Dr Tesfalem Yemane

Profile

I studied Political Science (BA) at the University of Asmara, Eritrea and worked as a Graduate Assistant at the College of Arts and Social Sciences in Eritrea Institute of Technology (2006-2010).

My role as a Graduate Assitant involved conducting tutorial classes, teaching the course 'Introduction to Political Science and International Relations' to first year students and taking part in exam coordination. After spending two years in Sudan as a refugee between 2010 to 2012, I went to China and completed an MA in International Relations at Tsinghua University.

For my final dissertation, I examined the evolution of the principle of non-interference (as it applies in Chinese Foreign Policy) in Sino-Sudan relations during the North-South Civil War and the Darfur Crisis. I also hold a second MA in African Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Bradford. Taking Eritrea as an illustrative case study, my dissertation critically analysed the politics EU's development aid to human rights violating states in the context of giving development aid and securitarian migration control.

After completing my studies at the University of Bradford, I worked in the UK refugee and migrant sector, including with Refugee Education, Training and Advice Service (RETAS Leeds), The Salvation Army, Growing Points and Migration Yorkshire. In 2018, I  joined the University of Leeds to pursue my doctoral studies.

For my PhD project, I draw upon decolonial and postcolonial scholarship and examines the case of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Through the lens of postcolonial scholarship, I examine the technologies through which Eritrean forced migrants construct outside imaginaries of the UK, how they form their asylum destination preferences and their lived post-arrival experiences as they navigate the different immigration recognition regimes in the UK. I argue that the factors that shape the destination preferences of asylum seekers cannot be decoupled from how Britain has deploy (and continues to do so) the same factors to expand/enroot its imperial/colonial project amd how it retooled them, with the aim of sustaining British neoimperial domination, in the supposedly postcolonial present.

Building on the participants’ post-arrival experiences, I also challenge the idea that Britain represents as postcolonial space insofar as the lived experiences of racialised refugees and asylum seekers are concerned.

Currently, I am working at the University of Liverpool as a Postdoctorial Research Associate. I work on the ESRC-funded Channel Crossing project that seeks to examine and understand the phenomenon of irregular crossings in the English Channel. This is a collaborative research project that involves academics from the universities of Liverpool, Sheffield, Notthingham and York.

Responsibilities

• As a Visiting Fellow, I lead and facilitate monthly Decolonial reading group.

Research interests

I am interested in issues and questions relating to the interoplay between race/raciality and forced migration; and postcolonial/decolonial approaches to forced migration. My co-authored work has been published in journals such as Ethinic and Migration Studies, Political Quarterly, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; as well as in edited volumes such asThe Sage Handbook of Global Sociology and Multilingual Matters. 

Qualifications

• PhD, Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK
• MA African Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Bradford, UK
• MA International Relations, Tsinghua University, China
• BA Political Science, University of Asmara, Eritrea

Professional memberships

• Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies