WOMEN AND MIGRATION: art, politics and policy

An AHRC ‘Making the Connections’ Regional Network Workshop
Loughborough University FRIDAY 20th JUNE 2008

The ninth event in the Making Connections: arts, migration and diaspora series will be held in The Business School, Loughborough University, on Friday 20th June 2008, during Refugee Week.

This workshop focuses upon ‘women and migration’ within the broader context of the asylum-migration nexus and the relationship between women’s experiences as asylum seekers, refugees, or migrants and questions of culture, law, citizenship, and politics. What is clear from the available research is that women face many barriers - including a gender biased asylum system - with their voices and experiences usually mediated by others (journalists, advocacy groups, researchers), and are rarely heard. Culture is an essential aspect of our identity and the available research tells us that women migrants bring a great deal to culture and communities. It is hence vital we create the spaces for women’s voices to be heard and the opportunities for women to achieve their potential.

Speakers from a variety of sectors (arts, social policy, media and law) will focus on outlining the important role that the arts and the media have in ensuring women migrants have a voice. Speakers include Marsha Meskimmon (women and art); Usha Sood (women and the law); Hildegard Dumper (research on women’s experiences of the asylum-migration nexus) and Ruth Lister (women, poverty and citizenship).

Presentations and workshops will be led by a range of organisations including the Nottingham African Women’s Empowerment Forum (NAWEF), the National Institute for Access to Continuing Education (NIACE), The Long Journey Home, Nottingham Trent University and Paragon Law. There will be an opportunity for all delegates to engage in discussion, and explore how the issues raised can be taken forward practically through the creation of a Manifesto for the region on ‘What Women Want’

The event is FREE and Buffet Lunch and Refreshments are provided. We also want to provide plenty of opportunity for discussion and debate, so places are limited. We are happy to assist with transport costs for unwaged delegates. If you’d like to attend, please contact Richard Bessell on R.Bessell@lboro.ac.uk Tel: (01509) 223383 by May 30th at the latest.

Final conference announcement

'Hidden Voices'

Eighth workshop - February

By all accounts a big success - and thanks to Andrew Lake and especially the Dreamers Youth Group, Loughborough

The workshop was the launch of the ‘Hidden Voices’ publication, which endeavours to record the development of the ‘Dreamers’. Dreamers is a Leicestershire Youth Service project providing support and informal educational opportunities for young asylum seekers and refugees aged 13-25 years.

At the core of this publication are the personal reflections of youth worker Andrew Lake who established Dreamers in May 2002. For 4 years Andrew recorded his conversations with young asylum seekers in his professional diaries. Extracts from these recordings form the basis of much of this publication

The publication can be downloaded here, and a full workshop report will follow in due course

Eighth network workshop - Helping asylum seekers through arts inclusion

Encounters and Intersections: Religion, Diaspora and Ethnicities Conference

9th-11th July, 2008 (NB: after the Making the Connections Conference, 3-4th July, Loughborough)
St Catherine’s College, Oxford

The Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme is hosting a joint conference with the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme, and the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme. The conference will be entitled: Encounters and Intersections: Religion, Diaspora and Ethnicities, and will be held at St Catherine’s College, Oxford from 9-11 July, 2008.

Below you will find some information about the conference, and I look forward to hearing from you if you are submitting an abstract (details below), which needs to reach me by email by 28 February 2008 (k.a.roche[@]leeds.ac.uk). A booking form is also attached, which should be returned to Kerry Carter at the address given.

This conference takes encounter and intersection as its frame. It explores the nature of relations between different faith and ethnic groups, between diasporic and indigenous citizens and between convivial, and not so convivial, multicultures in current, complex, post colonial contexts. We are interested in patterns and trends in contemporary identity practices, the intersections between social identities and how intersection and multiplicity are experienced and lived.

Encounters can be hostile, intimate, violent, anxious, celebratory, defensive, banal or historic. Participants can feel consumed, tolerated, included, marginalised or empowered. In policy terms, encounters can be read through the lens of ‘community cohesion’, the ‘duty to integrate’ or the ‘clash of civilisations’. How do different forms of encounter organise (and how are they organised by) particular relational spaces? How do they create and reflect ‘contact zones’? How do people negotiate multiple identities of faith, class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, place, etc? What are the social, political and ethical consequences?

