Biography

As a political geographer, Orhon Myadar studies the intersection of geography and politics at various scales. She is especially interested in questions of power, mobility, and displacement within the context of shifting political landscapes. She studies how borders of belonging or exclusion shift as political regimes change and how these fluid borders shape everyday struggles of underserved and marginalized individuals and communities. Her most recent research project, “Saving a piece of me,” explores the ways in which individuals who have been resettled as refugees in Tucson attempt to preserve their cultural practices while rebuilding their lives and integrating into the local community.

Abstract

Mobility and Displacement: A comparative analysis of refugees in Tucson and nomads in Mongolia

In this paper, I engage two central topics, mobility and displacement, as they inform and at times produce one another. I do so by examining three different cases to elucidate the complex and myriad ways in which mobility and displacement impact lives of peoples and communities at different spatial and temporal scales: herders in Mongolia, former “comfort women” in East Asia and refugees in Tucson. These cases demonstrate various ways in which the right to move is routinely hindered, in consequence displacing individuals and communities from their familiar territories and homelands. The cases also demonstrate how displacement functions as a both product and tool of violence.

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