Shahin Nasiri

Winner Dissertation Prize 2024

Report by the selection committee

In 1969, the relatively unknown singer Richie Havens was due to be the fifth performer on stage at the now legendary Woodstock festival. But the act that was due on first got stuck in traffic, so Havens was pushed onto the stage to open the festival in front of an audience of at least 300,000 people. After nine songs, four of them covers – his own repertoire was still quite modest – he didn’t know what else to play, but the organizers gestured to him to keep going. So, he launched into a rapid, forceful riff on his acoustic guitar. He played this rhythm for exactly a minute before he began to sing:

Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom, Freedom…  

Eight times the word ‘Freedom’, followed by quotes from traditional African-American songs that were conceived on slave plantations where dislocation and solidarity scarred so many lives.

Like in this song, freedom, (un)freedom and social solidarity lie at the heart of Shahin Nasiri’s wonderful dissertation, the recipient today of one of the Erasmus Dissertation Prizes. Shahin compellingly analyses and links these themes with great virtuosity, on the basis of a wide range of philosophical theories and a phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of refugees whom he interviewed in 2018 in Greece.

The jury was unanimous in its assessment that this highly original and important academic work convinces in all aspects. The combination of (abstract) conceptual-philosophical analysis and (concrete) qualitative-empirical research works excellently, because the quotations from his discussion partners are not reduced to illustrations of concepts but are in and of themselves conceptualized for the argumentation. That also takes into account the unique positionality of refugees in relation to the concept of freedom, an aspect that does not come to the fore so clearly in philosophical works.

The jury was impressed by the way in which Shahin critically yet respectfully analyses the philosophy of Hanna Arendt and succeeds in integrating thinkers like Olympe de Gouges and Frederick Douglass in conceptualizing the idea of freedom. His reflections on the notion of freedom in relation to pre-flight, flight and post-flight conditions are particularly illuminating. The same applies to his critical appraisal of the humanitarian mode of reasoning in which the role of the nation spate and citizenship are problematized in an insightful way.  

Friendship occupies a strikingly original place in this dissertation. Moreover, the transition from hostility and conditional acceptation to equality and reciprocity in the form of friendship is a refugee’s achievement that is closely connected to the pursuit of autonomy, of relational autonomy. In this process, the refugee is not a passive figure waiting for humanitarian help to rescue him from his unfreedom, but someone who actively pursues freedom. As Shahin writes: Refugees are freedom seekers in the first place. They reject their state of unfreedom and abandon house and home in search of freedom. One cannot imagine a more active form of resistance and autonomy.

All too frequently, refugees are viewed and treated as passive figures. That is down, not least, to post-flight conditions in places like Ter Apel, where refugees are condemned to a life of waiting, where indignity is commonplace and autonomy anything but obvious. What is so impressive about Shahin’s work is that it clarifies how relational autonomy can develop, even under conditions characterized by institutional unfreedom – just like a blessing in disguise, but as the result of a process in which the refugee performs, resisting abandonment and neglect in pursuit of freedom.   

In the same year that Woodstock took place, Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster wrote the number ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, which became world famous a year later when it was sung by Janis Joplin. One of the most iconic lines in this song is ‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.’ I doubt whether the prize-winner and his discussion partners would agree with this assertion. Refugees have lost a home, social ties, citizenship and protection. The ultimate state of unfreedom, as Hannah Arendt also argues. On the basis of this dissertation, that line in ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ should rather be: ‘Freedom is just another word for having things to lose’.