June 2022 Affiliate of the Month: Heba Gowayed (CAS Sociology)
Heba Gowayed
is an assistant professor of sociology. Her research, which is global and comparative, examines how low-income people traverse social services, immigration laws, and their associated bureaucracies while grappling with gender and racial inequalities. Dr. Gowayed’s new book Refuge, is an ethnography exploring the lives of Syrians seeking refuge in the United States, Canada, and Germany. In it she examines whether and how these countries recognize and invest in new arrivals’ humanity and potential, shaping their economic realities and feelings of belonging. As countries receive refugees through their social welfare systems, Refuge raises a mirror to how these systems (re)produce social inequality.
What made you decide to be a social scientist/ why does social science matter to you?
I am an Arab-American woman, who grew up in a practicing Muslim family. On 9/ 11/ 2001 I was in high school and I watched as planes flew into the twin towers. It was a horrific and bloodcurdling scene. About thirty minutes after the second plane hit, I heard my name on the intercom. It was my father’s friend there to check me out. I kept asking him why, but he didn’t answer. I thought something might have happened to my family; like others in the country I was disoriented and disturbed. Had my father flown to New York? Did I have a family member in the twin towers I didn’t know of?
When I got home, my father was sitting at the kitchen table. He began to speak to me about Japanese Internment camps, and how people react in ways that don’t make sense when they’re afraid. Muslims are going to be blamed for this, he told me, and people may target you. I was angry with him — why associate me with something that had nothing to do with me? But as I was targeted in the weeks that followed, I recognized that he was right.
Before that moment, we had talked about skin color, how my grandpa, who was dark-skinned, would have drank from the “colored” fountain in the United States. We’d spoken about how Arabs didn’t really fit into the American racial binary. But it was that day that I was exposed, in a real way, to the power of race. And, it became my life calling to understand it, and how it is shaped and maintained by borders, but also intersecting inequalities of gender and class.
Can you tell us about a recent research project that you’re excited about?
I just published my book Refuge, which is about how Syrian refugees experience destination countries, and whether or not these country’s national systems invest and recognize their potential as human beings. When I was speaking to the Syrian men and women, particularly in Germany, which they got to by making harrowing journeys across the Aegean sea, I was struck by the sacrifices they’d made to get to safety.
This was the inspiration for my second project, which I’m calling the “Cost of Borders.” This project centers the experiences of people on the move, migrating across the divide between so-called Global South and Global North in places like Tijuana and Lesvos in which I’ve been doing fieldwork. I am exploring and documenting the physical, emotional and also financial cost people make to get to countries that they hope will offer them the possibilities of a better future for themselves and their loved ones. I am also examining the expenditures that destination countries, like the United States, or countries in the European Union make to keep them out. The border, seen from this vantage, is a transaction that is always costly, and often deadly.
What is the best piece of professional advice you ever received?
The best advice I have ever received is to do work that is meaningful to me, and tell the truth in the way that makes me proud to tell it. Too often in academic life, and in life in general, we work in order to get outside validation of the high status actors in our professions or communities. But, those high status actors, due to histories of inequality that shape those environments, tend to be people who do not look like me, and who do not necessarily value the same things I do. For that reason, my goal, for everything I write and all the research I do, is to create a product that I can be proud of. Any accolade or recognition is a cherry on top.
What is your favorite course you’ve taught at BU?
I love teaching at BU. The students are amazing– kind, interesting, and eager to learn! So, it’s hard to pick out a favorite course. If I had to pick, my two favorites are Contemporary Theory which I teach at a graduate and undergraduate level, and the Immigration course.
Tell us a surprising fact about yourself.
The fact that I did k-12 in Auburn, Alabama always surprises people!