Title: The ambivalence of nature in displacement: an ethnography of relations to the living on Afghan migration journeys
Expected Completion Date: Fall 2026
This research looks at the migration journeys of Afghans towards Western Europe through ethnographic methods, examining specifically what kinds of perceptions of nature and relations with the non-human emerge in contexts of migration.
The meanings associated with the non-human living on these journeys are ambivalent, between experiences of border violence in non-urban landscapes, and strategies of survival and feelings of hope and serenity anchored in resistant relations with non-human actors.
By bridging transnational studies of displacement with anthropological enquiries on nature, the project aims to show how the boundaries of concepts such as “nature” and the “human” are constituted and contested in displacement. By extension, the project questions whether relations to nature in displacement exemplify the ways these relations emerge in broader contexts of exploitation and violence, in times of climate change, social struggle and repression.
I have an academic background in political sciences and international relations. Through my academic curriculum in France, Iran, Turkey and Switzerland, learning Persian and Turkish, I developed research interests on mobility and migrations. In parallel, I have ongoing personal photography and videography visual anthropology projects.