November 5, 2026

1:00 - 2:30pm (ET/Toronto)

This is a virtual event

Zoom link:

Guest speaker: Bernadette Ludwig, Assistant Dean, Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences, Western Connecticut State University

, Unwelcome Shores is an ethnographic study of the Liberian refugee community in Staten Island, New 91亚色, home to the largest per capita concentration of Liberians in the U.S., that sheds light on the racialization of Black refugees and the racism they have experienced at every step of their migration journey. In this pioneering study, sociologist Bernadette Ludwig explores how Liberians have responded to such racist exclusions, noting how members of this community reject the informal refugee label once they are resettled in the United States. Liberian migrants often view the label as a liability since the larger general public, the media, and the U.S. government tend to regard Black refugees as an economic and social burden unworthy of assistance. Indeed, Black refugees鈥� humanity is often ignored, Ludwig contends, in favor of overemphasizing presumed barbaric violence, endemic wars, cultural backwardness, and diseases. By detailing the lack of aid and support for Black refugees and describing how Liberian refugees in particular have had to overcome various struggles and barriers in coming to the U.S. and while living here, Unwelcome Shores highlights the overarching role of race and anti-Black racism in American society.

Biography

Bernadette Ludwig, PhD is a Sociologist and the Assistant Dean of the Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU). Prior to joining WCSU, she was a tenured Professor of Sociology and the Director of Civic Engagement at a college in New 91亚色.

Her primary research focuses on the intersection of immigration, race, and gender and analyzes how seemingly racially neutral refugee and immigration policies indeed are inherently racist. In addition to her book, (Rutgers University Press, 2025) she had published widely in journals such as International Migration, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, and International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, and in edited books.

In another research project, she investigates the significance and meaning of community-engaged learning opportunities for students, in particular those from historically excluded groups which have been published in Michigan Journal of Community Service, Learning Science Education & Civic Engagement, and others. Her co-edited book  (Edward Elgar Publishing) was published in August 2026.

Before pursuing a PhD in Sociology, Dr. Ludwig worked with refugee and immigrant communities in Atlanta GA. During that time, she was the executive director of two non-profit organizations, including Culture Connect, Inc., which she co-founded. Her years of working in the field with refugees and immigrants continue to inform her research and her teaching.  As a first-generation college graduate and immigrant, she is committed to mentoring students, in particular those from historically excluded groups. Dr. Ludwig also serves as a pro-bono country conditions expert for asylum and deportation claims/hearings.

The post CRS/Tubman Book Launch: Unwelcome Shores: Black Refugees in America appeared first on Centre for Refugee Studies.

1:00-2:00pm (ET/Toronto)

This is a hybrid event

In person: 626 Kaneff Tower, 91亚色, Keele Campus

Zoom:

Guest Speaker: Kiril Sharapov, Chair in Forced Migration, Edinburgh Napier University 

Russia鈥檚 full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted widespread warnings of mass trafficking, abuse and exploitation among people fleeing the war. Yet research across Poland, Romania, Moldova and Spain suggests that trafficking did not occur on the scale anticipated. This finding needs to be read alongside evidence of exploitation and continuing economic insecurity, as well as gaps in how harm is recorded and recognised. The gap between predictions and available evidence nevertheless raises questions about what helped protect people and how we understand trafficking prevention.

Drawing on research undertaken for the International Organization for Migration, this talk argues that explanations focused on awareness-raising and specialist anti-trafficking interventions give insufficient attention to access to rights. Safe mobility, lawful residence, employment, housing, healthcare and social support can reduce dependence on exploitative arrangements and give people greater scope to refuse or leave them. These protections depend on people being able to exercise their rights in practice.

The findings challenge the treatment of migrant and refugee vulnerability as a natural consequence of displacement or an inherent characteristic of particular populations. Laws, policies and institutions can produce vulnerability, but they can also reduce it when there is political will. This raises a further question: why are governments willing to extend protection to some displaced populations while withholding it from others, and what sustains or erodes that willingness over time?

