camp of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon where the spatial and temporal aspects of different types of refugee encampments influence the narratives significantly. My primary texts include- Mohsin Hamid's Exit West (2017), Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone (2015), Behrouz Boochani's No Friend But the Mountains (2018), Shatila Stories (published in 2018 and authored by nine Syrian and Palestinian refugees and translated by Nashwa Gowanlock), Voices from the 'Jungle': Stories from the Calais Refugee Camp (authored by people who have stayed in Calais at some point in their lives and published in 2017), Annie Holmes' and Olumide Popoola's Breach (2016) and Refugee Tales (writers collaborated with asylum seekers and detainees to produce four volumes of stories published between 2016-21 about their experiences in England imitating the format of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales). I would also try to gain access to the narratives of refugees available at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre under the University of Manchester. Further, I am interested in participating in the walks organized by The Refugee Tales project in future as it will be an important experience in understand how refugee and asylum seekers perform their narratives as an act of agency to demand a compassionate and sensitive asylum process.