Solidarity in Europe two years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

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Dr Rob Sharp, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex

It has now been well over two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As of February 2024, nearly 6.4 million Ukrainian refugees had been recorded globally. As the war has progressed, the European Union’s support for displaced Ukrainians has generated significant public debate, not least due to the conflict’s heightened and prolonged demands on member states’ public infrastructure and associated economic cost, necessarily of concern and interest to the public. This concern comes after a widespread outpouring of support from private individuals, companies and non-governmental organisations.

If we take solidarity to comprise a negotiation between two individuals around shared values, with clear emotional, legal and sociocultural dimensions, then the question of solidarity fatigue in relation to those responding to the war – those in institutions and private individuals offering help with accommodation, integration, language, or financial help – has generated significant press and academic interest. The European Commission’s Ukraine adviser Lodewijk Asscher has suggested its major cause is economic slowdown relating to cost-of-living crisis. One might expect solidarity fatigue to particularly hit Germany and Poland most prominently, given that these two countries have hosted the largest number of Ukrainian refugees since the invasion, around a million in each country respectively, according to some reports.

As a Media and Cultural Studies researcher, I am particularly interested in the discursive and communicative justificatory strategies used when expressions of fatigue are articulated by those at the heart of offering solidarity – small NGOs, self-organised community organisers and employees of cultural institutions. I completed 45 interviews in January through April 2024 with such individuals in Berlin and Warsaw, many of whom were displaced Ukrainians, as part of an ongoing project funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust in order to understand such questions of solidarity further, not least in an effort to critically interrogate successful attempts at maintaining solidarity long-term in respect to such crises.

In May 2024 I organised workshops in Ukrainian run by the Ukrainian artists Dasha Podoltseva and Elena Orap at the centre for urbanism ZK/U in Mitte, Berlin and in Collegium Civitas in central Warsaw. Up to 15 displaced Ukrainian women based in each city attended in each workshop, where a series of object, photographic and map-elicitation activities were used – with strong ethical consideration – to explore specifically the question of recognition or its opposite – not just solidarity, but also legal-rights-based and affective alternatives. Participants explored where, for instance, in each city they felt recognised or otherwise – showing much more of an affinity to Warsaw’s identity as a reconstructed city, as opposed to the post-Soviet architecture of East Berlin. Clearly memories of the city’s railway stations are still raw and being rearticulated in different ways.

Workshop activity, Photo by Dasha Podoltseva/Elena Orap

Via these different methodologies, and as I proceed with writing up my analysis, there have been numerous complex articulations around solidarity fatigue – as the cultural and political climate has shifted, as rights have evolved in both jurisdictions, and as complex affective and emotional responses between people have needed to be renegotiated over time as the full-scale invasion wears on.

In Berlin, multiple interviewees referred in general terms to the changing media and political climate as attitudes towards the crisis have evolved. As you might expect, many NGO employees highlighted a shift from a short-term emergency response targeting health and accommodation to longer-term questions of integration and socioeconomic inclusion, alongside rearticulating a changed understanding of the duration of the war, which was originally widely believed to be temporary but is now perceived by many interviewees to be indefinite. The original positive reception of Ukrainians by institutional media has changed to something more ambivalent. Such media discourses are often used as a justificatory articulation of solidarity fatigue.

In Berlin, it was clear that caveats have been introduced among some independent citizens over time in order to justify their withdrawal in some cases from providing solidarity. This is manifested through what might be called a kind of associative solidarity with particular caveats – whereby solidarity is extended to members of a particular groups but not to others – that reproduce the boundaries around the German liberal nation-state (Straehle, 2020). It is also indicative of selective solidarity(Ortiz, 2022), whereby pre-existing values within a population may be used to justify providing support to some groups but refusing others (Steinhilper et al, in press; Lawlor and Tolley, 2017) – with some racial dimensions, including towards those arriving via the ongoing migration crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border.

In Poland, these discursive changes were more overtly politicised. These partly reflect the populist mediated discourses of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) government which lost power in Poland in October 2023, shortly before data gathering for this paper took place. It also reflected changing media narratives over time in Poland resulting from the war’s domestic effects; most notably, the Polish farmers’ protests in 2024 against the European Green Deal and the import of grain from Ukraine.

The NGO Migration Consortium, in a 2023 report on the aftermath of the full-scale invasion produced with colleagues from the University of Warsaw, spoke of burnout being especially pronounced among Ukrainians now embedded within NGOs in Poland. “Refugees from Refugees from Ukraine proved to be extremely committed workers,” reads the report. “They claimed that work was a way for them to participate in the war – a field where they could make themselves useful. This very personal, strong motivation was admirable, but at the same time it fostered overworking and job burnout.”

As well as being written up for its own ends, my research is also feeding partly into a series of AHRC-funded workshops with cultural institutions across the UK, hosted at a national institution in Manchester and London in June 2024, with representatives, in an attempt to produce guidance or at least share best practices in sustaining ethical participatory best practices with refugees long-term, from an initial perspective of minimizing misrecognition. While this and the aforementioned data is complex, given its quantity and its skeins of competing dimensions, I am looking forward to sharing and discussing this work in greater detail with colleagues in the coming months. If anyone is interested in discussing individually please do get in touch.

