Narrating Migration


Book Description

This book reflects on the myriad ways in which forms of exclusion and inclusion play out in narratives of migration, focusing on the case of Northern Italian narratives in today’s superdiverse Italy. Drawing on over a decade of the author’s fieldwork in the region, the volume examines the emergence of racialized language in conversations about migrants or migration issues in light of increasing recent migratory flows in the European Union, couched in the broader context of changing socio-political forces such as anti-immigration policies and nativist discourse in political communication in Italy. The book highlights case studies from everyday discourse in both villages and cities and at different levels of society to explore these "intimacies of exclusion," the varying degrees to which inclusion and exclusion manifest themselves in conversation on migration. The book also employs a narrative practice-based approach which considers storytelling as a more dynamic form of discourse, thus allowing for equally new ways of analyzing their content and impact. Offering a valuable contribution to the growing literature on narratives of migration, this volume is key reading for graduate students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociocultural anthropology, language and politics, and migration studies.




Narrating Migrations from Africa and the Middle East


Book Description

Exploring narratives produced by different groups of MENA and SSA migrants or refugees, this book focuses on the spatial and temporal aspects of their experiences. In doing so, the authors examine a wide range of accounts of journeys to host countries and memories (or recreations) of “home”. The spaces that migrants occupy (or not) in their new country; the spaces and times they share with local populations; and different conceptions of space and time across generations are also investigated, as are how feelings surrounding space and time are manifested within these different narratives and their affective-discursive practices. Taking both a traditional, linear view of migration as well as a multilinear, multimodal approach, the book presents an in-depth investigation into the ways in which people inhabit multiple real and digital spaces.




Migration, Narration, Identity


Book Description

This book presents articles resulting from joint research on the representations of migration conducted in connection with the Erasmus Intensive Programme entitled -Migration and Narration- taught to groups of international students over three consecutive summers from 2010 to 2012. The articles focus on various aspects of the migrant experience and try to answer questions about migrant identity and its representations in literature and the media. The book closes with an original play by Carlos Morton, the Chicano playwright working in the United States."




Undocumented Storytellers


Book Description

Undocumented Storytellers offers a critical exploration of the ways undocumented immigrant activists harness the power of storytelling to mitigate the fear and uncertainty of life without legal status and to advocate for immigration reform. Sarah C. Bishop chronicles the ways young people uncover their lack of legal status experientially -- through interactions with parents, in attempts to pursue rites of passage reserved for citizens, and as audiences of political and popular media. She provides both theoretical and pragmatic contextualization as activist narrators recount the experiences that influenced their decisions to cultivate public voices. Bishop draws from a mixed methodology of in-depth interviews with undocumented immigrants from eighteen unique nations of origin, critical-rhetorical ethnographies of immigrant rights events and protests, and narrative analysis of immigrant-produced digital media to interrogate the power and limitations of narrative activism. Autobiographical immigrant storytelling refutes mainstream discourse on immigration and reveals the determination of individuals who elsewhere have been vilified by stereotype and presupposition. Offering an unparalleled view into the ways immigrants' stories appear online, Bishop illuminates digital narrative strategies by detailing how undocumented storytellers reframe their messages when stories have unintended consequences. The resulting work provides broad insights into the role of strategic framing and autobiographical story-sharing in advocacy and social movements.




The Courage for Civil Repair


Book Description

This original, scholarly collection of essays investigates the intersections of large-scale international migration and solidarity-building. Unpacking how civil courage occurs, under what forms, and what sustains it, Carlo Tognato, Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, and Jeffrey C. Alexander bring together authors to explore a new theory of the exemplary individual or collective in the recent age of “migration crises”—actors who stand against injuries or injustices toward migrants, even when it is costly or risky in a context of hostility or indifference. A resource for those interested in the triggers and safeguards of democracy and civil society, and for scholars and practitioners alike, this volume offers empirical case studies from the US, Europe, Australia, and Latin America of cross-group solidarity efforts.




