Jona Zyfi

Jona (Yona) Zyfi is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies. Her PhD work explores the intersections of technology and (im)migration through a human rights lens. Though her academic interests are broad, born in Albania and raised in Australia, Jona’s research is motivated by her lived experiences with immigration and refugee systems and processes. She is an alumni of Massey College and a past recipient of a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Doctoral Scholarship, 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, teaches at the Centre, and co-hosts an academic podcast called Criminologia. Outside of academia, Jona is an English-Albanian interpreter, plays tennis, and enjoys hanging out with her husky, Nala.  

Publications

• (forthcoming). Zyfi, J. (2023). Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy in Europe [Review of the book Privacy and Border Controls in the Fight against Terrorism: A Fundamental Rights Analysis of Passenger Data Sharing]. The European Journal of Migration and Law.
• (under review). Zyfi, J. (2023). Vulnerability and the Global Compacts: How local actors understand and assess the concept in practice. LAWS [Special Issue on Vulnerability and the Legal Protection of Migrants: A critical look at the Canadian context].
• Atak, I., Grundler, M., de Oliveira, P.E., Bast, J., Guild, E., Maple, N., Vanyoro, K., Wessels, J., & Zyfi, J. (2023). Reviewing the Reviews: The Global Compacts’ Added Value in Access to Asylum Procedures and Immigration Detention. PROTECT Working Papers. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.768803 
• Atak, I., Asalya, S., & Zyfi, J. (2023). I started to lose meaning in life: Understanding the vulnerability of asylum seekers and non-status migrants in Toronto, Canada. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7526290 
• Atak, I., & Zyfi, J. (2022). Notions of Vulnerability in Field Level Governance in Toronto, Canada. In C Jacobsen, M-A Karlsen, and J Vearey (Eds.), How key actors and stakeholders apply the notion of vulnerability. PROTECT Deliverable no. D4.4. PROTECT Consortium.
• Zyfi, J. & Macklin, A. (2022). The creeping role of privatization in Canada’s immigration detention centers. In A. Luscombe, D. Silva., & K. Walby (Eds.), Changing of the Guards: Private Influences, Privatization, and Criminal Justice in Canada (pp. 247-289). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
• Zyfi, J. (2022). Unbridled power: Privatization in Canadian immigration detention. Border Criminologies.
• 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. 177-197). Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• Ballesteros-Pena, A., Tran, G., & Zyfi, J. (2019). Workshop: Detention practices, criminalization of migrants and border control in Canada. Border Criminologies. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centrebordercriminologies/blog/2019/06/workshop 
• 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). 

Presentations

• (Nov 2023). “Predicting risk: There is an 83% chance you are a criminal”. Society for Social Studies of Science, Hawaii, USA.
• (Jul 2023). “Probing automated decision-making in Canada’s Express Entry system”. Law and Society Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
• (Mar 2023). “Digital frontiers: Probing technologies of containment”. Workshop on Bordering Migration at Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada.
• (Mar 2023). “Do as I say, not as I do: The implementation of the GCM commitment to healthcare in Canada:. International Studies Association, Montreal, Canada.
• (Dec 2022). “Have the Global Compacts impacted assessments of vulnerability? A multi-perspective analysis of field level governance actors in Canada.” Metropolis Americas Migration Policy Summit, Tijuana, Mexico.  
• (Dec 2022). “Predicting criminality: From Lombroso to biometrics”. Society for Social Studies of Science, Cholula, Mexico.
• (Nov 2022). “Passenger Name Records: Terrorism vs. Privacy” Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Waterloo, Canada.
• (Jul 2022). “The creeping privatization of immigration detention in Canada”. Law & Society Association, Lisbon, Portugal.
• (Aug 2021). “The impact of the Global Compact on Refugees and the Global Compact on Migration on assessing vulnerability: Preliminary findings of fieldwork in Canada”. The Right to International Protection: A Pendulum between Globalization and Nativization? PROTECT Virtual Conference, Ryerson University, Canada.
• (May 2021). “The role of privatization in Canada’s immigration detention centers”. International Workshop on Expanding the penal landscape: The immigration detention phenomena, hosted virtually by the Universidade da Coruña, the University of Toronto, and University of Oxford.
• (Nov 2020). “Forecasting criminality: The impact of biometrics on racialized communities”. Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), Washington DC, USA. (cancelled due to COVID-19)
• (Aug 2020). “Destined to be a criminal: Biometrics, race and predictions of criminality”. Society for Social Studies of Science, Prague, Czech Republic.
• (Nov 2019). “The Privatization of Immigration Detention in Canada”. Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Francisco, USA.
• (May 2019). “Role of biometrics in immigration decisions”. Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Toronto, Canada.
• (Jun 2019). “Privatization of immigration detention practices in Canada”. The Migration Conference, Rome, Italy.
• (Jul 2018). “Playing with lives under the guise of fair play: the safe country of origin policy in the EU and Canada”. International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, Thessaloniki, Greece.
• (May 2018). “Syrian refugee resettlement through storytelling”. Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies Student Caucus, Ottawa, Canada.
• (Nov 2017). “You say safe, but for who?” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia, USA.
• (Sept 2017). “Europe’s Influence on Canada’s Designated Country of Origin Policy”. International Metropolis Conference, The Hague, Netherlands.
• (May 2017).  “Safe for Some, Not for Others: Europe’s Influence on Canada’s Refugee Policy”. Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Victoria, Canada.
• (Nov 2016). “Challenges in the Fight against Human Trafficking in Europe: Enhancing the Resilience of State Policy and Practice”. (animated poster). Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, New Orleans, USA.
• (Jun 2016). “#RefugeeCrisis: Analyzing Social Constructions of the Syrian Refugee Crisis Through Twitter Hashtags”. Justice, Crime and Deviance Graduate Conference, Brantford, Canada.
• (May 2016). “Safe Countries of Origin Concept in the EU and Canada: Policy and Human Rights Implications”. Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Winnipeg, Canada.
• (Jun 2015). “Asylum in Canada: Policy and Human Rights for Refugees”. (research video) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Congress, Ottawa, Canada.
• (May 2015). “The Criminalization of Migration in a Canadian Context”. Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Toronto, Canada.
• (Feb 2015). “The International Student Experience”. Speaking Your Language Mental Health Symposium, Toronto, Canada.