Paper short abstract:

Based on research that looked at perceptions and realities of migration, inequalities and political attitudes in Great Yarmouth, we reflect on the use of photography and video as methods in migration research, and on the collaborative role that academia and museums can have in the research process.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on a 2017 research project in Great Yarmouth (Norfolk, UK) that looked at the interplay of perceptions and realities of migration, inequalities and political attitudes in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. In order to explore different understandings of "locality" and "foreignness", we used a combination of 16 semi-structured interviews and participatory photography methods. For the latter, five research participants were asked to capture their everyday experiences of social, economic and political diversity through the use of photography. A selection of 24 photos were subsequently exhibited and integrated with the museum collections at the Strangers' Hall Museum in Norwich, and at the Time and Tide Museum of Great Yarmouth Life, alongside discussion sessions with the participants, researchers, NGO representatives and the wider public. Additionally, the project included the production of a short film narrating, anonymously, some of the testimonies collected in the interviews, which was also shown at the Time and Tide Museum. The research project tied into a then newly started Museum-University partnership entitled Migration in Norfolk (MiN), which aimed to diversify audiences and increase public awareness of the ways in which migrants contribute to tell the story of the county. In this paper, we reflect on the use of photography and video as research methods in migration research, and the potential as well as challenges of incorporating a museum-university partnership as integral part of the research process.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores visual representations of flight and exile in Morocco. It engages with scholarship on refugee narratives and participatory, creative arts to explore representations of displacement which depart from dominant accounts of victimhood.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how visual representations by and of refugees and migrants can expose fraught power dynamics and debunk misrepresentations. It generates from our inter-disciplinary project 'Arts for Advocacy: creative engagement with forced displacement in Morocco' - led by a team of anthropologists and cultural studies scholars in partnership with Morocco-based artists, NGO practitioners and migrant leaders. Our team co-organised a series of video and theatre workshops with Moroccan artist Amine Oulmakki involving participants from Morocco as well as sub-Saharan migrants and refugees living in Rabat. This formed of the basis of 'Migration. Récits. Mouvements' (Exhibition in Rabat, December 2017), a video installation - conceived as a collective project - directed by Amine Oulmakki.

Our paper explores how the exhibition displays mismatched and broken up visual and oral accounts by the participants - who partook in decision-making regarding the production of the videos. The visual and oral experience is a challenging one: viewers are invited to navigate a space where bodies trace their own emotional and physical journeys, while the emboldened presences emerging from the screens are unsettled by the displaced temporality and sequencing between frames and sound. Drawing on scholarship examining refugee narratives in anthropology and beyond, the presentation explores how this exhibition proposes counter-narratives of displacement which depart from confessional and 'authentic' accounts of victimhood, and in doing so offers novel ways to engage with exile and flight.

Paper short abstract:

This audio-visual paper, through a self-reflexive approach, addresses the dilemmas concerning the critical aspects of recording and presenting images of vulnerable people (migrants), and consuming images produced by them, which can appear paradoxical in the context of a media saturated society.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013 I was invited to join a project that aimed to organize film workshops for unaccompanied minor refugees in order to produce a film shot by them about their journeys. Being highly critical to the idea, refusing the collaborative form of working, I transformed the project into a film that none of the original participants were physically appeared in.

In contrast, in 2016-17, with the collaboration of a young refugee in Greece, we made a film that was shot by him with his own mobile phone. This audio-visual paper, through a self-reflexive approach, compares these two experiences in an attempt to address the dilemmas concerning the critical aspects of recording the image of the people who become the subjects of research as well as consuming the images that are produced by them. By doing so I also would like to address the poetical and political strategies existing in Audio-Visual form of anthropological presentation of the topics that are widely covered by the mass media. This paper also includes the reflection of my collaborator toward the process and outcome of this film while after that the journey is seemingly over.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how indigenous artists reflect on their migration experience and urban life. It shows that an engagement with art, artists and exhibitions can connect indigenous' perspectives, demands and hopes to larger audiences, impact policies and boost place-making and migration research.

Paper long abstract:

In 1999 the Shipibo Community of Cantagallo was created consolidating a process of migration to Peru's capital. Shipibo people moved from the Amazonian region in search of better conditions of life, work and security in the face of terrorism. In 2016, a fire destroyed a large part of the urban community making evident the precarious situation in which urban Shipibo lived and enlivening their demands. Indigenous artists and art have played a crucial role in Shipibo´s experiences of migration, place-making and political demands.

