Professor in Politics
University of York
United Kingdom
[email protected]
Read Sara’s February 2020 Spotlight on Language, Culture and Justice.
I am a professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York. I have held (visiting) fellowships at the University of Vienna (EU FP7 Marie Curie Fellowship), University of Goettingen, the International Institute of Social Studies (the Hague), the University of Leeds, the Jan van Eyck Academy and the University of Nottingham.
I conduct research on the claims to protection, rights and settlement by Afghans and Iraqis who have worked for Western military forces and development organisations, as well as on the activities and strategies of their advocates, including veterans, lawyers and civil society activists.
Read more about this research and its impact in these commentaries: “Afghan Interpreters Demand Rights, Not Favours” (Discover Society, Nov. 6, 2019); “Abandoned by the British, Afghan Interpreters Explain How They Wait for Years Seeking Safety” (The Conversation, May 30, 2018); and “Afghan Interpreters: Belonging on the Battlefield, Excluded From the Nation?” (openDemocracy, May 12, 2018).
I was invited to give written and oral evidence to the UK Parliament’s House of Common’s Defence Select Committee on Afghan civilians who supported British forces during their involvement in Afghanistan in 2017 and 2021. The 2021 Written Evidence can be found here.
Broader areas of interests: the politics of unequal encounters in a global world, more specifically politics of NGOs and (global) civil society; migration and refugees, in particular support and advocacy initiatives; (post)colonialism, race and racism; gender, sexuality and feminist politics; the role of brokers in international development, conflict and migration; and processes of co-optation of radical politics and complicity.
Selected Publications in the Field of Language, Culture and Justice
- De Jong, S. (2023). Translating Migrant Muslim Men: Strategies of Conditional Inclusion by Afghan Interpreters Employed By Western Armies’, European Journal of Politics and Gender.
- De Jong, S. (2023). “From Migrant Crisis to Migrant Critique: Affirmative Sabotage and the Right Claims of Afghans Employed by Western Armies”, in: Combating Crises from Below. University of Maastricht Press.
- De Jong, S. (2022). “Brokers betrayed: The afterlife of Afghan interpreters employed by western armies”, Journal of International Development, 2022.
- De Jong, S. (2022). “Divided in Leaving Together: The resettlement of Afghan locally employed staff – A comparison between Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the US”, IGDC Working Paper Series.
- De Jong, S. (2022). “Segregated brotherhood: the military masculinities of Afghan interpreters and other locally employed civilians“. International Feminist Journal of Politics.
- De Jong, S. (2021). “Resettling Afghan and Iraqi interpreters employed by Western armies: The Contradictions of the Migration-Security Nexus”, Security Dialogue.
- De Jong, S. (2018) “Brokerage and Transnationalism: Present and Past Intermediaries, Social Mobility and Mixed Loyalties,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 25(5): 610-628.
- Severs, E. and S. de Jong (2018) “Preferable Minority Representatives: Brokerage and Betrayal,” PS: Political Science and Politics, doi:10.1017/S1049096517002499.
- De Jong, Sara (2018) “A Window of Opportunity? Refugee Staff’s Employment in Migrant Support and Advocacy Organizations,” Identities-Global Studies in Culture and Power. pp. 1-19. ISSN 1070-289X
- De Jong, S. (2016) “Cultural Brokers in Postcolonial Migration Regimes.” In: Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (eds. N. Dhawan, E. Fink, J. Leinius, and R. Mageza-Barthel). Berlin: Springer, 45–59.