Professor Sara de Jong

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Profile

Biography

Sara de Jong joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York in 2018. She is Co-Chair of the University of York Migration Network (MigNet) (with Professor Simon Parker).

She obtained her PhD in Politics (2010) from the University of Nottingham, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice. She has 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.

Areas of Interest

Her areas of interests include the 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; co-optation of radical politics and complicity.

Media Coverage (Selection):

UK

Afghans who're eligible to settle in the UK are stuck in Pakistan, BBC Newsnight, 16 May 2023
Afghans Interpreters stuck in Pakistan, BBC News, 16 May 2023
‘'We are here because you were there': Portrait project focuses on Afghan interpreters in UK’, Forces.net, 11 October 2022.
We've been left to an enemy the UK couldn't defeat': Afghans who protected UK officials and the British Embassy in Kabul say they've been betrayed by the government who left them behind, trapped in the country a year after Taliban seized control', Daily Mail, 3 September 2022.
‘We were lied to’: Interpreters stranded in Afghanistan voice anger at Britain, The Telegraph, 30 August 2021
Let more Afghan interpreters resettle in UK, say ex-military chiefs - BBC News, 28 July
Hundreds more Afghans who worked for British military to be fast-tracked into UK, ITV, 31 May 2021
‘The first group they will kill’: why Afghan allies are terrified about Australia’s exit, The Guardian, 30 May 2021

International:

Canada: ‘GardaWorld critiquée pour avoir lâché des employés afghans’, Le Journal de Montreal, 1 October 2022
Netherlands: ‘Oud-bewakers Nederlandse ambassade 'mishandeld en neergestoken' door taliban’, RTL News, 23 August 2022
Denmark: Hollandsk ekspert: »Det er utroligt, at Danmark slipper af sted med at påstå, at I gør det godt«, Politiken, 14 August 2022
Belgium: Onzeker lot Afghaanse tolken: wie kan weg, wie niet?, VRT, 18 August 2021
The United States: Britain accelerates relocation of Afghan interpreters to the U.K, New York Times, 31 May 2021

Research

Overview

She currently conducts research on the claims to protection and rights by Afghan and Iraqi military interpreters and other Locally Employed Civilians and the strategies and activities of their advocates, including veterans, lawyers and civil society activists.

Academic articles and reports:

"Brokers betrayed: The afterlife of Afghan interpreters employed by western armies", Journal of International Development, 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, May 2022.

Segregated brotherhood: the military masculinities of Afghan interpreters and other locally employed civilians, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2022
Resettling Afghan and Iraqi interpreters employed by Western armies: The Contradictions of the Migration–Security Nexus, Security Dialogue, 2021.

Online blogs:

Or listen to the ‘Talking Migration’ podcast:

Why don’t Afghan interpreters get to stay?

Her broader areas of interests concern 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 co-optation and complicity in (radical) politics.

Publications

Selected publications

Her PhD research was published as a monograph with Oxford University Press (2017) in the Gender and IR book series under the title Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women's Issues across North-South Divides

The book has been reviewed in Times Higher Education, International Affairs, the LSE Review of Books, Sociology, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Women’s Studies International Forum.

Other selected publications include:

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. (2022) ‘Writing rights: suturing Spivak’s postcolonial and de Sousa Santos’ decolonial thought’, Postcolonial Studies, 25:1, 89-107,
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, S. R. Icaza and O. Rutazibwa (2018) Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge.
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. and S. Kimm (2017) 'The Co-optation of Feminisms: A Research Agenda', International Feminist Journal of Politics, 19(2).
de Jong, S. (2016) ‘Converging Logics? Managing Diversity and Managing Migration’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(3): 341-358.
de Jong, S. (2016) “Cultural Brokers in Post-colonial 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.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Other teaching

Sara is interested in critical pedagogy and innovation in learning. She co-edited the edited volume Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning with Rosalba Icaza and Olivia Rutazibwa (Routledge 2018) and the (open access) special issue 'Decolonising the University' with Rosalba Icaza, Rolando Vázquez, and Sophie Withaeckx (2017), Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies (Dutch Journal for Gender Studies).

Together with Sanne Koevoets, she edited the book Teaching Gender with Libraries and Archives: The Power of Information (CEU Press). Free download available

External activities

Memberships

She is an invited member of the Refugee Integration Forum Yorkshire and Humber and a member of the editorial board of Agenda Publishing 'Understanding Europe: The Council for European Studies' book series.

Impact and Engagement

Protection and Rights of Afghan Locally Engaged Civilians

In collaboration with photographer Andy Barnham, she developed the exhibition ‘We are here, because you were there: Afghan interpreters in the UK’, first shown in Glasgow, Cambridge, London, Cardiff and Leeds (2021-2022).

View a virtual tour of the exhibition centre in the Ffotogallery in Cardiff.

In August 2021, she was an invited speaker at a roundtable on the security situation in Afghanistan organised by the Defence committee in the Dutch Parliament. She was also an Invited Speaker for the digital event on “Locally Employed Civilians in Afghanistan: How can we save those in need of protection now?”, organised by Sven Giegold MEP (German Green Party), 20 August 2021. In 2021 and in 2017, she provided oral evidence to the UK Parliament's Defence Select Committee on Afghan locally employed civilians. Watch the Defence Select Committee session (2017). The Defence Select Committee's report was published in May 2018. Read also her response in The Conversation. She is a founding member of the advocacy initiative Sulha Alliance.

Refugee, Migrant and Ethnic Minority Staff in Refugee and Migrant Support Organisations

Watch one of her public talks, hosted at the Migration Museum in London, in which academics and third sector representatives came together to problematise this ‘migrant as outsider’ discourse.

The findings of her FP7 Marie Curie research project BrokerInG about refugee, migrant and ethnic minority staff of social sector organisations in the field of migration have been disseminated in a Methods in Motion blog, workshops, and public lectures, for instance at the Migration Museum Project in London. Third Sector Dissemination Brochure Research Results Employing the Cultural Broker in the Governance of Migration and Integration, 2016.

Academic-Artist Collaborations

Read her LSE Impact blogpost ‘“Success is not measured in how inspired we are” – Reassessing artist-academic collaborations under neoliberalism’ and the article (co-written with Alena Pfoser) ‘‘I’m not being paid for this conversation’: Uncovering the challenges of artist–academic collaborations in the neoliberal institution’.

She also contributed to the 2017 and 2018 'Who are We' Tate Exchange, a week-long event on identity, belonging, migration and citizenship through arts and audience participation at the Tate Modern museum, as part of The Open University Tate Exchange Associates' Consortium, and co-edited a special feature for openDemocracy ‘Who Are ‘We’ in a Moving World?’.