The Refugee Tales Project as Transmedia Activism and the Poetics of Listening. Towards Decolonial Citizenship (original) (raw)

Stories of Shelter, Stories of Refuge: Refugee Tales and Threads from the Refugee Crisis

Stories that concern refugees make considerable claims regarding the need for representational forms contained in literary discourse to carry societal weight; in other words, stories about refugees address themselves to the ongoing political and social crisis of migration. This paper considers two recent examples of “refugee literature”, the multiply-authored Refugee Tales (2016), a collection that adopts the Chaucerian pilgrimage format, and Kate Evans’ Threads from the Refugee Crisis (2017), a graphic novel in the vein of Joe Sacco’s Palestine (1996) that narrates its author’s experiences in the Calais Jungle. While both texts hybridize their literary form, they do so for with different political and aesthetic effects. Ultimately, this paper seeks to ascertain the relevance of these literary narratives to their seemingly direct objects of reference: communities of refugees, asylum seekers, and the reading public.

Polemics of Healing: Storytelling, Refugees and Futures

2008

The plight of refugees has been well documented in a number of countries. Refugees represent the fail- ure of nation states to live peacefully and endow human rights to their citizens. A significant aspect of refugees'; stories concerns the ways in which they express their distress. In this paper we locate storytelling in the lives of Afghan refugee women living in Australia. We explore the tie between the body and metaphor and how the later is articulated via a language of distress. We also tie current constructions of refugees to the wider social sphere. Here, refugees are viewed in an array of negative stereotypes which mirrors the moral crisis of post-modernity. We suggest for the fostering of empathy towards refugees in the future as their stories allow us to become more humane, thereby providing a means of developing a higher level of consciousness.

‘I have something to tell the world’: A comparative discourse analysis of representations of refugees and asylum seekers in print media and texts written by refugees and asylum seekers themselves, within the frames of creative writing workshops

This study compares print media representations of refugees and asylum seekers with representations in short stories and poems written by refugees and asylum seekers themselves, within the frames of creative writing workshops. The primary research question guiding the study reads: How do (self-)representations in texts written by refugees and asylum seekers, within the frames of creative writing workshops, differ from representations of refugees and asylum seekers in print media. As a theoretical foundation for the study serves the social constructionist assumption that language, rather than reflect, constructs reality, and that the way the world is understood affects policies, practices and actions – in this case concerning refugees, asylum seekers, refugee relief, refugee/asylum seeker reception systems, integration etc. Starting out from the notion that print media representations of refugees and asylum seekers follow certain recurring patterns – not only resulting in rather simplistic portrayals, but, also, almost systematically leaving out refugee and asylum seeker voices, views and opinions – the study, following Dorothy Smiths suggestion that individuals somehow excluded from a particular discourse may offer perspectives undermining it, turns to the refugees and asylum seekers’ own texts as a possible source of alternative representations. Using Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, complemented by semiotic analysis, (self-)representations in three anthologies with refugee and asylum seeker texts are compared to the results of a meta analysis of earlier research of representations of refugees and asylum seekers in print media. The findings of the study suggests that there are similarities, but also significant differences in how refugees and asylum seekers are represented in their own texts when compared to print media. Consequently, it is argued that there is a potential worth fostering in the creative writing workshops for refugees and asylum seekers, as well as similar initiatives. They may be seen as a step towards increasing refugees and asylum seekers’ opportunities to voice their opinion in matters that concern them; as answering to the post colonial call for bringing in new voices to the (social) development debate; and as contributing to the realisation of an agonistic democracy/pluralism.

Refugee stories in Britain : narratives of personal experiences in a network of power relations

2009

Contemporary Western society is permeated by a culture in which personal tales can be told and listened to continuously, which is intensified by different modes of hi-tech mass media production and consumption. However, some narratives seem to flow into public discourses and find receptive audiences much more easily than others. Personal experience stories of excluded communities, when they feed into audiences that will listen to them, have the potential to bring about social change. Indeed, lifting the silence surrounding socially excluded lives is a legitimate, democratic means of achieving social and political justice. In a globalised world it is the degree to which a person has the capacity to control the story of their lives which is considered a significant means of empowerment. Refugee narratives are mostly represented by others, mainly as part of a political strategy to control their entry into Britain, and their lives whilst their claim for asylum is being considered. A ran...

Poeticizing A Story of Asylum: Refugees, Refuge, and Refuse

CULTURAL AND PEDAGOGICAL INQUIRY, 2017

Today, Rohingya refugees continue to flood across the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta from Myanmar to Bangladesh. For many of them, there is no promise of return, of reprieve, of refuge, as they seek asylum from religious persecution. There are no homes, only hospital rooms and hallways awaiting the wounded and injured. These are the news headlines on TV. In a post-truth era of poll-I-ticking, liking, loving, emoji-ing, tweeting, we are, our family, myself included, failing to witness what Solnit (2013) calls elsewhere the stories of lives faraway, nearby.

“In the First Place, We Don’t Like to Be Called ‘Refugees’”: Dilemmas of Representation and Transversal Politics in the Participatory Art Project 100% FOREIGN?

