My dissertation explores the afterlives of leftover migrant objects—items that become waste or are discarded—and the memories they materialize. In an era when migration defines global experience, these objects hold fragments of disrupted lives, embodying histories of those who left them behind.

This project reclaims discarded objects as repositories of memory and history, examining what Jane Bennett calls «the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, and to produce dramatic and subtle effects» (2010: 6). Central questions include: How does memory materialize through objects? How do these materials communicate stories about transnational mobility and militarization? Who controls the process of materializing these memories, and for what purposes?

By engaging pain, loss, and trauma as methodological lenses, I investigate memory as an active process shaped by material and affective interactions. This work integrates archival and media studies approaches to understand migration’s mediated nature through materiality, critically examining power structures that determine whose memories matter and how they circulate.