‘But You Don’t Look Like a Syrian’: Migrant Narrative Beyond the Dichotomous Divide in Migration Studies

This paper is a personal piece, which also aims to draw upon academic research using insights from current discourses of and on migration, to ask questions about migrant and refugee experience of everyday microaggressions and internalisation of colonial forms of narrative. Employing a reflective autoethnographic approach, redolent of experience and memory, the paper draws on my own first-hand experience with migration and, in particular, comments I heard over my time in the UK, the ensuing discussions and reflections, and my own ongoing research.