Tuesday 28 January 2020 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Mond Building Seminar Room, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge, The Mond Building, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RF
About
ALL WELCOME
Tuesday 28 January 2020
4.30–6.00 Mond Building Seminar Room
Sayana Namsaraeva
University of Cambridge
Dystopian Mongolia: Reconceptualization of the Home Country by Mongolian Asylum Seekers in the UK
Based on anonymized background papers of the Mongolian asylum seekers in the UK, this presentation critically analyses these ‘affectively loaded’ documents (to use expression by Navaro-Yashin 2007) and their attempts to present Mongolia as a failed state, in cataclysmic decline and a degraded society. I argue, that though the dystopic image of Mongolia in their victimhood stories seems to be the result of interaction between two actors – the UK legal system and illegal
migrants, these narratives cannot be viewed as entirely constructed, since they contain worrying signs of a society in a deepening crisis. So the question remains: will this dystopic image become a reality?