Episode 3: “How Migration Status Impacts Health and Healthcare of Refugees”

“People do their best to maintain their emotional wellbeing. … They spend time with their friends, or they create mutual collective support mechanisms to cope with these feelings of exhaustion, boredom, insecurity and uncertainty, and they try to maintain their hope for a better future, but it’s not always easy to do so.” – Dr. Elif Sari

In the third episode of our mini series, we talk to Dr. Elif Sari about how the notion of “becoming sick” is related to people’s migration experiences, especially those who are part of the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community. Dr. Sari discusses how this notion is rooted in the idea of harsh working environments and discriminatory practices of healthcare. She also addressed how both of these factors contribute to the emotional and physical wellbeing of these people.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Unsafe Present, Uncertain Future: LGBTI Asylum in Turkey
• No Safe Refuge: Asylum-Seekers and Refugees Denied Effective Protection in Turkey
• Governing through Uncertainty: Experiences of Being a Refugee in Turkey as a Country for Temporary Asylum​​​​​
• Working Life Experiences of Iranian LGBTI Migrant Workers in Denizli Province in Terms of Occupational Health and Safety.
• Unsafe Haven: The Security Challenges Facing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Turkey
• Waiting to be ‘Safe and Sound’: Turkey as LGBTI Refugees’ Way Station

Guest Biography:

Dr. Elif Sari is a queer feminist anthropologist, a new faculty member in the UBC Department of Anthropology, and an uninvited immigrant settler on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nation. She completed her Ph.D. (2021) in anthropology at Cornell University with a concentration in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. After graduate school, Dr. Sari spent one year at the University of Toronto, where she had a chance to work in the Queer and Trans Research Lab as the Martha LA McCain postdoctoral fellow. Currently, she is working on her first book manuscript, which is an engaged ethnography of queer and trans asylum from the Middle East to North America. She is also excited to start two new research projects, one focusing on private refugee sponsorship in Canada and one exploring the connections between migration, sexuality, and art (particularly drag).