Configurations of Migration


Book Description

In a global context in which phenomena of migration play an ever more important role, the ways individual and collective experiences of migration are covered in the media, represented in culture, and interpreted are coming under increasing scrutiny. This book explores the complex relationship between creative engagements with migration on the one hand, and forms of knowledge about migration on the other, inquiring into the ways aesthetic practices are intertwined with knowledge structures. The book responds to three pressing research questions. First, it analyses how fictional texts, plays, images, films, and autobiographical accounts mediate forms of knowledge about migration. Second, it identifies the ways in which specific media approaches and aesthetic practices influence people's ideas about and awareness of migratory experiences in a globalized world. Finally, it delineates how historical perspectives help us compare epistemological approaches to migration in the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries, and how these approaches affect the way critics and the public responded to and thought about different forms of (forced) migration. Bringing together renowned scholars working across disciplines, it investigates the possibilities and limitations that different media present when it comes to reflecting on, communicating, and imagining experiences of migration, and how these representations in turn create ways of knowing and understanding migration.




Narrating, Framing, Reflecting ‘Disability’


Book Description

Fostering a dialog between Critical Disability Studies, American Studies, InterAmerican Studies, and Global Health Studies, the edited compilation conceptualizes disability and (mental) illnesses as a cultural narrative enabling a deeper social critique. By looking at contemporary cultural productions primarily from the USA, Canada, and the Caribbean, the books’ objective is to explore how literary texts and other cultural productions from the Americas conceptualize, construct, and represent disability as a narrative and to investigate the deep structures underlying the literary and cultural discourses on and representations of disability including parameters such as disease, racism, and sexism among others. Disability is read as a shifting phenomenon rooted in the cultures and histories of the Americas.




Transformative Learning Meets Bildung


Book Description

This edited volume sets the groundwork for a dialogue between transformative learning and continental theories of Bildung in adulthood. Both theoretical frameworks bring meaning to the complex learning process of individuals as they develop a more critical worldview. In this volume, a variety of authors from different countries and theoretical backgrounds offer new understandings about Bildung and transformative learning through discussion of theoretical analyses, educational practices, and empirical research. As a result, readers gain greater insight into these theories and related implications for teaching for change. From the various chapters an exciting relationship between both theories begins to emerge and provides impetus for greater discussion and further research about two important theories of change in the field of adult education. /div




Performing Nostalgia: Migration Culture and Creativity in South Albania


Book Description

Migration studies is an area of increasing significance in musicology as in other disciplines. How do migrants express and imagine themselves through musical practice? How does music help them to construct social imaginaries and to cope with longings and belongings? In this study of migration music in postsocialist Albania, Eckehard Pistrick identifies links between sound, space, emotionality and mobility in performance, provides new insights into the controversial relationship between sound and migration, and sheds light on the cultural effects of migration processes. Central to Pistrick?s approach is the essential role of emotionality for musical creativity which is highlighted throughout the volume: pain and longing are discussed not as a traumatising end point, but as a driving force for human action and as a source for cultural creativity. In addition, the study provides a fascinating overview about the current state of a rarely documented vocal tradition in Europe that is a part of the mosaic of Mediterranean singing traditions. It refers to the challenges imposed onto this practice by heritage politics, the dynamics of retraditionalisation and musical globalisation. In this sense the book constitutes an important study to the dynamics of postsocialism as seen from a musicological perspective.




The Migration Conference 2022 Programme


Book Description

The Migration Conference 2022 Programme offers about 80 sessions in four days from 7 to 10 September. The Migration Conference series attracted a few thousand colleagues over the last 10 years and become one of the largest continuous events on migration and the largest scholarly gathering with a global scope. The conference covers all areas of social sciences, humanities, economics, business and management. More popular areas so far included work, employment, integration, refugees and asylum, migration policy and law, spatial patterns, culture, arts and legal and political aspects which are key areas in the current migration debates and research. Throughout the program of the Migration Conference you will find various key thematic areas covered in over 300 presentations by about 500 contributors coming from all around the world, from Australia to Canada, China to Argentina, Brazil to Japan, and South Africa to Norway. We are proud to bring together experts from universities, independent research organisations, governments, NGOs and the media. The Migration Conference 2022 is hosted by the Faculty of Law, Economic and Social Sciences Agdal of Mohammad V University, Rabat, Morocco and organised by AMERM (l’Association Marocaine d’Etudes et de Recherches sur les Migrations) and IBS (International Business School, UK). Details of the conference programme and the links to the online sessions can be inspected here. www.migrationconference.net | @migrationevent | fb.me/MigrationConference | Email: [email protected]