Storying Social Distancing with Swana Refugee Youth

Storying social distancing grapples with the experiences of refugee youth at the intersections of multiple societal pandemics—Islamophobia, anti-Muslim violence, anti-migrant politics—and the recent Covid-19 pandemic, all amidst the devastating earthquakes in central Croatia. Although the Covid-19 pandemic introduced “social distancing” into our global lexicon, social distancing has long been reverberating through historico-political violence globally and in the Balkans, including genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and the detention, deportation, and public outcasting of migrants, refugees, and Black and Brown bodies.

This presentation discusses collective memory writing amongst seven young refugees from Syria and a Croatian activist-researcher. The story-telling flows took place in the summer of 2021, in a Croatian village by the Croatian-Serbian border as the terrain of police violence against refugees, and the site of autonomous crossings and free movement. Rooted in the politics of reclamation of one’s identities and entitlements, the collective memory writing session sought hope and solidarity. The experience of sharing, writing, documenting, and strategizing on publicizing the refugee youth journeys prior to and amid their everyday living and schooling experiences in Croatia revealed multiple societal pandemics, all operating through racialized surveillance and disciplining of refugee youth. These nuanced accounts move us towards the mobilization of the new ways of knowledge production that unsettle and combat permeating work of racialized criminalization and cultural exclusions.