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Posted in Migration Research

Bridging Research and Reality: A Glimpse into the Summer of Research Event on Gender, Sexuality, and Migration

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Sarah Scuzzarello (SCMR, Geography); Nuno Ferreira (SCMR, Law); and Moira Dustin (SCMR, Law)

In academia, the rollercoaster of research (and other) administration often takes precedence over considerations about dialogue between researchers, participants and stakeholders and conversations with colleagues across disciplines. We were asked by the University of Sussex to host a hybrid event for the 2024 Summer of Research, and we decided to take the opportunity to organise an event that showcased groundbreaking research done at the University in the fields of gender, sexuality and migration. We also took the opportunity to facilitate a platform for dialogue about the importance, the difficulties, and the challenges of participatory methods in understanding these complex social, political and legal issues. This event, which took place on June 13th, 2024, was a confluence of minds – academics, local stakeholders, postgraduate students and researchers, and other interested participants – all gathered to engage in a dialogue that transcends traditional research boundaries.

Flyer from the Summer of Research

The event commenced with opening remarks from David Ruebain, Pro Vice Chancellor of Culture, Equality, and Inclusion at the University of Sussex. His words set the tone for the day – one of inclusivity, engagement, and a shared commitment to enriching the academic discourse with diverse perspectives.

The first roundtable was a dialogue between fields of research that often intersect yet remain distinct. The discussion revolved around three focal points: conceptual (gender, sexual orientation, trans* identities), empirical (asylum seekers and “voluntary” migrants), and institutional (migration governance and social work). The speakers, including Moira Dustin (LPS), Nuno Ferreira (LPS), Sarah Scuzzarello (GS), Rachel Larkin (ESW), and Leila Zadeh (Rainbow Migration), delved into the blurred boundaries of migrant categories, the application of intersectional analysis, and the significance of social spaces in shaping the experiences of research participants. Importantly, speakers emphasised the need for knowledge co-production in the field to move away from “extractivist” approaches in research, while also being mindful of what “participatory research” means and its limitations. There was a clear agreement that we ought to be clear about who should be involved in co-producing knowledge – charities or research participants – and that different types of knowledge are “co-produced” depending on how collaboration is structured. Equally important is the recognition of the potential goal- and timing misalignment between academia, third sector, and funding bodies that can make knowledge co-production difficult. Those involved in a project will have different roles and capabilities, and we need to acknowledge the existence of diverse priorities and of different rhythms in our respective institutions, be those higher education, research institutes, or charitable organizations. An open dialogue and a call to identify the most appropriate stages in a research project to involve other non-academic actors seems one possible pathway towards meaningful knowledge co-production.

Lunch: A Feast for Thought and Collaboration The lunch was more than just a culinary break, offered by local caterer Jessie Kwong at Vegan Peace Food. It was a feast of thought and collaboration. As attendees mingled and exchanged ideas, they were offered a preview of Mehran Rezaei Toroghi’s new documentary film with queer Iranian refugees and migrants living in Turkey, the UK, and Canada (part of the NQIfFM – Negotiating Queer Identities following Forced Migration project), and a small selection of the collages  that were part of the Queer(ing) Home and Belonging exhibition, illustrating the use of participatory visual methods in the speakers’ respective research projects.

Thumbnail from the documentary The Other Place

During the second roundtable we looked at participatory research methods, focussing on the value and challenges of participatory research in gender and LGBTQI+ migration studies. This session brought together academics and research participants to discuss the benefits of participatory and arts-based methods. The conversation, with Manjot Kaur Dhaliwal (LPS), Mehran Rezaei-Toroghi (LPS), Magadaline Moyo (Right to Remain campaign organiser), Pierre Monnerville (photographer), and Oner Ozdamar (Head of Department, secondary school), highlighted the need for a shift in research approaches to make them more meaningful to participants and stakeholders. The academic panellists talked about the benefits of art-based methods as a “way in” to build trust and establish a more open channel of communication between researchers and the research participants. The process is messy however, and requires a high degree of flexibility that the rigid parameters of academia do not always account for. On the side of the participants, they all emphasised that taking part in the research project had both a public and a personal function. Publicly, they were driven by a desire to seek change in how migrants are perceived in the UK and how asylum seekers, and especially those seeking protection on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, are “stripped of their dignity by the Home Office”, as one participant said. To make their experiences visible and public, participants hoped to help others who are emigrating in navigating similar challenges to the ones they once faced. On a personal level, they talked about the importance of finding a respectful space where they could be themselves and reflect on their journey on their own terms – something they seldom have had the time to do.

A Step Towards Meaningful Research

The hybrid event at the University of Sussex was a testament to the evolving landscape of academic research. It underscored the necessity of bridging the gap between theoretical research and the lived experiences of individuals. By incorporating participatory visual methods, the event not only enriched the academic dialogue but also paved the way for more inclusive and impactful research practices.