As part of my new research, "A Collaborative Approach to the Aesthetical Political Dimension of Amazonian Contemporary Art", in this paper I explore how Shipibo art has participated in the construction/reconstruction of Cantagallo and in the inscription of indigenous epistemologies in the urban landscape. Second, and with attention to the artworks of Elena Valera (Bahuan Jisbe), Harry Pinedo (Ini Metsa) and Olivia Silvano, I show how these artists express affects, agendas and hopes about their mobility and new urban experiences, reflecting on the possibilities that an engagement with art and artists' self-reflexivity posits for migration research and policy-making. Third, it reflects on the potential that art, exhibitions and urban interventions have had in building awareness of indigenous' experiences and demands in the larger Lima and in amplifying Shipibos' claims for a real pluricultural city.

Paper short abstract:

Over 1000 years Gt Yarmouth grew from a small group of huts, on a sandbank, to a community of 100,000 people, either descended from migrants or migrants themselves. Island, the community-driven, visual arts project uncovered and celebrated this long and rich migration history.

Paper long abstract:

The 2018 Island Project was a 'Silver Darlings' artistic collaboration with Anglia Ruskin University for ethos and research; Time and Tide Museum for historical contexts and networking and Great Yarmouth Library for research and links. Other partners were SeaChange Arts for support; HLF for vital financial support and, most important of all, the staff and families from four local schools and the many citizens who shared their migration stories. Well over 100 stories were collected from past and present migrants.

Following the citizen research phase at the library and museum, local stories and corresponding models from the past provided both a framework and stimulation for assemblies and cross-generational workshops in schools. These gave the opportunity for people to informally talk whilst engaged in clay model making and to then record their stories on video. Workshops were also developed in the library with additional story capture in the video van. This resulted in over 240 people being engaged and culminated in an exhibition containing a 7m sandbank of the town with over 120 clay models each individually relating to an important part of a family's story. The sandbank was surrounded by storyboards and, in an adjacent room, video projections of families relating their experiences and showing their models.

This paper explores the context for the stories, what was learned and some unexpected outcomes. Our open and relaxed approach led to some interesting comments and conclusions. The project also raised questions regarding methodology, engagement and participation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how the Portuguese artistic practices mobilize the experiences of migration and displacement. I intend to explore how the Portuguese artistic scene is a platform to produce a critical discourse about these topics and how ethnography is mobilized.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses how the Portuguese artistic practices mobilize the experiences of migration and displacement.

I intend to explore how the Portuguese artistic scene is a platform to produce a critical discourse about the different contemporary mobilities and also examine how anthropology - object and methodologies - is involved in contemporary artistic practices (Schneider & Wrigth 2006, 2010, 2013).

Through an ongoing ethnography of the artistic practices (Buscatto, 2008), I analyse the work José Carlos Teixeira (n. 1977, Porto, Portugal) and intend to examine how this artist is involved in contemporary scrutiny of the real and how he combines his artistic practice with anthropology and its methods.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic findings and using interactive presentation methods, we explain how creative activity and personal reflection shape productions of knowledge and collective memory in the Museo Migrante, a travelling pop-up exhibition of migration and indigeneity, in Chiapas, Mexico.

Paper long abstract:

The Museo Migrante (MuMi) is a travelling pop-up exhibition constructed by indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in collaboration with the locally-based NGO, Voces Mesoamericanos. Through images, texts, objects and creative activities—which are constantly shaped anew through relocations and new visitors' engagements—MuMi is designed to make visible the complex roots and consequences of domestic as well as international migration by revealing the stories of those who move—and those who do (or can) not. The project aims not only to inform, but also to examine the processes and material culture of knowledge and memory construction—both collective and individual—and invite reflection on identity, dignity, rights and freedom.

In this presentation, we explain how MuMi operates, and how the naming of the space intentionally interrupts popular ideas—derived from the nation-state—regarding whose stories, images, art, and bodies "belong" in the museum. We then draw on ethnographic and interview findings to reflect critically on MuMi's "success" in relation to its intended goals, and assess the challenges of measuring its impact on the communities it visits. The presentation will feature subtitled video clips of co-author Deyanira Cleriga Morales—unable to travel to the conference due to financial restrictions—and an "exhibit" that we invite panel attendees to co-create during the presentation. These interactive and sensorial methods serve to highlight the realities of (im)mobility as well as the ways in which affect and personal reflection shape the production of knowledge and ideas about migration—capturing the intent and ethos of MuMi.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how participatory practices in museums can positively impact the process of 'integration', moving beyond a broader approach to 'migration'. It focuses on recent Berlin-based projects and reflects on aspects of the applied methodologies that aim to impact the involved peoples.

