My story is centered around the experience of Afghan women in the US – currently, it is based on four questions / ideas:

This quote from a lawyer at HIAS: “we failed Afghans, we continue to fail Afghans.” I want to see what ways our system forces educated Afghan women back into the traditional / familial roles that they escaped in the 2010s when the Taliban was expelled from big cities.
What do Afghan women think about a Trump administration? They’ve fled gender discrimination, and came to find an American election that was framed as a gender-war.

Sub-question, which is that I’m wondering what Trump will do about humanitarian parole once in office… he has threatened taking it away, but then he’d have to kick out Afghans. After all his finger-pointing at Biden for the Afghanistan-withdrawal, this would be a real contradiction. What threat does his administration pose for Afghan migrants?

How are Afghan women managing a less familial culture? Especially as many of them have family either still trying to get in.

Best case scenario: i find someone who has family that came up through the Darien (which many Afghans are doing now, because Brazil took away the protections that had initially driven many to immigrate there) and I can speak to that migration story also

How are different generations of Afghan migrants relating to each other (pre-2021, the 2021 influx crowd, and those receiving asylum now) – is it like Latin American migrants, where the older ones have some resentment towards the recent crowd?

My points of access:

Nasiba, who I’ve already written about. Good example of an educated woman who has less opportunities here than she had in Afghanistan pre-Taliban takeover

Wahid and I are going to Virginia the weekend of November 29th, to spend two days there. There’s a huge group of Afghans there, and he could connect me with some interesting people:

https://www.iwmf.org/community/maryam-yousufi/

Former journalist, now basically an Instagram influencer, 367k followers. Has an afghan clothing brand, really interesting example of tradition colliding with American culture

He’s said that once I meet Maryam, I could probably meet a lot more people in her circle, who are similar – how are these women, who seem to be doing well, affected by US policy w.r.t migration and asylum?
Connecting with Women for Afghan Women on November 19th – hopefully they are willing to let me visit their Virginia office, where I could meet a more traditional counterpart to Maryam. If not, I’ll be in Virginia either way. Large Afghan population there, there are other community centers I can contact otherwise. Wahid’s family also lives in Virginia, maybe they could connect me with recent migrants.

NY trip:

Yalda Afif works at Commonpoint community center, used to be director of Afghan resettlement for HIAS. She also is (was?) close friends with Bibi Aesha, who was the TIME cover story in 2011 about Afghan woman repression – would be interesting to check in, and see how Aesha is doing now?
Have connected with the people at WAW. Media-communications officer is out until the 19th, but they’ve indicated i could maybe visit the New York Queens office once she’s back

 

Minimum viable story: I tell the stories of multiple Afghan women (ideally different class background and time since they’ve come in – Nasiba is a Dari-speaking Hazara, Yalda is Pashto-speaking, hoping to bring in varied groups) showing how they’ve adapted to the US, are supported and challenged by it, and what the Trump administration means for them.

Outline:

I can’t really do a lede or nut graf until I get to immerse

Beginning with a scene of Maryam and her friends, if I can get them to talk about life in Afghanistan as compared to life here. Planning on embedding for a day, hopefully can get them just relaxing. Zoom out to talk about the challenges of living in the US, bring in HIAS quote.

Talk background for a while, bring in general experience of Afghans migrants in general, their migration story, then zoom in on Afghan women and the statistics about illiteracy and unemployment among them – incorporate interviews from HIAS lawyer, bring in more “typical” example of what resettlement has looked like: Nasiba + WAW- or Yalda-connections

Bring in interviews from researchers Held and Rai, about unique challenges Afghan women face, about the loss of extended-family systems (here’s an opportunity to bring in the fact that many Afghans are waiting for their family to be granted asylum – some still in Afghanistan, others coming up from the Darien, others in Iran/Pakistan, facing repression there). Support with an example of Afghan women living traditional lives here (this will be a challenge to find access, maybe a write-around?)

Talk more explicitly about the Trump administration (compared to the experience of women still living in Afghanistan, which comes up in every interview). Come back to Maryam and her friends – are there any similar scenes I might see between Maryam and the other Afghan women I meet?

^^ this is ALL very dependent on the access I get during my trip. Feels very variable, uncertain. How can I set up my time there to ensure I get what I need? This is my biggest concern.