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Posted in Academic Life

New migration research in Pakistan

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A collaborative blogpost by Dr Ayub Jan and Professor Shahida Aman of the University of Peshawar, Pakistan, with Dr Ceri Oeppen, Dr Tahir Zaman and Professor Michael Collyer of SCMR.

One of the largest protracted displacement populations in the world; significant internal and international labour migration; historic displacement from partition; forced migration due to floods and other climate-related hazards…  These are just some of the reasons why Pakistan is such an important location for migration research.    

SCMR co-directors Ceri Oeppen and Tahir Zaman, and SCMR member Mike Collyer, recently returned from a visit to Pakistan where they spent time with PDE Project co-investigators at the University of Peshawar, the oldest university in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (north-west Pakistan).  Their visit included an international conference, Displacement Crises in Pakistan, and the launch of the newly established ‘Migration Research Cell’.  Based in the Department of Political Science, the Migration Research Cell is a stepping stone to a full Migration Research Centre at the University of Peshawar.

L-R: PhD researcher Waseem Murad, Dr Ayub Jan, Dr Tahir Zaman, Prof. Abdul Rauf, Prof. Mike Collyer, Dr Ceri Oeppen, and Prof. Shahida Aman, PhD researcher Hafeez Ullah, after the Protracted Displacement in Pakistan conference, held at the University of Peshawar, 8th of May 2024.

The SCMR team spoke to Dr Ayub Jan, Director of the Migration Research Cell, about the importance of migration studies in Pakistan, and his and Professor Shahida Aman’s (Chairperson of the Department of Political Science’s) plans for future migration research.

Thanks so much for hosting our visit to Pakistan, it’s so exciting to see all the migration studies activities you’re working on!  Why do you think it’s important to research migration in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa?

We at the Department of Political Science have created a Migration Research Cell, which is the first of its kind in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The reason why we feel it is important to research migration in the province is that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is home to more than four million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees. The issue of displacement is a protracted one as Pakistan generally and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa specifically has been home to Afghan refugees for four decades and more. More than 70 % of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan live in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These protracted refugee crises have led to the growth of ‘Protracted Displacement Communities,’ where the hosts and refugees are now intertwined in economic and socio-cultural links of mutual support and friendships. This is besides the millions of internally displaced people who have also suffered forced displacements because of the war and conflict in the borderland and the climatic disasters that have struck the province quite severely in the last few years. We feel that such aspects of protracted displacement crises are quite under-researched and therefore need to be academically and rigorously investigated.

How will your migration research work feed into your teaching in the Department of Political Science?

We have been thinking of incorporating migration- related courses since the start of our migration research projects. Recently, we succeeded in getting approval from the Board of Studies in Political Science at the University of Peshawar to start teaching a mandatory course on Migration Studies at the undergraduate level. We have also included five new specialized courses on Migration at the MPhil and PhD. level, mostly drawing from our diverse research work undertaken over the last three years, much of it with our SCMR colleagues. The draft has already been shared with the University’s relevant academic bodies for approval. The Fall 2024 session will open with these new courses taught at the BS and MPhil/ PhD., levels.

What do you think are the key issues for migration researchers in Pakistan?  

The key issues for migration researchers are manifold:

  • Conflict areas are difficult to access, especially the borderland areas where the security situation is still precarious.
  • There is a plethora of government organizations, whose NOC (No Objection Certificate) are a must for carrying out research in conflict and camp settings and among refugees. So, this entails going through several official channels and planning beforehand.
  • It can be a challenge to gain the trust of the refugee and displaced communities for conducting interviews among them. For this, it is important to first gain the trust of the intermediaries, especially the local leaders called maliks, shura members or masharan (elders).
  • Cultural sensitivities around women mean that only men can collect data from men and women can collect data from women. Also, accessing women and allowing them to express themselves freely often become challenging because of their restricted mobility and patriarchal norms regulating the lives of women migrants.
  • Another issue is the availability of statistical data related to refugees living in Pakistan. Particularly, Afghans who live as registered and unregistered refugees in diverse settings of camps and cities. In bigger camps such as the Pannia camp in Haripur, despite being closely regulated, multiple data are produced by authorities, community mobilizers, and community leaders (maliks) about the number of households and individuals living in the camp. This creates a problem of selecting samples for researchers.

What are your plans for the Migration Research Cell at the University of Peshawar?  

We are planning to turn the Migration Research Cell into a full-fledged Migration Research Centre with the capacity to enrol students in different programmes at the Undergraduate, MPhil and PhD., levels and give specialized degrees in Migration Studies. We also plan to link the Migration Research Cell with migration centres around the world including the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. We hope to undertake various further collaborative academic exercises under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of Sussex. This includes the exchange of faculty and students as well as academic collaboration through joint research projects, organizing conferences and summer schools, and developing courses on migration studies. 

Epilogue

SCMR Co-Directors are currently working with Dr Jan and Professor Aman to propose a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Sussex and the University of Peshawar to facilitate future collaborative research and teaching – Watch This Space!

