In this episode, Shahram Khosravi, Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, reflects on a lifetime of theorizing from outside the law, and his ongoing urge to create otherwise.
When Shahram talks about theorizing from outside the law, he is not using a metaphor, he is referring to his experiences growing up Bakhtiari, and the refusal of his people to be dominated by colonial powers, whether in Tehran, or European. Shahram also talks about being Young and Defiant in Tehran, to name one of his books, and about crossing borders as a so-categorized Illegal Traveler, to name his auto-ethnography, or auto-theory of borders. And, he talks about refusing modes of knowledge production that are hostile to him and his people. As Shahram explains, coming from Indigenous People, such refusals are not about negation, but rather about creation, and walking in the fog of the unknown
At the time of this recording, in June 2025, Israel and the United States were bombing Iran, putting people outside of the law, again. In the episode, we take this moment to reflect on how deep we are falling, and how dark the times are, in which we are again witnessing genocide in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy. But, we also talk about how we can build on the movements that came before us, and from other places, to fight these dark times.
And, in this spirit, we listen to music that transports into those other worlds. We listen to Aida Shahghasemi, who sings the song Gole Bavineh, taking us to the Bakhtiari world of Shahram’s youth. We then listen to Parvin, who sings the song Ghoghaye Setargan, which carries different Iranian revolutions in it. Finally, we listen to Soheil Nafisi, who sings Nima Yushij’s poem Ay Adamha, in which a person drowning in the sea cries out to a festive crowd on the shore and the old world they represent, demanding to be seen, and demanding a liveable world.
Enjoy listening.
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In this episode, Shahram Khosravi, Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, reflects on a lifetime of theorizing from outside the law, and his ongoing urge to create otherwise.
When Shahram talks about theorizing from outside the law, he is not using a metaphor, he is referring to his experiences growing up Bakhtiari, and the refusal of his people to be dominated by colonial powers, whether in Tehran, or European. Shahram also talks about being Young and Defiant in Tehran, to name one of his books, and about crossing borders as a so-categorized Illegal Traveler, to name his auto-ethnography, or auto-theory of borders. And, he talks about refusing modes of knowledge production that are hostile to him and his people. As Shahram explains, coming from Indigenous People, such refusals are not about negation, but rather about creation, and walking in the fog of the unknown
At the time of this recording, in June 2025, Israel and the United States were bombing Iran, putting people outside of the law, again. In the episode, we take this moment to reflect on how deep we are falling, and how dark the times are, in which we are again witnessing genocide in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy. But, we also talk about how we can build on the movements that came before us, and from other places, to fight these dark times.
And, in this spirit, we listen to music that transports into those other worlds. We listen to Aida Shahghasemi, who sings the song Gole Bavineh, taking us to the Bakhtiari world of Shahram’s youth. We then listen to Parvin, who sings the song Ghoghaye Setargan, which carries different Iranian revolutions in it. Finally, we listen to Soheil Nafisi, who sings Nima Yushij’s poem Ay Adamha, in which a person drowning in the sea cries out to a festive crowd on the shore and the old world they represent, demanding to be seen, and demanding a liveable world.
Enjoy listening.
Ep 28: Border imperialism in the Balkans. With Manja Petrovska (English).
De Verbranders
1 hour 22 minutes 49 seconds
11 months ago
Ep 28: Border imperialism in the Balkans. With Manja Petrovska (English).
Our guest is Manja Petrovska, a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam and the Université libre de Bruxelles.
We start our conversation today in the Balkans. Before her PhD, Manja spent five years supporting people travelling through the Balkans to Europe’s more affluent northwest, including at the Macedonian-Greek border and in Bosnia.
Witnessing the intense violence that Croatian, Greek, Macedonian, and other police forces inflicted on people on the move, she increasingly started questioning who governs and funds this violence. This led her to focus on the International Organization for Migration, or the IOM.
From this five-year engagement, Manja co-authored a report from this five-year engagement, titled Repackaging Imperialism: The EU-IOM Border Regime in the Balkans, published by the Transnational Institute. Although the report’s other authors are not featured in this episode, everything we discuss related to the report is based on their work as well, so special thanks to Nidžara Ahmetašević, Sophie-Anne Bisiaux, and Lorenz Naegeli, as well as Niamh Ni Bhriain, who was the report’s main editor.
As the report lays out, while the IOM portrays itself as a neutral broker and knowledge center on migration, it is, in fact, an active implementer of particular states’ border policies, bolstering police, border guards, and private contractors known to commit atrocities. Most IOM funding comes from affluent states that can directly commission projects, which the IOM then implements in regions far from its primary funders.
What emerges from the conversation is a European Union border regime that extends its influence into the Balkans through the IOM, funding violence that northwestern European states can then distance themselves from by mobilizing racist depictions of brutality as always something occurring in various elsewheres. From the perspective of people living in the region, this is not a new phenomenon but rather one that echoes the efforts of past empires that sought to shape what we now call the Balkans. Hence the report’s title: Repackaging Imperialism.
In addition to affecting the lives of people on the move, this regime is also leading to a remilitarization of borders in a region still recovering from war and genocide.
We then move to discussing Manja’s current PhD project. As part of this project, she has recently attended a number of border technology fairs, which are marketplaces where security companies showcase their ideas for border security, with government officials as their clients. Manja takes us into a world where cowboy hats, raffles, and rampant alcohol consumption are used to aid in the selling of heartbeat monitors, document scanners, and weapons—illustrating how absurdly and soul-crushingly removed the worlds of weapons sales are from the people whose lives these weapons affect.
Finally, Manja recounts her own encounter with border enforcement. After leaving one of the last security fairs she attended, she was administratively detained and taken to immigration detention in Belgium. There, she met and tried to support many others who were in a much worse situation than she was, mainly people from other Balkan states and Palestinians.
We end the conversation by reflecting once again on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the need to resist the brutal slaughter, starvation, displacement, and land theft of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state. We feel pain at this destruction of life. Weapons companies, Manja explains, profit, not only from causing mass death but also from surveilling, governing, and dividing people when displaced, once again showing us that our struggles are deeply interconnected.
De Verbranders
In this episode, Shahram Khosravi, Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, reflects on a lifetime of theorizing from outside the law, and his ongoing urge to create otherwise.
When Shahram talks about theorizing from outside the law, he is not using a metaphor, he is referring to his experiences growing up Bakhtiari, and the refusal of his people to be dominated by colonial powers, whether in Tehran, or European. Shahram also talks about being Young and Defiant in Tehran, to name one of his books, and about crossing borders as a so-categorized Illegal Traveler, to name his auto-ethnography, or auto-theory of borders. And, he talks about refusing modes of knowledge production that are hostile to him and his people. As Shahram explains, coming from Indigenous People, such refusals are not about negation, but rather about creation, and walking in the fog of the unknown
At the time of this recording, in June 2025, Israel and the United States were bombing Iran, putting people outside of the law, again. In the episode, we take this moment to reflect on how deep we are falling, and how dark the times are, in which we are again witnessing genocide in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy. But, we also talk about how we can build on the movements that came before us, and from other places, to fight these dark times.
And, in this spirit, we listen to music that transports into those other worlds. We listen to Aida Shahghasemi, who sings the song Gole Bavineh, taking us to the Bakhtiari world of Shahram’s youth. We then listen to Parvin, who sings the song Ghoghaye Setargan, which carries different Iranian revolutions in it. Finally, we listen to Soheil Nafisi, who sings Nima Yushij’s poem Ay Adamha, in which a person drowning in the sea cries out to a festive crowd on the shore and the old world they represent, demanding to be seen, and demanding a liveable world.
Enjoy listening.
