Jona Zyfi

Jona (Yona) Zyfi is a doctoral student at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and a Junior Fellow at Massey College. Born in Albania and raised in Australia, her research is motivated by her lived experiences with immigration and refugee systems and processes. While her research interests are broad, her PhD work focuses on the role and human rights impact of technology in immigration and refugee status determinations. In 2020 Jona was awarded a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Doctoral Scholarship and is a past recipient of the SSHRC Top 25 Storyteller Award, the Barbara Frum Memorial Award in Canadian Scholarship and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Presently, she is a research assistant for a project examining private refugee sponsorship in Canada from a sponsor’s perspective and the co-host of an academic podcast called Criminologia. She is also one of three researchers on the Canadian team of the PROTECT project which studies the impacts of the United Nations’ Global Refugee Compact and Global Migration Compact on the functioning of the international refugee protection system. The study is being conducted in 20 countries and is funded by the European Commission under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 framework. Outside of academia, Jona is an English-Albanian interpreter, plays tennis, and enjoys biking with her husky, Nala. 

Publications

• (forthcoming) Zyfi, J. & Macklin, A. (n.d.). The role of privatization in Canada’s immigration detention centers. In A. Luscombe, D. Silva., & K. Walby (Eds.), Private Influences, Privatization, and Criminal Justice in Canada (Chapter 13). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
• Macklin, A., Goldring, L., Hyndman, J., Korteweg, A., Barber, K., & Zyfi, J. (2020). The kinship between refugee and family sponsorship (Working Paper No. 2020/4). 
• Zyfi, J., Abu Alrob, Z., & Atak, I. (2020, August 4). Canada’s response to the Global Compact on Refugees: Are we doing enough? The Migration Initiative.
• Atak, I., Abu Alrob, Z., & Zyfi, J. (2020, July 27). The US is not safe for asylum seekers: Federal Court of Canada strikes down the Canada-US Agreement. PROTECT.
• Macklin, A., Barber, K., Goldring, L., Hyndman, J., Korteweg, A., Labman, S., and Zyfi, J. (2020). Kindred spirits? Links between refugee sponsorship and family sponsorship. In S. Labman, & G. Cameron (Eds.), Strangers to neighbours: Refugee sponsorship in context (pp.). Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• Zyfi, J. & Atak, I. (2018). Playing with lives under the guise of fair play: the safe country of origin policy in the EU and Canada, Int. J. Migration and Border Studies, 4(4), 345-365. [Special Issue: The Criminalisation of Migration and Asylum: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Consequences and Human Rights Impact].
• Macklin, A., Barber, K., Goldring, L., Hyndman, J., Korteweg, A., Labman, S., and Zyfi.J. (2018). A preliminary investigation into private refugee sponsorship, Canadian Ethnic Studies, 50 (2), 35-58. [Special Issue: Canada’s Syrian refugee program, intergroup relationships and identities].
• Zyfi, J. (2016). Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada: An auto-ethnographic account of sponsorship (Working Paper No. 2016/2).