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Posted in Academic Life

Migration Research and ‘The Other’ Europe

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Florian Bieber (University of Graz, Austria), Kathy Burrell (University of Liverpool UK) and Ruxandra Trandafoiu (Edge Hill University, UK)

Migration scholars should pay greater attention to migration research that focuses on Eastern Europe as a site of diverse but also singular migration-related phenomena.

While East-West mobility is well represented in migration scholarship, especially in the UK, where it has seeped into relevant research on Brexit and populism, many other migration-related phenomena taking place in Eastern Europe, have largely been ignored. This diverse region, which has incurred mass labour emigration and significant war induced population displacement, has to become a key site for researching other aspects of migration, such as potentially challenging post-COVID and post-Brexit migration return, divergent diaspora policies especially in relation to homeland political engagement, contradictory refugee discourses and initiatives, new dynamics between national minorities and immigrant groups, and a significant demographic shift from emigration to immigration. Eastern Europe lends itself to comparative regional perspectives, which can reveal diverse nuances and rich experiences, thus negating any attempt to treat Eastern Europe as a homogeneous area, which occasionally, can be a strong temptation. As migration, in its various incarnations, begins to spoil any claims of racial and religious homogeneity in Eastern Europe and jeopardizes those long-entrenched dreams of national uniqueness, comparative and multi-sited research can better capture the dynamism and unique historical and social moment Eastern Europe is going through. In the remainder of the article, we detail where, in our view, the rich research potential of the region lies.

Eastern European societies are transitioning from emigrant to immigrant societies. This pivotal moment remains largely ignored by researchers and politicians. Governments are either blindsided by the long-term economic and social problems caused by mass emigration (labour gaps, child abandonment and depopulation, among others) or fall too easily into populist temptations to use war refugees as pawns in a game of power grabbing. Hence, despite similar traumatic shifts experienced by Italy, Spain or Greece, which can offer a glimpse into the future, this key impending change at the level of collective psychology is ignored, while the needs of the new immigrants and refugees in Eastern Europe, are left undealt with. In the academic world, conferences and papers on this subject are beginning to emerge, but much of this terrain remains unexplored.

While immigration to the region is by no means a new phenomenon, once we accept that the post-socialist period has brought new migrant groups into Eastern Europe, the question emerges: when do migrant groups become a minority? What rights can they claim vis-à-vis ‘historical’ minorities? Many Eastern European countries have spent a lot of time and resources over the past few decades dealing with minority rights issues, from border mobility and citizenship rights for co-nationals residing in neighbouring countries, to placating the vociferous claims of national minorities left traumatised by border changes. And yet there is little vision for the Chinese migrants who moved to Hungary in the 1990s, or the Vietnamese communities settled in Czechia and Slovakia. If the ‘ethnic problem’ wasn’t complicated enough in Eastern Europe, the new layers of communities emerging after the fall of communism, from transnational diasporic ones to new immigrants, who inhabit multiple spaces simultaneously, are not just symbolically stretching Eastern Europe beyond its geographic location but is playing havoc with the already illusive aspiration for a neat overlap between state and nation. So, the questions that naturally follow are: is it possible to join the majority nation in Eastern European countries? Is it conceivable and practical to rethink the nation as a multicultural or, indeed, transnational one?

Discursively, the stretching of traditional concepts (like kin state or kin minority) and the layering of communities translate into a parallel: on the one hand migration-related phenomena are pathologized, on the other hand, migration and multicultural encounters are accepted as an everyday occurrence managed through lived experience. The pathological aspect derives from overwhelming fears of national extinction which continue to permeate Eastern European public discourses. Past and present colonial encounters and legacies, such as the perceived Islamic threat to majority Christian cultures, and the legacy of both distant and more recent wars, mean that national annihilation anxieties are counteracted through the allure of monosited lives, the positive framing of immobility and the clinging on to traditional notions of nationhood and belonging. A hierarchy of treatment that states apply to different groups is emerging in Eastern Europe. To what extent this will contribute to a racialization of Eastern Europe, this time from inside the region itself and no longer imposed by the Western gaze, is an interesting matter, worth pursuing through research.

The seesaw of EU accession currently shaping Western Balkan politics but also one day (hopefully soon) post-war Ukraine and Moldova, adds another ingredient to the Eastern European political cake. Its shapeshifting layers should continue to add to the reservoir of political phenomena worthy of investigation. In research, we are as guilty as those journalists who always look for the hottest spot, the breaking news, unable to recognize slower burning developments elsewhere. As the EU remains preoccupied by the war in Ukraine and securitizing its external borders, EU accession for several countries in Eastern Europe has seemed to have slowed down, with possibly significant consequences.

Elsewhere, while the focus shifts from people fleeing Ukraine to people fleeing Russia, will the new humanitarian crises redefine who is a refugee and who isn’t, and will they add to concerns about mobility becoming immobility, trapping refugees indeterminately? These migration crises are political crises, and they bring, to some extent, Western and Eastern Europe closer together. And yet this happens at the cost of targeted and racialized exclusion, of withholding human rights and reframing citizenship as special entitlement. This is where, once again, comparative research, which considers Eastern Europe to be a site of valuable emerging policies and new ways of thinking about war induced displacement and refugee rights, will test its value.

