Life Before the Paper

Resisting the Segregation Between Theory and Action Through Research and Asylum Activism

Abstract

Dismantling oppressive power relations through academic papers and action is key for critical geographers. However, some geographers may prioritise writing “theoretically detached” papers over concretely contributing to the struggles of the people concerned by those papers. They may overlook reflexivity, ethics, and politics, thus spatially and temporally segregating their academic work from action and from their own situated humanity. In violent contexts, separating research from activism and prioritising in time disembodied theoretical papers risks reproducing the status quo in academia and society, reiterating the violence that erases racialised people. As researchers, we have a responsibility to use our power to resist, together with others, dehumanising dynamics. I use autoethnography to analyse some encounters that I have had, as a researcher and activist, with people seeking asylum, activists, researchers, and others in the politicised context of asylum in Finland. Some encounters allowed for the subjectivities and practices of activism and research to co-exist, although with some challenges, while others segregated and marginalised activism. Combining works by critical and feminist geographers, researchers of forced migration, and Black feminist theorists, I examine how where we put our time has ethical, epistemological, and political implications. I invite researchers to re-centre our situated humanity in our work and to engage more with politics. My novel focus on temporalities enriches discussions about crossing the borders between theory and activism. Lastly, I suggest ways to meet people navigating injustice in the times and spaces relevant to them, both within and beyond academia.