Paper long abstract:

Museums have increasingly initiated projects that reflect on (forced) migration, through which they aim for a bottom-up approach that involves the affected people in the presentation of their own journey or heritage. Combining studies from migration and museum research, this paper explores participatory practices in museums in relation to 'integration', moving beyond a broader approach to 'migration'. It focuses on three selected projects that have taken place in Berlin in response to the so-called 'refugee crisis' and defines elements of these projects that set out to further the process of integration. The paper reflects on the impact of such practices on forced migrants and the local population, rather than on the museum and its goals to diversify audiences. Integration can be understood as a two-fold process that takes place not only in the context of the life of the migrant, but also in the lives of those that make up society of the migrants' destinations. Various projects with refugees in museums have aimed to play a role in these binary shifts of the local population learning about commonalities with newcomers to develop openness and hospitality towards different cultures and cultural practices, and recent migrants understanding commonalities with the local population and situation to develop a feeling of belonging, or Heimat. They often acknowledge these dynamics of integration and aim to foster a positive impact on the involved peoples. This paper studies the ways in which these projects go beyond their institutional goals in order to achieve this particular objective.

Paper short abstract:

Collected artefacts turned into a Museum of 'Spiritualities' uncover the diverse spiritual needs of older people with migrant background in residential care. Current care practice focuses mainly on 'bodily' care, this research stresses the importance of spiritual care for older people.

Paper long abstract:

Economical shifts, ageing of the population, and migration trends are changing the care demand in the United Kingdom. This is also reflected in residential care for older people, especially regarding the spiritual needs of its residents (Ballew et al. 2012). In a multi-sited ethnographic study, older people living in four different residential care facilities with diverse religious and cultural backgrounds were asked to bring an artefact to their interview. The artefact had to give or represent a sense of wellbeing. It functioned as a conversation starter and gave insight into older people's ideas of spirituality.

The dichotomy between subject and object became re-evaluated in the 1980s. A more agency-oriented approach to artefacts and the use of artefacts in social scientific methodologies emerged. Understanding the meaning ascribed to personal objects can inform us about a culture that might not be communicated verbally. Furthermore, artefacts and their collection have been a part of exhibiting cultures, the most prominent example being a museum. Museums are such an integral part of our society and people's lives that they "frame our most basic assumptions about the past and about ourselves" (Marstine 2007:1). Therefore, especially in the context of older people and their spiritual needs, the collection and exhibition of artefacts seems invaluable. The result is a Museum of 'Spiritualities,' informing us about the different spiritual needs that older residents with diverse backgrounds in residential care facilities have and how they can be addressed.

Paper short abstract:

Live methods as creative research practices, inspired by participatory action research, verbatim and forum theatre constitute politically transformative and critical methods that brings those situated outside of traditionally centred subjectivities -migrants, women, exiled, refugees- back to centre.

Paper long abstract:

In my PhD research I explore the practices and meanings of Indian citizenship for the Tibetans living in exile in India. The research focuses on the lived experiences of the Tibetans in the period 2015-2020 in the broader framework of what it means to be a Tibetan living in India in current times, but also asking how can a migrant and refugee have access to Indian citizenship and what are the advantages and limitations of citizenship as conferred by the Indian state. The rich data emerging from the ethnographic research conducted in 2016-2017 shows that the question of Indian citizenship is a debatable and critical possibility for both young and older generations of Tibetans living in India.

By using Forum Theatre as a tool in the last ethnographic fieldwork of my PhD research (2019) I engage with the research participants in a way that enables them to assert, express and perform their embodied agency insofar as both the researcher and the participants can be transformed in an inter-relational processes of becoming. As a research tool, the Forum theatre workshops have the potential to produce rich forms of knowledge, starting with the use of the body, emotions and culture (Kaptani and Yuval-Davis, 2008). Forum theatre espoused with ethnographic methods can produce transformative and emancipatory research about identity and citizenship of Tibetans living in India.