Migration has impacted almost every aspect of social life in Eastern Europe over the last three decades, highlighting the need for concerted social support policies and a reconsideration of the impact of skills and labour supply in economic growth. We need to see migration as an economic issue. As remittances dwindle in crisis hit Europe, how will migrant return be encouraged to maximize specialist skills and reinvestment? Will importing foreign, currently Asian labour, be a viable long-term option? How will racial diversity be accommodated by overwhelmingly white, often ethnically homogenous societies? How will the wellbeing of new migrants be ensured when nationalism, religious conservatism and populism have been defining characteristics of many countries in the region? The key link between economic policy and migration outcomes is the occasional blind spot of migration research, and we advocate for a renewed focus on seeing practices of mobility and settlement in an economic development context.

More historical work needs to take place too, to capture the diversity of Eastern Europe’s historical experiences and the huge range of postcolonial phenomena at play. This would help uncover Eastern Europe as a region where ethnic, racial and religious diversity is probably more pronounced than that currently recognized and accepted. Lip service historians and politicians have perpetuated for far too long the myth of cultural homogeneity in Eastern Europe and rejecting it might help regroup academic research to face current realities and future challenges.

Ultimately, what emerging research interests but also absences in research do, is to highlight how important Eastern Europe is to the migration and diaspora academic field, how much richness the region can yield in terms of theories, methodologies and practices and how unfair lingering disparities between our attention to migration in Eastern versus Western Europe is. This richness, this multiplicity, also highlights how problematic the Eastern Europe label is. Although we have used it ourselves to conveniently situate our claim for relevance and visibility in the political geography of the region, we also accept that instrumentalizing the term feeds into Europe’s colonial imaginary and its inescapably unethical hierarchies. Maybe this issue too, could inspire a new debate over what we mean by ‘Eastern’ Europe.

The points raised in this article were first crafted during a webinar, hosted by the Institute for Creative Enterprise at Edge Hill University.

Florian Bieber is a Professor of Southeast European History and Politics and Director of the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. He held a Jean Monnet Chair in the Europeanisation of Southeastern Europe from 2019 to 2023. He is the coordinator of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG) and has been providing policy advice to international organisations, foreign ministries, donors and private investors. He studied Political Science and History at Trinity College (USA), the University of Vienna, and Central European University (Budapest). He has worked for the European Centre for Minority Issues and taught at Kent University (UK). He is also a Visiting Professor at the Nationalism Studies Program at CEU. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the LSE and New York University and held the Luigi Einaudi Chair at Cornell University. Recent publications include Debating Nationalism (Bloomsbury 2020) and The Rise of Authoritarianism in the Western Balkans (Palgrave 2020) and Negotiating Unity and Diversity in the European Union (Palgrave 2021, with Roland Bieber). His forthcoming monograph is Hvar in the Modern Age. Identity and Change in Southeastern Europe, published by Bloomsbury in 2024.

Kathy Burrell is Professor of Migration Geographies at the University of Liverpool UK, with interests in migration governance, mobility, material culture and home, and is a specialist in Polish migration particularly. She is currently writing up work from three different projects – research on the UK’s ‘Homes for Ukraine’ hosting scheme, recently published in Antipode; British Academy funded research on UK Poles’ navigations of the post-Brexit Settled Status schemes; and an AHRC funded project ‘Stay Home Stories’, investigating the impact of Covid-19 on experiences of ‘home’ among people with diverse migration and faith backgrounds in the UK.

Ruxandra Trandafoiu is Professor of Politics, Communications and Diaspora at Edge Hill University, UK. She uses digital, ethnographic, and participatory research to study the way media and technology shape transnational lives and aid the political engagement and self-advocacy of diasporic/minority communities. She is the author of Diaspora Online: Identity Politics and Romanian Migrants (Berghahn) and The Politics of Migration and Diaspora in Eastern Europe: Media, Public Discourse and Policy (Routledge), as well as several edited collections and numerous articles exploring the relationship between media and mobility. Her forthcoming book Migration, Dislocation and Movement on Screen is published by Berghahn in July 2024.

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The Iranian diaspora’s role in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement

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Author anonymous.

In October last year, Berlin attracted international attention for a turnout of more than 80,000 Iranian people and allies showing solidarity with protesters in Iran. Capturing a feeling that resonates with myself and other members of the Iranian diaspora, one protester told the BBC: “It’s breath-taking, it’s amazing…it’s the first time that so many people in our nation are united regardless of their political beliefs before revolution and after revolution. I am really proud.” Under the Islamic Republic in Iran (IRI) dictatorship that has gripped the homeland for 44 years, mass protests inside Iran are not new.

Why is this unprecedented solidarity and activism from the diaspora happening now? As a British-Iranian woman under 30 years old, who grew up in the UK and with strong family ties in Iran, I have been struck by the increased diasporic activism both online and in the national and international political arena. I’ve found myself active in Iranian homeland politics like never before. Importantly, I have witnessed an increased cohesiveness among the Iranian diaspora and an unprecedented optimism that real change is in the making. 