The talk considers what these findings mean for contemporary anti-trafficking models. It asks whether an industry concerned with sustaining its own institutions and funding can leave the causes of exploitation unchallenged, while practices of border enforcement, conditional assistance and restrictive victim identification can make people more vulnerable. What would change if success were judged by people鈥檚 ability to avoid and leave exploitation, rather than principally by awareness campaigns, victim identification and criminal justice outcomes?

Kiril Sharapov is Professor in the School of Applied Sciences at Edinburgh Napier University. A sociologist of forced migration, he researches how laws, policies and institutions produce or reduce vulnerability to exploitation. His work examines human trafficking, anti-trafficking policy and the politics of protection, including research for the International Organization for Migration on the Ukrainian refugee response in Poland, Romania, Moldova and Spain. He serves on the editorial board of Anti-Trafficking Review and has guest-edited issues on public perceptions of trafficking and anti-trafficking funding.

Kiril leads the ESRC-funded project Caring to Survive: Disability and Everyday Acts of Care during the War in Ukraine (2026鈥�2029), building on his earlier research on disability, displacement and COVID-19 in Ukraine. His wider work includes climate displacement in Mongolia, migrant labour and the regulation of sex work. He is Vice President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, founder and convenor of Edinburgh Napier鈥檚 Migration and Mobilities Research Network, and Co-Convenor of the British Sociological Association鈥檚 Sociology of Rights Study Group.

The post CRS Seminar: Rights, Protection and Trafficking Vulnerability in the Ukrainian Refugee Response: Evidence from Poland, Romania, Moldova and Spain appeared first on Centre for Refugee Studies.

2:30 PM to 4:00 PM

Location: S701 Ross (in person event), Keele campus, 91亚色

Guest speaker: 脰zg眉n Erdener Topak, Associate Professor, Department of Social Science at 91亚色

Drones have rapidly emerged as central components of expanding digital border surveillance apparatuses. This talk demonstrates how European drones produce necro-racial effects across Mediterranean borderzones, particularly for migrants trapped in Libya. Operating through remote, vertical surveillance and data-sharing mechanisms, European border drones facilitate pull-backs to Libyan torture spaces where migrants are subjected to crimes against humanity. The talk examines how the drone gaze reproduces a racialized way of seeing, denying migrants their complex subjectivities and human rights while reducing them to anonymous, heat-emitting threat profiles. Furthermore, the talk critiques mainstream debates surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous border drones. Moving beyond the twin traps of techno-utopian solutionism and techno-dystopic 鈥榢iller robot鈥� imaginaries, it argues that the violent outcomes of a dystopian future are already present for racialized populations, without the need for drones to achieve full autonomy. Finally, the talk highlights how migrants exercise dark sousveillance to evade drone surveillance, reclaiming their subjectivity and human rights.

Bio: 脰zg眉n Erdener Topak is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Science at 91亚色, Canada, where he is primarily affiliated with the Criminology undergraduate program and Socio-Legal Studies graduate program, as well as a Resident Scholar at the Centre for Refugee Studies (CRS). As an interdisciplinary social scientist, Dr. Topak's research focuses on surveillance, migration, state violence and repression (including authoritarianism and genocide), human rights, and critical criminology. His current research centers on two primary themes: 1) surveillance, forced migration, borders, and violence; and 2) authoritarian and genocidal surveillance. His work is situated within the Global South and East, with a particular empirical focus on the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He co-edited the volumes New Authoritarian Practices in the Middle East and North Africa (2022, Edinburgh University Press) and Surveillance and the Dossier (2026, University of Toronto Press), and his recent work has appeared in journals including International Political Sociology, the Journal of Genocide Research, the Journal of Borderlands Studies, and Surveillance & Society.

