Wages of whiteness contra refugee in the twenty-first century

Afghan and Ukrainian women’s self-identification as (non)refugees in Canada

Bibliographic Data

ID24226132
AuthorsA Karimi (0000-0002-9470-0782, UBC)
Year2026
Pages1-20
Publication date2026-07-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Community (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2026.2693582
OpenAlexW7167094486
LanguageEN
References cited43

Why do some displaced groups embrace the label ‘refugee’ while others reject it? Drawing on 70 semi-structured interviews with Afghan and Ukrainian women fleeing wars to Canada, this paper highlights that race impacts refugee labelling at macro- and micro-levels. The Canadian government categorises Afghans as refugees and Ukrainians as special category immigrants. Further, self-identification appears as mirroring state categorisation, where Afghans accepted the refugee label for its legal and residency rights while noting its constraints. Ukrainians rejected the racialised refugee category and identified as European immigrants as a strategy of belonging in Canada. I argue that the state’s use of categories reflects a postcolonial continuity in categorical treatment of European and non-European populations. I use Du Bois’s ‘wages of whiteness’ to explain why Ukrainians refused the label, arguing that the affective rewards of European whiteness outweigh the advantages of refugee status. In effect, Canada’s two-tier resettlement programme for Afghans and Ukrainians – resembling the policies of most Western countries – separates protection while publicly distancing that protection from the refugee category, thereby legitimising the stigma attached to ‘refugee’ and refugee groups. States must decouple access to rights from stigmatised labels and reassess how special visa regimes reproduce hierarchies among displaced populations.

Afghan women · Canadian immigration policy · displacement · Postcolonialism · refugee resettlement · refugee status · Self identification · sense of belonging · Ukrainian women · W. E. B. Du Bois · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access