Humanities, 2021

100% FOREIGN? (100% FREMMED?) is an art project consisting of 250 life stories of individuals who were granted asylum in Denmark between 1956 and 2019. Thus, it can be said to form a collective portrait that inserts citizens of refugee backgrounds into the narrative of the nation, thereby expanding the idea of national identity and culture. 100% FOREIGN? allows us to think of participatory art as a privileged site for the exploration of intersubjective relations and the question of how to “represent” citizens with refugee experience as well as the history and practice of asylum. The conflicting aims and perceptions involved in such representations are many, as suggested by the opening sentence of Hannah Arendt’s 1943 essay “We, Refugees”: “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’”. Using 100% FOREIGN? as an analytical reference point, this article discusses some of the ethical and political implications of representing former refugees. It briefly considers recent Da...

Theorising narratives of exile and belonging : the importance of Biography and Ethno-mimesis in “understanding” asylum

Qualitative Sociology Review, 2022

The article explores the use and importance of taking a biographical approach to conducting participatory action research (PAR) with asylum seekers and refugees in order to: better understand lived experiences of exile and belonging; contribute to the important field of Biographical Sociology; provide a safe space for stories to be told; and in turn for these stories to feed in to policy and praxis. The authors’ combined work on the asylum-migration nexus, the politics of representation and participatory action research methodology (PAR) as ethno-mimesisi argues for the use of biography to contribute to cultural politics at the level of theory, experience and praxis, and is constitutive of critical theory in praxis. PAR research undertaken with Bosnian refugees in the East Midlands and Afghan refugees in London will be the focus around which our analysis develops. We develop a case for theory building based upon lived experience using biographical materials, both narrative and visua...

City of welcome: refugee storytelling and the politics of place

Continuum, 2017

Drawing from a programme of applied research engaging with diverse groups of young people in an urban setting in Australia, this paper explores the peace building potential of facilitated storytelling. In this study 'coperformative refugee storytelling' involved scaling up narrative practices with the intention of creating city spaces that are more meaningfully inclusive of young people from refugee backgrounds. This model hinges on the theories of urban philosophers who emphasized the role of the imagination, and of cultural activity, in producing public space as a site of resistance. If space is produced relationally, and if cultural activity is an important medium for the production of relational space, then the role of artists and storytellers becomes a critical one in the creation of city spaces that are either welcoming or alienating. This discussion weaves strands of urban and cultural philosophy into a practical model for mobilizing collective storytelling to support a practice where a cosmopolitan imaginary can be publicly rehearsed. Ultimately, the function of this paper is to establish that if, as cultural practitioners, we understand that 'co-performative refugee storytelling' has the potential to produce relational spaces, then we may put this imaginary to use in practical ways. One way to get the measure of a city is to study its location and its borders on a map. Another way is to hear some stories told by those who live there. In 2013 and 2014, I convened a team of dedicated cultural practitioners to investigate what new storied knowledge we could unearth by listening to some 'small stories' (Lorimer 2003) shared by local young people. Collectively we embarked upon a multi-arts project, an experience which would lead us to learn something new about the third largest metropolis in Australia, Brisbane, from the inside out. The knowledge we circled around could be viewed as intangible, of a moral nature even. We learnt how, as micro communities of city dwellers, we can develop an everyday, imagined sense of who belongs in a place and how we connect. We learnt something about how as an urban citizenry we could develop our capacity to be good hosts to newcomers from refugee backgrounds through sharing and co-performing stories. The project gathered momentum over a period of several months as a group of 20 young engaged in a programme of activities, involving theatre and participatory film making and facilitated dialogue, exploring the theme of 'welcome'. The work we did together became known 'Brave New Welcome' (BNW) project, and the participants, 'Brave New Welcomers'. The BNW, recruited through local settlement support, community arts and education networks, was an assorted lot. About half were born in Australia. Several had come with their families as infants or children some years ago, from far away war-torn places, seeking refuge in Australia. Six of the BNW had only just arrived in Australia. These

States of displacement: voice and narration in refugee stories

2015

3 Chapter One: Introduction 4 Main Texts and Writers 5 Key Terms 5 Historical Background 9 Theorists 11 Key Question 12 Chapter Two: A Discussion of What is the What (2008) 14 The Preface 15 Anacoluthon and Acolyte 20 The Title 25 The Idea of the Story 26 Images and Memory 27 Chapter Three: A Discussion of Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York (2011) 32 The Title 33 The Epilogue 34 Inter-views 37 Parts and Wholes 42 Subjectivities 45 “Rented” Democracy 46 Relationships 48 Chapter Four: A Discussion of Luxurious Hearses (2008) 51 Patterns 52 “Rupture” and Interruption 53 The “inconclusive present” 57 Nationalisms 58 Image and Memory 61 Shifting Subjectivities 63 Chapter Five: Conclusion 69 Voice and Narration: The Anacoluthon and the Acolyte 69 Histories and Stories 71 Texts 72 References 75