Speculative Borders: China Miéville’s The City & the City

Who is it that we choose to see and who is‘unseen’? How can we think and respond differently to the world around us?  In this piece Dom Davies adds to his series of blogs on Refugee Hosts exploring our emotional, political, cultural and social responses to the architecture and geography of border regimes, and to those…

Hard Infrastructures, Diseased Bodies

In this piece, Dominic Davies (University of Oxford) explores the architecture of the 'global border regime' as a political and en emotional response to representations of migrants and refugees as an 'invasion'. Through an analysis of detention architecture, including through depictions of detention centres by artists and in graphic novels, Davies suggests that visual strategies can highlight…

Invisible (at) Night: space, time and photography in a refugee camp

by Dr. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, UCL and PI of Refugee Hosts Invisible (at) night: space, time and photography in a refugee camp If our perceptions of refugees’ experiences of displacement were based on photographs produced and disseminated by the UN, NGOs and the media, we could be forgiven for assuming that refugees’ daytimes are either seemingly…

Hope, Resilience and Uncertainty: A Day with Displaced Syrians in Southern Turkey

In this piece, which draws on Charlotte Loris-Rodionoff's on-going fieldwork in Turkey, we are offered a glimpse of how loss, hope, memory and the future are navigated by Syrian refugees in the everyday. This quotidian lens provides an important antidote to the narratives of exceptionalism that typically colour media and policy responses to forced migration, unearthing diverse experiences of displacement, and…

Time Machine: Stereoscopic Views from Palestine, 1900

This March, the Middle East Studies department at Brown University, Rhode Island is hosting an exhibition - Time Machine: Stereoscopic Views from Palestine, 1900 - that invites spectators to become time travellers. Drawing on 100 images taken in 1900 of Palestine and the surrounding 'Holy Land', the collection - curated by Ariella Azoulay and Issam Nassar…

Broken Borders: Overcoming Personal and Cultural Barriers along the Refugee Route

In this piece, Ufuk Ozturk offers some personal reflections on his experiences working with refugees as a volunteer in Turkey. The following account touches on the roles that language and translation play in enabling not only conversations between cultures, but also insights into one's own personal identity, assumptions and beliefs. Examining such themes, and how…

Alice’s Alternative Wonderland: Chapter Three

READ CHAPTER ONE AND TWO.  This is the final part of Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami‘s three part re-imagination of the classic children’s story Alice in Wonderland, told from the perspective of Alice the refugee. In this chapter, we learn what has happened to Alice after her journey across the Aegean: this is a moment of confusion and im/mobility. Tahmineh’s piece demonstrates…

Alice’s Alternative Wonderland: Chapter Two

READ CHAPTER ONE HERE.  This is chapter two of Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami's three part re-imagination of the classic children's story Alice in Wonderland, told this time from the perspective of Alice the refugee. In this chapter, we are told of the perilous journey Alice has to take to Europe, across the Aegean Sea. This is a story of…

Syrians in Akkar: Refugees or Neighbours?

Rethinking Hospitality towards Syrian Refugees in Lebanon by Estella Carpi, University College London-Development Planning Unit & Save the Children-Humanitarian Affairs Team The discourse of ‘hospitality’ has both informed and reinforced the international response to the mass influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict. However, while unprecedented in scale – by the end…