‘ If you had experienced what I experienced… ’: Un/Doing Refugeeness as Knowledge‐Making Practices of Interviewees From Authoritarian Regimes

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the concept of refugeeness as a socially constructed identity shaped by both democratic and authoritarian migration management systems. Using qualitative interview data from studies with children and adults fleeing Syria, Iran, and Iraq, the article investigates what and how interviewees communicate about their refugeeness to non‐refugee researchers from Germany. Employing the theoretical concept of performativity, the paper demonstrates that the processes of un/doing refugeeness in research interviews are agentic, as interviewees actively produce knowledge about authoritarianism in relation to the positionality of researchers from democratic contexts. Key findings show that interviewees make refugeeness intelligible by simplifying complex experiences and referring to aspects of the authoritarian/democratic dichotomy that are familiar within German discourses and reflected in asylum law, such as religious coercion. Through VulnerAbility, interviewees performatively enact information about political repression and human rights violations by referring to emotions and bodily sensations, such as fear, sorrow, or pain, which convey to researchers what life under authoritarianism and on flight routes feels like. In this way, interviewees enable researchers to empathise with their experiences by imagining themselves in similar situations.