Originally published Nov. 6, 2019, at the website Discover Society.
This month’s feature comes from Hub member Sara de Jong, lecturer at the Department of Politics, University of York. She currently researches the claims to protection and rights by former Locally Engaged Civilians in Western military campaigns and their advocates. She provided written and oral evidence for the UK’s Defence Select Committee’s 2018 report “Lost in Translation: Afghan Interpreters and other Locally Employed Citizens.”
Recognising migrants as political actors is one important way to work against the representation of migrants as voiceless victims. Whereas institutional asylum frameworks create a circumscribed space for migrants’ voices, in which ‘asylum seekers are charged with narrating themselves in a condition of sanctuary’ (Farrier 2012: 1), migrants have entered and created various other platforms to share their stories and demands. In these political spaces, migrants do not merely articulate personal grievances, but have added to a chorus of protest against undignified treatment. Former military interpreters from Afghanistan and Iraq, who had to leave their countries because their employment with Western forces left them exposed to threats, constitute a distinct and vocal subgroup of migrants who demand protection and rights.