https://www.hebagowayed.com/home daily 1.0 2025-04-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/d4e7645f-0de1-4727-8fcd-bc7a983e2d37/headshot+for+website.jpeg Home - Welcome أهلاً My name is Heba Gowayed (click here for pronunciation) and I am a writer and associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center, and a current Carnegie Fellow (2025-2027). My research and writing centers the lives of people who migrate across borders and the unequal and often violent institutions they face. My award-winning book Refuge, published with Princeton University Press, takes readers into the lives of displaced Syrians who sought refuge in the United States, Canada, and Germany. 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. I am currently working on my second book, The Cost of Borders, where I argue that borders, rather than markers of sovereign territory, are comprised of a series of transactions that are always costly and often deadly. Moving across the world including frontiers like the Southwest border of the United States, the islands of the Greek Aegean, and the walls that contain Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, I detail the insatiable appetite for “security” that animates borders, and the smugglers fees, time, and physical risks that people incur to cross them. As borders expand, I argue, they erode the rights of all people within the nation that built them. I am published in academic journals as well as public outlets including The Guardian, In these Times, Slate, Al Jazeera English, The New Humanitarian, and Teen Vogue, and have had my work and words featured in various outlets and podcasts including my favorite one Code Switch. (Headshot by Andrea Kane) https://www.hebagowayed.com/research daily 0.75 2025-04-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/1607547494605-PQL7JHUWGKSRVVRCYVQH/ain-essira-photo.jpg Other Research - The Unnecessary Nudge, Sociological Forum, 2018 Winner of the Easter Sociological Association’s Candace Rogers Award for “most outstanding paper by a graduate student,” this article examined a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) pilot in the low-income Egyptian neighborhood of Ain EsSira. CCTs are a poverty alleviation tool by which policy-makers attempt to incentivize low-income people, and particularly mothers, to fulfill development goals. It argues that while mothers did send their children to school as a result of the program, it was because the cash transferred by the program allowed them to afford its costs, not because its conditions required it. Public school education in Egypt is expensive due to corruption at the level of teachers and administrators who require parents to pay private lesson fees to offset their own low wages. This article reflects on the use of cash incentives in poverty policy, and the danger of studying programs solely through outcomes that blackbox how programs actually work in the lives of the poor. (Heba Gowayed, 2013, Ain EsSira, Cairo, Egypt) https://www.hebagowayed.com/media daily 0.75 2025-04-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/1608565753836-OKENYG0KQLUDF2A6B848/teen%2Bvogue.jpg Media & Advocacy - The Citizenship Exam Puts an Unfair Burden on Low-Income Immigrants, in Teen Vogue We must divest from policies that treat immigrants as a threat in favor of policies that invest in them as people https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/36833256-c767-406d-b006-e2e1e4f3d7f0/ukraine+one.jpeg Media & Advocacy - Racism & Blocked Refuge of the Displaced of the Middle East & North Africa, for Arab Center, Washington, DC For the majority of the world’s displaced, to be forced to leave home is to contend with a global patchwork of unequal borders designed to exclude those who need resources and stability from countries that have it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/36eecea8-7caa-460f-ba1b-23eb43b62717/Screenshot+2025-03-12+at+12.43.54%E2%80%AFPM.png Media & Advocacy - Mahmoud Khalil is being used as a pawn in Trump’s mass deportation plan, The Guardian The Palestinian student’s arrest at Columbia University is a harbinger of what’s to come on college campuses https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/1634667026067-Q01BRT7YY694MF0GKGYY/Screen+Shot+2021-10-19+at+9.10.19+PM.png Media & Advocacy - The Inhumane Futility of Border Policing, in Al Jazeera English Increased and more violent border policing does not work. It is time to abolish it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/a0fb3619-954f-46e4-a72f-337f09f8a664/cover+parenthood+adn+genocide.jpeg Media & Advocacy - On Parenthood and Genocide, In These Times A new mother and scholar of forced displacement writes about Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian children in Gaza. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/4ce4a5f0-364e-4757-95bf-2dd4afdd25b3/GettyImages-976901242+copy.jpg Media & Advocacy - For Women, Migration is a Constant Battle, in Al Jazeera English The gendered costs of anti-refugee policies like Title 42 need to be acknowledged and addressed. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/eefdd88f-0e20-490d-b004-f833e1843ea5/human+toll+of+war.jpeg Media & Advocacy - The Human Toll of Refuge, in The New Humanitarian Long after conflicts slip from global attention, the displaced continue to pay the price— a reflection on borders, racism and the promise of refuge in light of Ukranian exodus. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/2e88da27-1720-46a8-b629-04c787bd8b0d/Screen+Shot+2022-12-07+at+3.50.24+PM.png Media & Advocacy - How Trump’s human trafficking efforts failed immigrant survivors, The Hill Access to legal reprieve for immigrant survivors of trafficking has long been difficult, but under the Trump administration, they faced an unprecedented risk of harm. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/2f17ac7e-749f-4364-b258-39e2fb8b02e3/gaza+cover+phoot.jpeg Media & Advocacy - Gaza as Ground Zero for Israel’s Border Technology, Arab Center Washington DC How the AI industry in Israel fuels the occupation and fuels violent border policy in the rest of the world. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/b685bdd3-a1ba-4793-bebb-b9309294f358/Floods-in-Pakistan-Lahore-768x433.jpeg Media & Advocacy - Climate Change & Migration, for Arab Center Washington, DC The climate crisis is an amplifier of global disadvantage — most people displaced will remain in situations of chronic poverty and protracted conflict the Global South. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/1769cd5d-1095-492b-80f4-275fe3c842a0/Screenshot+2025-02-12+at+8.43.45%E2%80%AFAM.png Media & Advocacy - Trump’s Obsession with Immigration is Really an Obsession with Segregation, The Guardian US His policies are the latest instantiation of a centuries-long American tradition: laws meant to exclude people of color and privilege whiteness. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/1608565728872-J9XV5B6LZOYCCXU1DKRX/slate.jpg Media & Advocacy - The Case for Abolishing the Citizenship Exam, in Slate It’s expensive, ineffective, and discriminatory. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/e8eb2a74-34dd-4a80-ad6c-782222a4b6ec/Screen+Shot+2022-05-25+at+10.43.00+AM.png Media & Advocacy - Make it stand out New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) on Refuge for Jadaliyya https://www.hebagowayed.com/refuge daily 0.75 2024-06-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/cd4ede94-1deb-4f05-ba4b-00f2f999f163/cover_refuge.png Refuge - Winner of the 2024 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award from the Eastern Sociological Society & the Racial and Ethnic Minorities section’s 2024 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award from the American Sociological Association. As the world confronts the largest refugee crisis since World War II, wealthy countries are being called upon to open their doors to the displaced, with the assumption that this will restore their prospects for a bright future. Refuge follows Syrians who fled a brutal war in their homeland as they attempt to rebuild in countries of resettlement and asylum. 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. Purchase here (Code: P289), or elsewhere books are sold https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/d12e8b7c-df1c-49bf-adbc-0969da8d2cc4/Screen+Shot+2022-05-25+at+10.43.00+AM.png Refuge - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.hebagowayed.com/the-cost-of-borders daily 0.75 2025-04-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/1644255790494-V39EKE3HXT1CYKAI1NO4/IMG_E9D82B26E804-1fayad.jpeg The Cost of Borders - The Cost of Borders On maps borders are depicted as lines of equal thickness that divide our world into separate states. In international law, they are markers of territory that states have a right to defend. In the Cost of Borders, I challenge these lay and legal imaginaries of borders. I show that in practice, borders are comprised of a series of transactions that are always costly and often deadly. These include the exorbitant payments made by states, that fuel a security apparatus, and animate industries designed to deny the mobility of people, and even kill them. They include expenditures made by travelers, who go into debt and risk their lives to secure a future worth having. It includes a growing smuggling industry valued at $10 billion a year, of people who carry the ladder to the spot of wall least surveilled, who provide boats in treacherous waters, who sell a pathway to freedom that travelers are gladly paying. Though borders do not deter people from moving, I show, what the security logic of borders is successful at is destroying the democracy that makes the nations that erect them an attractive destination for anyone. The ultimate cost of borders, I argue, is the destruction of the nation itself. Writing from this project has appeared in public outlets including “Borders & the Exchange of Humans for Debt,” “The Inhumane Futility of Border Policing,” “For Women Migration is a Constant Fight,” as well as pieces on Climate Crisis Displacement and Racism and Blocked Refuge written for the Arab Center in Washington, DC. (Image of abandoned chair in evacuated “jungle camp” in Samos taken by Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/b6a24bd5-4ee4-45f6-abc3-606556d673c8/IMG_5361.jpeg The Cost of Borders Panorma of evacuated "jungle camp" Vathy, Samos (photo credit: Heba Gowayed) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/c96aa9a3-8c7b-47f4-85fe-1fdb3d326ec2/IMG_6414.JPG The Cost of Borders Confiscated boat in Lesvos port, baby bottle visible (photo credit: Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/fb81305e-d5fc-468d-9fe6-3f7a99df23a2/A875664C-5BAE-4B60-B33D-8F718BA3ED55-13595-000007ED52515AF2fayad.JPG The Cost of Borders Conducting interview evacuated "jungle camp" Vathy, Samos (photo credit: Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/7718fdb2-e69b-4064-bb9b-2cb93d0becb1/IMG_5345fayad.JPG The Cost of Borders Church in Rubb Hall in evacuated "jungle camp" Vathy, Samos (photo credit: Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/0db3037a-280f-4283-99b4-2f2588c46c55/IMG_1D35549BFB9F-1fayad.jpeg The Cost of Borders Gym in evacuated "jungle camp" Vathy, Samos (photo credit: Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/b00a48a3-cff6-4872-ac98-b9cf415a3413/IMG_5AF61AC8AC1F-1fayad.jpeg The Cost of Borders Evacuated "jungle camp" Vathy, Samos (photo credit: Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/f7a1d2e1-a78c-4373-b5b3-332e00a3d461/IMG_FBFC947379B7-1fayad.jpeg The Cost of Borders Children's toys evacuated "jungle camp" Vathy, Samos (photo credit: Fayad Mulla) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/5586d25e-3257-45f5-95c1-016cf47ae223/IMG_5396.jpeg The Cost of Borders "Closed Controlled Access Camp" -- effective prison to which asylum-seekers were evacuated to in Vathy, Samos. (photo credit: Heba Gowayed) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/c7f6e8aa-c428-4a0c-aa3a-22f37425a04f/IMG_5630.jpeg The Cost of Borders Graffiti on the walls of Ritsona camp in Athens. (photo credit: Heba Gowayed) https://www.hebagowayed.com/new-page daily 0.75 2024-01-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/c1087863-b706-4d9b-8331-010854538261/access+denied_Page_01.jpg https://www.hebagowayed.com/583544494043 daily 0.75 2025-04-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5dfbc6ed2d1fae30b70de983/fb81305e-d5fc-468d-9fe6-3f7a99df23a2/A875664C-5BAE-4B60-B33D-8F718BA3ED55-13595-000007ED52515AF2fayad.JPG