Paper details
| Paper authors | Joseph Owens |
| In panel on | Resisting Border Violence: The Role of Civil Society, Local Actors, and Researchers |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting | In-Person & Online |
Abstract
Histories of non-statist societies have demonstrated how getting up and leaving was an effective option for individuals and communities to refuse unsatisfactory power relations. In fact, state histories can also be read as an effort contain and curb these acts of leaving.
These histories usually stop at the advent of the contemporary global state-system: the state can no longer be physically evaded. Yet, individuals and communities still leave for the same reason, albeit with an intention to navigate movement regimes.
This paper takes an ethnographic approach to understand how individuals practice leaving in the 21st century state-system. In particular, it traces a historical genealogy of leaving in communities in Darfur, Sudan, to contemporary Darfuri leavers today in Egypt. In doing so, it juxtaposes a tradition of refusal at odds with current state-administered movement and border regimes. Likewise, it proposes alternative understandings of protection and asylum rooted in communities beyond the current international order.