Co-sponsored with Socio-Legal Studies, 91亚色

The post CRS/SLST Seminar: Border聽Drones: Necro-Racial Effects, AI and Futures appeared first on Centre for Refugee Studies.

1:00pm - 2:30pm (ET/Toronto)

This is a virtual event

Zoom:

Guest speaker: Kaziwa Salih, CRS Visiting Scholar

Poor Dad, Rich Daughter provides a comprehensive analysis of women鈥檚 entrepreneurship in post-ISIS Kurdistan, Iraq. It examines the experiences of Kurdish women entrepreneurs from the perspective of the complex matrix, which includes historical oppression, socio-political instability, economic rentierism, and gender regimes. The analysis moves beyond conventional notions of empowerment, viewing women's economic activities as ethical, relational, and political labor conducted amid structural abandonment and systemic neglect.

The book examines Kurdish women鈥檚 entrepreneurship through three interconnected dimensions: the historical and structural effects of conflict, political fragmentation, economic dependency, and gender inequality; the different pathways women use to build businesses through NGO support or informal networks that the author conceptualized as the 鈥淭hree Cs鈥�; and the social, religious, political, and technological barriers limiting their agency. Ultimately, entrepreneurship is presented as resilience, healing, resistance, and a pathway toward dignity, citizenship, and meaningful social change.

Finally, "Poor Dad, Rich Daughter" states that the entrepreneurship of Kurdish women can be considered an act of resistance against patriarchal structures, rentier politics, and the legacy of violence. The authors emphasize the need for transformation, not just empowerment. Namely, there is a need for localized and systemic support, implementation of gender equality laws, a balanced domestic workload, and further research on technology inclusion and post-conflict recovery models.

Bio:

Kaziwa Salih (PhD): Is a Visiting Scholar, Centre for Refugee Studies at 91亚色; holds a Ph.D. from Queen鈥檚 University in Canada. She is the author of several books, and published many scholarly articles. Her latest books: Poor Dad, Rich Daughter: Gender Regimes, Citizenship, and Rising as Entrepreneurs in Post-ISIS Kurdistan (2026, LPP), and 鈥�The Palgrave Handbook of Kurdish Genocides (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and:聽 Genocide Culture: Cultural Habits, Ethnic Engineering, and Religious Doxa (2024, Routledge). Dr. Salih鈥檚 interdisciplinary research brings together Digital Humanities, Anthropology, and Sociology, Political Science to examine genocide and crime, immigration and refugee studies, ethnicity and conflicts, Kurdish Studies and Middle East politics, Indigenous sovereignty, and ecological politics.

The post CRS Book Launch: Poor Dad, Rich Daughter: Gender Regimes, Citizenship, and Women鈥檚 Entrepreneurship in Post-ISIS Kurdistan appeared first on Centre for Refugee Studies.

2:00pm - 3:30pm (ET/Toronto)

This is a virtual event

Zoom link:

Guest speaker: Bronwyn Bragg, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Lethbridge and CRS affiliated scholar

Prof. Bragg's new book "We asked for refugees, we got people instead: Refugee placemaking in Canada" will be published in November 2026 with McGill Queen's University Press' Forced Migration and Refugee Issues series. She wrote much of this as a postdoctoral fellow at CRS.

Bio

Bronwyn Bragg is an assistant professor in the department of geography and environment at the University of Lethbridge. Specializing in migration, feminist political economy, and precarious work, she has published articles on immigrant labour, citizenship, family reunification, and immigration policy. Her research is supported by the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is the author of "We asked for refugees, we got people instead" forthcoming with McGill-Queen's University Press in November 2026.

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1:00 - 2:30pm (ET/Toronto)

This is a virtual event

Zoom link:

Guest speaker: Reece Jones, Writer and Professor of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai'i at M膩noa

When an ordinary man is thrust into the dangerous world of smuggling at America鈥檚 northern border, he is forced to risk his own freedom to protect refugees from violent immigration policing.