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Protests in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, London (UK). Photo by the author.

It is estimated there are more than four million Iranians abroad. The 1979 revolution was a huge driver of emigration, with the upper and middle classes moving to North America and Western Europe. The Iranian diaspora is usually a fractured group that steers clear of organising around homeland politics, but the killing of Kurdish-Iranian woman Zhina (Mahsa) Amini at the hands of morality police in September 2022 led to an eruption of political diasporic activism in support of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. The rallying cry of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ originates from Kurdish liberation movements, and now also embodies the female-led, intersectional revolution in Iran focused on securing human rights for all and an end the dictatorship. As the former Shah’s son and secular democracy advocate, Reza Pahlavi, told the Guardian newspaper, the revolution is continuing because everyone understands this is a “do-or-die” moment. Diasporic activism has ranged from global rallies for solidarity and awareness, social media campaigns to amplify Iranian voices, and political lobbying. This is however while standing against foreign intervention.

Social media

Unlike previous uprisings such as the Green Movement in the wake of the hotly contested 2009 election, Iranians use of the internet has rocketed from 14 per cent of the population in 2009 to 79 per cent in 2021, Following the killing of Amini, the ability to document what’s happening on the ground and connect with outside Iran is therefore unprecedented. The messaging online and from prominent human rights campaigners was clear early on to not allow the regime’s nationwide internet shutdown to silence Iranian voices and commit atrocities with impunity. And so members of the diaspora (alongside established independent Iranian media and human rights activist groups) have become facilitators in sharing videos, images and messages from Iranians to the outside world and to keep their stories visible, and IRI accountable, on the international stage.

Diaspora mobilisation included templates to write to political representatives, circulating petitions, details of global rallies, and social media posts to spread awareness of particular protesters recently missing or arrested. Organised actions to gain votes for the women of Iran to be chosen as Time magazine heroes of the year, and for Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour’s song ‘Baraye’ (For Freedom) to be chosen as the Grammy awards song for social change category, were also targeted visibility efforts that succeeded. Existing Iranian businesses and celebrities have also turned their hand to using their social media as a tool to raise awareness of events in Iran. One Texas-based Persian language teacher, for example, began doing vocabulary videos of protest slogans, while Iranian food businesses came together to promote #cookforiran challenges.

Social media has also grown in the number of English language accounts now solely campaigning for Iran. Some examples include United 4 Mahsa, Diaspora for Iran, Be Iran’s Voice and Iranian Diaspora Collective on Instagram whose content ranges from weekly round-ups of news of the ongoing revolution, calls to actions and videos shared from Iran on what’s happening on the ground. Iranian Diaspora Collective for example was formed in response to the “overwhelming demand from Iranians in Iran to amplify their voices”. It describes itself as “non-partisan, multi-faith and queer-led” and has more than 57,000 followers. It launched a crowdfunding campaign to install billboards highlighting the Woman, Life, Freedom movement around the world to counter the lack of coverage in the mainstream media. Within two months it had installed billboards at 136 locations and gained 22 million media impressions, according to its campaign update.

Global protests

October 1st, 2022 marked the first day of global rallies to show solidarity with protesters in Iran, which took place in more than 150 cities worldwide. Toronto hosted the highest recorded turnout with 50,000 people, and global rallies continued every weekend through 2022, with further events ongoing. In January 2023, bus loads of Iranians from around Europe travelled to Strasbourg to demonstrate in front of the European Parliament demanding that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a powerful branch of the IRI, be placed on the EU’s terror list. In the UK, the same demand is being targeted at Westminster, with British-Iranian activist Vahid Beheshti’s hunger strike outside the Foreign Office ongoing since February 23rd. And this news gets relayed in Iran. One Iranian journalist Tweeted a picture sent to their newsroom of a boy in Iran holding a sign asking the London hunger striker to break his dangerously long action. An underground youth group of Iranian protesters also published a statement of their support of diaspora efforts to designate the IRGC a terrorist group. A key understanding of activism in the diaspora is that their actions must represent and amplify the demands of those inside Iran.

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Protests in support of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in London (UK). Photo by the author

But the threat of the regime beyond borders is also a risk. The social media group, Iranian Diaspora Collective, for example, does not disclose the identities of all its members due to concerns of surveillance and the safety of family members in Iran. London-based independent media Iran International’s newsroom was forced to leave the UK in February due to a “significant escalation” in state-backed threats against its journalists. According to the Metropolitan Police 15 plots to kidnap or kill UK-based people seen as enemies of the regime have been foiled since 2022.

International political lobbying

From removing IRI from the UN women’s rights commission, to establishing the UN to set up an independent investigation to hold IRI accountable for its crimes against Iranian people, the diaspora has been at the forefront of pushing international action. Widespread campaigns gained traction worldwide in December as executions of protesters became a reality. In efforts for the  #stopexecutionsiniran campaign, lobbyists tried to galvanise international politicians into giving political sponsorship for prisoners. Joint efforts have also emerged from female Iranian and Afghan activists to launch a campaign to make gender apartheid a crime under international law.

