Heba Gowayed

Heba Gowayed is an associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College and the Graduate Center. Her work centers on the lives of people who migrate across borders and the unequal and often violent institutions they face.

Her award-winning book Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential (Princeton University Press, 2022), (Princeton University Press, 2022), takes readers into the lives of displaced Syrians who sought refuge in the United States, Canada, and Germany. She argues that their experiences reveal that these destination countries are not saviors; they can deny newcomers’ potential by failing to recognize their abilities and invest in the tools they need to prosper. In addition to her academic writing, Gowayed is published in outlets such as The Guardian, In These Times, and Slate and has had her work featured in various outlets and podcasts including her favorite one, Code Switch.

In her project, “The Cost of Borders: Reimagining the World’s Most Polarizing Institution,” Gowayed challenges our imaginaries of borders as boundaries that states have a right to defend. She argues that borders are not legal markers of sovereign territory but comprised of a series of transactions that are always costly and often deadly. Moving from Tijuana to Lesvos to Gaza, she details the insatiable appetite for “security” that animates borders, and the time, physical risks, and smugglers’ fees that people incur to cross them. As borders expand, she shows, their violence not only dehumanizes those who move against them but erodes the rights of all within the nation that built them.