This conference is organised by the ESRC/AHRC Programme on Religion and Society ( www.religionand society.org.uk), the AHRC Programme on Diasporas, Migration and Identities ( www.diasporas.ac.uk ) and the ESRC Programme on Identities and Social Action (www.identities.org.uk). It will show-case the interdisciplinary research taking place in the UK on these themes across the arts, social sciences and humanities.

The conference includes a keynote address from Prof. Paul Gilroy (London School of Economics) and author of After Empire; The Black Atlantic and Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack.

There will be panels on Living Intersections – New British Identities and Encounters – Materials, Spaces and Performances highlighting the research being conducted in the three Programmes. The conference will include parallel sessions of paper presentations, photographic and poster exhibitions, a conference dinner, drinks receptions and many opportunities for discussion and networking with researchers from a wide range of disciplinary and intellectual perspectives.

We welcome submissions to present papers (20 minutes plus 10 minutes for questions) on the conference themes. Your paper might present some empirical findings, it might consist of a performance, a theoretical review, critique and new argument; it might consist of a textual analysis, raise provocative questions or analyse one case, site or context. Abstracts should be submitted to Katie Roche (k.a.roche[@]leeds.ac.uk) by the 28th of February, 2008 including full contact details for all authors.

Left luggage

Image (c) John Perivolaris, all rights reserved

Image maker's subgroup co-ordinator Jon Perivolaris has launched a year-long photographic project/blog on the theme of objects of migration, entitled Left Luggage. As he explains:

"An empty suitcase lent for a month each to a series of collaborators. Each one fills the suitcase with objects of their choice and according to the project’s key terms. These are:

Homeland
Journey
Arrival
Destination

The idea for the project was sparked when my mother gave me my grandfather’s monogrammed, leather suitcase. For several months it sat empty on the floor by my desk like an absent presence by my side.

I knew that the suitcase had travelled around the world with my grandfather, who was a sea captain with the Greek merchant navy. Why should it not continue on its travels as a tribute to the memory of Captain John Perivolaris, whose birthday was on the same date as mine?"

see: http://leftluggage.wordpress.com/

Telling tales

A fabulous event at University of Northampton today - thanks to Judith, Jackie and all participants. The seventh Making the Connections event focused on issues of narrative, storytelling and identity with a focus on the postcolonial, and was well attended by academics, activists and artists from Northampton and the wider East Midlands. The Avenue campus at Northampton provided a suitably art-full environment to explore these isses



After introductions and words from those working in Northamptonshire with ethnic minority communities, Rea Dennis gave a storytelling/performance that dealt with some key issues of origins/belonging and journeys of self-discovery. from Northampton to Greece to Australia and back, Rea showed how telling tales can help people come to terms with experiences of loss, separaton and anxiety, and provide a space for exploring questions of identity




Workshops focusing on objects and stories of movement and migration bought some of the therapeutic value of storytelling into sharper relief, while a film present by Doug Smith on Northampton's Irish populations shoed how oral histories can be used as a resource for education: at the same time, the film raised questions about who was being represented, and how.

The day finished with a conversation with Guyanese novelist, academic and poet David Dabydeen, who spoke about his move from social realist accounts of migration and identit to more magic realist tropes, inspired in part by Guyanese tribal beliefs. Dismissing the search for an authentic home, he nonetheless spoke about his movements between, and imagingings of, his Guyanese, Indian and Coventrian homes. He particular reflected on his own family's experience: "my parents, and other people's parents, would have seen England not quite as an Utopia, or an El Dorado in reverse, but certainly as a place where jobs were plentiful and the people hospitable, and wealth within your grasp. I think there was the belief that if you went to England and worked, you could become wealthy, whereas in fact when they came, they were not welcome as they expected to be...I felt a…sense of displacement, and lived with the reality that …there was always the threat of violence" (from http://www.humboldt.edu/~me2/engl240b/student_projects/dabydeen/dabydeenbio.htm).

An inspiring, provocative and entertaining day!