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公署报告称，有8 240万人被迫流离失所，其中2 640万人被视为难民。长期以来，难民的形象总的来说与逃亡的经历有关，逃亡被视为对家乡危及生命的条件的一种必要的和积极的反应。但是，随着过去十年全球监视文化和边境军事化的加剧，不流动和拘留已成为难民的定义性经历。世界各地对难民营中难民的各种表现形式的描述，大多数都在大众媒体的受害者-威胁这一规范性二元对立之间摇摆不定。这种非人性化的形象使得有必要转向文学作品，以反击围绕移民和难民形象的负面话语。我的论文旨在探索挑战甚至颠覆寻求庇护者和难民在当代叙事（小说和非小说）中高度生物/死亡政治空间中的霸权化表现的可能性。通过从跨学科的角度参与所选文本，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。我提出的论文打算与来自欧洲的虚构，部分虚构以及非虚构作品进行接触，澳大利亚和黎巴嫩的Shatila巴勒斯坦难民营，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- Mohsin Hamid的退出西部（2017），Jenny Erpenbeck的Go，Went，Gone（2015），Behrouz Boochani的No Friend But the Mountains（2018），Shatila Stories（出版于2018年，由九名叙利亚和巴勒斯坦难民撰写，Nashwa Gowanlock翻译），来自“丛林”的声音：加莱难民营的故事（作者是在生活中的某个时候住在加莱的人，2017年出版），安妮·霍姆斯和奥卢米德·波普拉的违约（2016）和难民故事（作家与寻求庇护者和被拘留者合作，在2016年至2021年期间出版了四卷故事，讲述他们在英国的经历，模仿杰弗里·乔叟的《坎特伯雷故事集》）。我还将试图获得曼彻斯特大学艾哈迈德·伊克巴尔·乌拉种族中心提供的难民叙述。此外，我有兴趣参加未来“难民故事”项目组织的步行活动，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作为一种代理行为来执行他们的叙述，以要求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.