Local Community Experiences of Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey
Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh was invited to reflect on her research with regards to ‘The Ethics and Politics of Representation’ at the Power and the Politics in/of Ethnographic Research Seminar Series, hosted by University College London. This seminar was the fourth in a series of events organised by the PAPER project which aims to addresses questions…
How does UNHCR narrate refugee stories through its official media? In this piece, Leonie Harsch adopts a critical approach, and builds on a number of important arguments put forward by researchers, to argue that the telling of 'refugee stories' by humanitarian organisations can sometimes result in exclusionary outcomes - this is especially the case when individual…
As part of her research into how humanitarianism has been changed by Calais, Hari Reed and collaborators, under the umbrella of the IMAGINE charity, have curated an exhibition called Protestimony, which was first shown at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2017. Here she showcases some of the images, questions and dilemmas of the show. Protestimony…
How do shared experiences of widowhood inform a sense of self and community among Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in Jordan? In this piece, Dina Zbeidy explores every-day lives in displacement, refugee-refugee relations, self-representation and spaces of refuge in Wihdat, a Palestinian camp east of Amman. In particular, she highlights the important social role that community spaces…
How can creative storytelling enable new ways of thinking about and representing displacement? In this piece, Tahmineh Hooshyar Emami reflects on the process of writing her fictitious account, Alice’s Alternative Wonderland, which was originally displayed in three parts on Refugee Hosts. Alice’s Alternative Wonderland is the fictitious account of a child’s experiences on the European refugee trail; here the author…
Representations of the 'refugee crisis' have ranged from the spectacular to the devastating. In an attempt to engage with this spectacle, some organisations have developed virtual reality 'experiences' that aim to encourage audiences to 'walk in the shoes' of displaced people: to feel compassion for their plight, and to gain an understanding of their everyday…
In this piece, Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek explores the problematics of photographic representations of singular suffering refugees and their impact on political discourse in Poland. In a challenge to this, Dominika reflects on her own approach to representations, reflected in her "Refugees. Present/Absent" exhibition, which sought to focus on the materiality of everyday experiences and the refugee journey as a…
This soundscape of Athens, Greece, offers an evocative and immersive insight into sounds of everyday life in the city. Athens has become home to many refugees from Syria and elsewhere, who have brought with them new sounds documented in this piece. Engaging with spaces of refuge through sound is a method that can help us…
Below you can listen to two soundscapes recorded during Prof. Alastair Ager's recent fieldtrip to Hamra, a vibrant neighbourhood in Beirut which is home to a dynamic commercial and social scene in addition to many refugees from Syria. Such soundscapes offer an invaluable entry point to engage in a multi-sensory analysis of the social, economic and political…
The Multiple Faces of Representation By Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, University of Oxford and Odile Ammann, University of Fribourg The face of the Other – under all the particular forms of expression where the Other, already in a character’s skin, plays a role – is just as much pure expression, an extradition without defense or cover,…
Refugee Hosts 
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