Soon after conservative businessman Bob Boul茅 opens the Smuggler鈥檚 Inn, a quirky bed and breakfast in Blaine, Washington directly on the US-Canada border, refugees, drug traffickers, and ICE agents all trust him with their secrets. The refugees tell Bob heartbreaking stories of persecution and death. The drug traffickers and ICE agents try to recruit Bob to their side in the dangerous game of smuggling at the border. As Bob鈥檚 work at the Smuggler鈥檚 Inn spirals, he is forced to make a series of risky decisions that draw him deeper and deeper into the murky border underworld, putting his own freedom at risk. His secret life comes crashing down after a violent confrontation with a Border Patrol agent in his driveway, leading him to question his core beliefs about right and wrong as he finds his true purpose in life. In this gripping expos茅, Border expert Reece Jones and immigration lawyer Greg Boos reveal the hidden world of America鈥檚 northern border and provide readers with urgent insights into immigration and border policing throughout the United States.

From the Taliban-controlled countryside of Afghanistan to the infamous La Joya prison in Panama, the stories featured in Smuggler converge in the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest in the borderlands between Seattle and Vancouver. There are car chases, drug deals between the Hells Angels and the Sinaloa cartel, and over a thousand people who slip quietly across the border to safety in Canada in the dead of night. After the violent confrontation with the Border Patrol agent, Bob鈥檚 complaint goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose landmark decision in Egbert v. Boule paves the way for the apparent impunity of ICE agents on American streets in the second presidency of Donald Trump.

Featuring personal interviews, in-depth research, and a propulsive narrative, Smuggler is the untold true story of how a quaint bed and breakfast on the northern border became the epicenter of debates about refugee protections and violent immigration policing inside the United States.

Reece Jones is a writer and a of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai'i at M膩noa. Reece was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh before studying for his MS and PhD in Geography from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.聽

Reece's work has appeared in , , , and many other outlets. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal , a , and a lifetime of the American Association of Geographers.聽

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10:00am - 11:30am (ET/Toronto)

This is a virtual event

Zoom Link:

Guest Speaker: Jasmin Lilian Diab, Director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University and CRS affiliated scholar

This study explores the migration decisions and lived experiences of female-headed Syrian refugee households in Lebanon amid evolving political conditions following the fall of the Assad regime in 2024. Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews, it investigates how caregiving responsibilities, gender-based vulnerabilities, and the enduring threat of patriarchal violence shape these women鈥檚 reluctance to return to Syria and their aspirations for resettlement in Europe. While Lebanon offers relative freedoms, it remains a site of profound precarity, forcing women into protracted states of waiting. Anchored in feminist theory, intersectionality, and the aspirations-capabilities framework, this article reframes displacement as a gendered and strategic negotiation rather than passive victimhood. These women, navigating abandonment, statelessness, and systemic exclusion, emerge as agents of resilience 鈥� resisting reductive narratives and asserting autonomy through deliberate choices. The study calls for gender-responsive refugee policies that centre the specific needs, risks, and aspirations of female-headed households in protracted displacement contexts.

Bio:

Dr. Jasmin Lilian Diab (she/賴賷) is the Director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University, where she also serves as an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Migration Studies at the Department of Communication, Mobility and Identity.

In 2025, her research was awarded the Lisa Gilad Prize from the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), as well as the School of Arts and Sciences鈥� Distinguished Achievement Award.
In 2026, her research received the 鈥楤est Paper Award鈥� from the Gender and Sexuality in Migration Research Standing Committee at IMISCOE, the largest interdisciplinary network of scholars in the field of migration.

Dr. Diab is a Global Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School鈥檚 Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Refugee Studies at 91亚色, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for International Gender Studies at the University of M眉nster.

The post CRS Seminar: Prolonging the Temporary: Female-Headed Syrian Refugee Households on Displacement, Return and Waiting post-Assad appeared first on Centre for Refugee Studies.