Critical Refugee Studies

Below you will find a collection of my academic publications which center around critical refugee studies.

Toward Critical Refugee Studies

By Marina Levina
Published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2025)

This editorial by Marina Levina introduces a special issue of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies dedicated to developing Critical Refugee Studies (CRS)—an emerging interdisciplinary field that centers the lived experiences, narratives, and epistemologies of refugees. Levina urges scholars to expand and commit to CRS, not only as academic inquiry but as resistance to oppressive regimes and narratives. She emphasizes the need to rethink refuge as central to power, identity, and communication—and as a potential site of hope, agency, and transformation.

Refuge Special Issue of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies

Edited by Marina Levina
Published in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2025)

Issue highlights:

Mejía & Ono: Introduce “refugeness” as a rhetorical practice and critique rigid categories like "migrant" vs. "refugee."
Xiong-Gum: Uses Hmong concepts to theorize refuge as refusal and ethical world-making.
Aswad & Partain: Examine how U.S. refugee policy enforces “gratitude” as a form of political silencing.
Einertson: Explores Jewish refugee memory and narrative in the face of Eastern European neo-Nazism.
Pyatovskya & Khrebtan-Hörhager: Analyze the paradox of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Russia.
Ogunfeyimi: Reimagines Africa as a site of refuge for African Americans, complicating diasporic returns.
Lv: Links refuge to environmental and economic precarity in coal communities in China and the U.S.
Barnett & Gore: Call for new forms of refuge in response to climate change, beyond traditional notions of safe havens.