Local Community Experiences of Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey
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…
This and the following poem describe a trivial yet emotionally charged object: the thermo-blanket distributed to migrants in emergency situations. Is the thermo-blanket a sign of our welcome or the symptom of a tendency to cover and make ourselves blind to what is difficult to see? Through the simple yet powerful image of the blanket,…
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…
Introductory reflections by Prof Alastair Ager, Refugee Hosts Co-I (Queen Margaret University) and Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Refugee Hosts PI (UCL) Humanitarianism is marked by a commitment to principles of impartiality and neutrality. Agencies have often shied away from engagement with religion and its role in the lives of refugees for fear of compromising these principles. However, religion is not just…
How can poetry, creative writing and translation unearth and represent experiences of displacement? In this poem - the first of two pieces by Giulia Balestra of REFUNITE which will feature on Refugee Hosts' Representations of Displacement series - Giulia offers a reflection on belonging and positionality, with an English translation sitting alongside the original Italian. Through reflecting…
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…
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