Border Crossing and Displacement: Forced Migration of Afghan Children in Refugee Fiction

Abstract

Wars and political unrest in Afghanistan make its children one of the most vulnerable groups among refugee communities. Afghan children suffer from poverty and a lack of basic facilities available to the majority of children in other countries. Refugee literature, notably, has become an effective medium in representing their plight of living in stateless and homeless conditions. Novels with refugee child characters demonstrate the relationship between national borders and stateless children’s lives. This article examines this relationship in two novels: Fabio Geda’s In the Seas There are Crocodiles (2011) and Tristan Bancks’ Detention (2019). These novels reveal the life of Afghan Hazara refugee children who cross borders to escape war and oppression. The protagonists Enaiat and Sima respectively become symbols for understanding the life of the Afghan refugee children. The article uses the border studies framework and theories of childhood to study the relationship between borders and refugee children.