RESCHEDULED TO WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017, 2:30 P.M. SMITH 306
Presenter: Rawan Arar, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, University of California, San Diego Rawan Arar is a candidate for the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Law, Societies & Justice at the University of Washington. She will discuss her dissertation titled, "Leveraging Sovereignty: Syrian Refugees and the Jordanian State." Her dissertation asks: How do developing countries in the Global South – those that host 84% of the world’s 22.5 million refugees – maintain their sovereignty? She examines the case of Jordan, a state with 2.7 million refugees in a total population of 9.5 million people. The challenges of providing shelter, education, health care, and protection to millions of refugees are exacerbated as Jordanian citizens face high unemployment and strained social institutions including overcrowded hospitals and underperforming schools. Refugees and citizens alike are affected by growing national security concerns and the threat of violence along the Jordanian-Syrian border. She shows that sovereignty is a relational process enacted through quotidian practices not only from the top-down—by government and international officials—but also from the bottom-up—through the decisions of refugees and citizens. The practice of Jordanian sovereignty is necessarily couched within disparities that are foundational to the system of states that distinguish the Global North from the Global South. |