The Centre for Contemporary Political Theory Research Seminar: Service for rights, deserving rights? The case of local military interpreters who become refugees

The Centre for Contemporary Political Theory welcomes guest speaker Sara de Jong (University of York).

Abstract

This paper draws on the case of Afghans and Iraqis who are under threat due to their employment with Western armies to ask questions about duties, responsibility and rights. It analyses the basis for their demands for protection and social rights by 1) interrogating the relation between duties and rights in the case of non-citizens; and 2) discussing tensions in competing understandings of obligations, i.e. a collectivist military ethic that posits the duty to ‘leave no one behind’ versus more limited contractual obligations to former military interpreters. 

Speaker biography

Dr. Sara de Jong is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics whose interests include the politics of NGOs and civil society advocacy, in particular in the fields of migration and gender. In 2017 she published a monograph with Oxford University Press (2017)  'Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women's Issues across North-South Divides' and she is currently working on a book for the same press on Brokers Across Boundaries in Migration, Conflict and International Development.

Event details and joining information

This session will run from 16:00 to 17:30 and includes time for Q&A at the end. 

To join please email d.j.edyvane@leeds.ac.uk for the zoom details.