Drawing on an ethnographic study of Afghan women in metropolitan Vancouver (2002-05), this article argues that it is necessary to recognize research participants as producers of context-specific knowledge. Afghan women, a disenfranchised population, deploy particular strategies to foreground two interrelated scripts-the political economy of migration and resettlement and the remaking of a world-that help to bridge the analytical divide between the political economy and human agency. Within this blurred space, the women bring forth three themes that speak to policy makers and stakeholders: social provision as entitlement, valorization of the women's multiple identities, and transnational networks that contain but also go beyond the unit of the nation-state. The article concludes by making a case for locally-informed policy and service provision to effect progressive change. © 2008 Sage Publications.

Entitlement Human agency Political economy Afghan women

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