An alliance of diasporic Iranian opposition figures has also formed, drawing up a charter of secular democratic principles. They present themselves not as a “shadow government”, or leaders of the Iranian people, but aims to “reflect and pursue their demands’ with the goal of a secular democracy in Iran. They state practical steps of supporting public strikes and protests in Iran, drawing attention of the international community on the conditions of prisoners in Iran, and asking them to isolate IRI. Members include the former Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, women’s rights campaigner Masih Alinejad and Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Reflections

While continuing unity on Iran’s future political landscape is no easy task, the commitment of Iranians abroad to support those inside Iran on a mass scale gives hope and connectedness across borders I’ve never seen before among Iranians. My own engagement has changed. I previously had a strict ‘no Iranian politics’ social media rule for myself. Since Amini’s death, I have been sharing regular updates online, taken part in demonstrations, written to my MP, created templates for others to do the same, written articles, donated to NGOs and signed and shared petitions.

The celebration, education and pride of Iranian culture and diversity has also flourished within this movement, with excitement growing over the possibilities of a free, democratic Iran. For many in the diaspora, this could mean being able to travel to Iran for the first time or returning after many years in exile. For me as a dual national, it will mean being able to return without fear of arrest, which is something I have been unable to do for several years as IRI’s suspicion of foreign influence grows.

For both the diaspora and those inside Iran, the stakes are high and one thing is clear, there is no returning back to the status quo. The gains of a free Iran are too great to stay silent anymore.

As protesters shout on the streets of Iran: “Be scared, be scared, we are all together”.

Note – The author, a British-Iranian, has asked to be anonymous to protect her family from potential repercussions.
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Posted in Migration Comments

How time reveals hidden power in the refugee camp

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Dr Melissa Gatter is Lecturer in International Development (University of Sussex)

While a universal experience, the passing of time is not an equal one. For those whose mobility is policed, time becomes more immediately present, almost tangible, as they must wait for permission at every border crossing, however official or informal.

Such is the case for the residents of Azraq refugee camp, the desert site that Jordan and the UNHCR designated for 40,000 Syrian refugees in 2014. Located 35 kilometres from the nearest city on either side, Azraq camp looks nothing like Jordan’s well-known Zaatari camp, which features a booming microeconomy, winding cul-de-sacs, and a consistent rotation of journalists, researchers, and documentary filmmakers. In Azraq, the bustling market is instead a strictly regulated cash-for-work scheme, the neighbourhoods with makeshift patios and courtyards are replaced with straight rows of identical caravans, and the journalists, researchers, and filmmakers are often turned away at the camp’s entrance.

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Azraq camp, Copyright: Melissa Gatter

Order and compliance, not liveability or comfort, are prioritised in Azraq camp. This is enforced by the camp’s security apparatus, which responds to disobedience by threatening deportation. Village 5, the camp’s high security zone housing thousands of residents awaiting security clearance in lockdown, is an enduring reminder that residents are never truly settled in Azraq.

Since 2014, those living in Azraq have resided there for an indeterminate period, during which time their biological and biographical fates lie in the hands of a stranger: an aid worker or a security officer. In the meantime, they seldom have access to ‘national’ time; that is, the temporalities available to Jordanian citizens who can participate in capitalist timelines. While UNOs and NGOs run centres throughout Azraq, it does not take long to see that programming seldom carries biographical significance. Because humanitarians do little to address the structural marginalisation of refugees in Jordan, the skills certificates that many residents earn at NGO centres do not grant them access to careers, and diplomas achieved in the camp may not result in a place at a university. Many young residents become frustrated, resorting to the poorly paid cash-for-work scheme not for the income but for the sake of work itself.    

The apparent temporal stillness of the forcibly displaced contributes to the archetypal image of refugees as ‘stuck’. Their lives appear on hold; their wait, permanently transitory. My forthcoming book, Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp: A Nine-to-Five Emergency (AUC Press, 2023), is an ethnographic investigation into these temporal politics. It foregrounds time in its study of Azraq camp, revealing realities often overlooked by studies of forced displacement that centre around space. Studies that leave time to the background of camp spatialities tend to reproduce narratives of refugees as living in a paradoxical state of temporary permanence in which power is exercised solely through the tangible and perceptible: borders, material infrastructure, and space itself. When we focus solely on the spatial dimensions of power in camps, we miss all the ways that power also operates—and is challenged—through the temporal realm.

By honing in on the everyday temporal experiences of the Jordanian aid workers and Syrian residents of Azraq, my book locates invisible power across the camp as it affects both those who work there and who live there, emphasising the critical importance of the camp as time, not just a space. Examining the numerous ways that power operates through time is crucial to how we understand refugee camps as modern technologies of care and control. Through its investigation of Azraq’s everyday operations, Time and Power depicts a multifaceted timescape within which both aid workers and residents negotiate, challenge, and comply with the workings of the aid regime.

