Unbecoming Refugees: Shuffled Stories and the Politics of Imagination

Abstract

This interdisciplinary dissertation would not have been possible without the intellectual and affective exchange with other areas of thought. At PUC-Rio, Cátedra Sergio Vieira de Mello has been expanding and problematizing the research about refugees. I especially thank Professor Rosana Kohl Bines at Departamento de Letras, who has been a source of inspiration since the first time I attended her class and has illuminated this work's connections between aesthetics and politics. I am also indebted to Núcleo de Dramaturgia Firjan Sesi, whose encounters coordinated by Diogo Liberano in 2019 led me to write a play that, together with this dissertation, speculates about the limits and possibilities of representing refugees.I thank my colleagues at IRI, who have always supported each other: Maria Alice, Ricardo, Fátima, Thais, Lais, Daniel, and especially Bruna, my brilliant friend with whom I spent six months in London during our Ph.D. period abroad, in-between Malaysian street food, second-hand shops and omicron. I thank Goldsmiths, University of London for having me as a visiting student, especially Martina Tazziolli, from the Politics and International Relations Department, and Alice Elliot, who took me closer to Anthropology, despite the impossibility of doing ethnographic work. The time in the UK was financed by the CAPES PRINT program -Cátedra Sergio Vieira de Mello. The whole study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) -Finance Code 001.Finally and importantly, I thank my parents, Marta and Sylla, and my sister, Mariana, for being the ones I can always count on no matter what. Emiliano, my happy love, body and words by my side, supporting me, encouraging me, and making me smile and laugh every day. And Miguel, my dear 9-year-old stepsonor my lori, the name we invented for his place in our relationship. Seeing the long hours I used to spend over texts in English, Miguel gave me a hand-written Portuguese-English dictionary as a Christmas gift, with words he chose and their correct pronunciation. This dissertation is then full of words like bee, drizzle, dice and jackfruit, even though they are not to be found in the text.