Bahar Banaei is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at York University and is receiving a graduate diploma in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. She is also a member of the Collaborative for Racial Justice. Her SSHRC-funded research focuses on the role of race within migrant justice advocacy, including the strategies based on litigation and collective action. Her concern with legal strategies pays particular attention to how legal advocates understand the immigration detention system and in what ways racial rhetoric is employed in these strategies.
Bahar holds a Master of Arts in Social and Political Thought from York University and an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto where she majored in Literature and Critical Theory and minored in Sociology and Diaspora Studies.