Speakers
Description
In January 2022, five months after the fall of Kabul, a group of 172 primarily Hazara refugees arrived in Edmonton, Alberta, having earlier travelled across the border to Pakistan amidst one of the largest and most protracted displacement crises in the history of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The Afghan newcomers and their children have been supported throughout a difficult resettlement period--one made even more challenging by Covid-19 quarantine regulations--by Free Play for Kids (FPFK), a non-profit, Sport for Development organization. FPFK staff, many of whom are immigrants and refugees themselves, have been actively involved in co-producing sports and recreational programming with the children of Afghan newcomers, and with many adults who aspired to be physically active in Edmonton. For several of the men and women under 40--part of a generation of urban, middle class, educated Afghans who came of age during the US-led invasion of their country--these aspirations included continuing to play futsol and soccer, as they had done in Afghanistan and while perilously living without documentation in Pakistan. In partnership with FPFK, Kabul-Edmonton, a co-ed team comprised exclusively of Afghan newcomers, was subsequently formed and participated in an adult recreational soccer league throughout the spring and summer of 2022. In this presentation, we explore the results of a photo-voice project developed in creative collaboration with Kabul-Edmonton team members to explore the role(s) of sport as they rebuilt their lives and communities in exile in meaningful and different ways, often transcending hegemonic ideals of development and integration.
