Devastating scenes emerging from Kabul's international airport in mid-August provide a sharp reminder of the four-decade long crisis of displacement that has so profoundly impacted Afghanistan and given rise to a global Afghan diaspora. As the world once again contemplates the prospect of mass refugee movement, the tension between claims of international sympathy for the Afghan plight and the reality of closed borders is thrown into stark relief. This talk will place the current humanitarian situation, as it pertains to Afghan refugees, in its broader historical context, with a focus on the way in which dual forces of hospitality and hostility have circumscribed Afghan life.

Bio: Dr Elisabeth Yarbakhsh is a research scholar at the Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. She has a long-standing interest in refugee rights and has undertaken extended fieldwork amongst Afghan migrants and refugees in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her most recent publication is Iranian Hospitality, Afghan Marginality: Spaces of Refuge and Belonging in the City of Shiraz.