My examination of time in the refugee camp is not only concerned with its residents’ wait for the return to Syria. It carefully situates the everyday tempos of the camp within overlapping and conflicting contexts of humanitarian emergency, bureaucratised aid, neoliberal development, facades of care, and architectures of control. The book’s focus on time considers how humanitarian and development work operate through blurred timelines, how aid jobs are structured by deadlines, contracts, and proceduralism, and how aid workers have deeply personal perspectives on time’s passing in the camp. It is also about how camp residents build daily schedules, wait for services and work, and project themselves into alternative presents and various near and far futures.

The year I spent conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the camp between 2017 and 2018 revealed that while Azraq’s residents are indeed active in their waiting, the realities of displaced temporalities stretch far beyond either active waiting on the one hand and limbo, stuckness, and liminality on the other. Time and Power contends that time in displacement is not straightforward, but messy; not frozen, but confused. The camp is not only an endless present for its residents but also part of their recent pasts and near futures. We can acknowledge the co-evalness of Azraq while still not denying the reality that its residents feel that the timescapes of the camp are different and isolated from outside temporalities. Every moment of Azraq residents’ lives in the camp is bordered not only by material infrastructure that separates and confines but also temporal scaffolding that restricts and alienates.

Through ethnographic accounts of boredom and urgency, the book illustrates how Azraq’s residents are exhausted by keeping busy in the day-to-day while simultaneously confronted with an abundance of time in the camp. It follows residents as they navigate the camp system and negotiate the temporal and spatial power that shapes their lives in order to create more meaningful and comfortable residence in exile.

In its investigation of the ‘best-planned refugee camp in the world’, Time and Power asserts that it is impossible to analyse emergency response without critically evaluating bureaucracy, to understand how residents wait without acknowledging how they resist, to identify how aid workers care without recognising how the aid system controls, and to interrogate power without accounting for time and space together. My book is a call for more research on the politics of time in spaces of displacement, paying attention to the hidden dimension of disempowerment and isolation, but also agency and endurance.

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Posted in Migration Research

LGBTQI+ immigrants’ experiences of in/exclusion in the UK

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Dr Sarah Scuzzarello, Senior Lecturer in migration (SCMR and Dept of Geography, University of Sussex) and co-coordinator of GenSeM, Gender and Sexuality in Migration research at IMISCOE. With Golchehr Hamidi-Manesh, Research Assistant.

Rainbow and transgender flags

To what degree do the experiences of migration and settlement of LGBTQI+ people differ from those of heterosexual and cisgender migrants? The burgeoning field of ‘queer migration’ asks this and related questions, fore-fronting how sexuality and gender identity impact migratory processes. Working within this body of research, I conducted life-story interviews with LGBTQI+ migrants (N:17) from Europe (N:12), the US (N:3), and central America/Caribbean (N:2), eight of which identified as Black or minority ethnic (mixed race; Arab; Latinix). No participant had refugee background. The preliminary findings point to the need to enquire systematically, first, how LGBTQI+ individuals’ experiences of migration and settlement are influenced by intersecting social location of sexuality and gender identity, race, class, and migration status. Second, we need to analyse in which social spaces sexuality and gender identity matter in shaping one’s migratory journey, rather than assuming their ubiquitous relevance. Here, I present some of the participants’ experiences of settling in the UK that speak to these points. All participants’ names are pseudonyms.

At the margins as (relatively privileged) migrants

16 participants migrated to the UK as European or US citizens and they came as university students, family members, or high-skilled professionals. They did not face the same restrictions upon entry imposed on migrants from the ‘Global South’ or ‘low skilled’ migrants. Their relative privilege, however, does not spare them from the UK hostile climate towards migrants. Paolo (Italian gay man), who works in design, feels that British acquaintances treat him “like a guest”. Others point at how British politics have changed public attitudes for the worse.

As an immigrant [things have changes], yeah! I think it’s much less welcoming, open, than I think it was 20 years ago, 15 years ago […] I think over the last 12 years before the government, that has changed hugely. Things like this Rwanda policy is just a disgusting example of that. That no-one is welcome. (Mark, French American bisexual man)

European participants are adamant to underline that the climate of hostility worsened after the 2016 Brexit referendum, which has eroded their rights. They feel “unwelcome”, in the words of Christophe (French, gay man), “unstable”, “stressed” and “anxious” (Mark), and “sad” (Fatime, French queer woman), their right to be in the UK questioned (Frank, Italian gay man). Four participants decided to mitigate the insecurity borne out of Brexit by naturalising as British citizens.

British citizenship completely came out of Brexit because there was no need for this before. We were just here. And it was forever. (Olle, Swedish gay man)

Thanks to their privileged status as eligible citizens who had the means to naturalise, those participants could act upon their perceived insecurity and create a sense of stability after the rug “had been pulled out from under us”, as Mark puts it.

Findings suggest that the participants’ sexuality and gender identity does not fully define their experience of migrating to the UK. Instead, being foreign citizens, regardless of their relative privilege, shaped their experiences.

Spaces of belonging in queer Britain

Several White respondents stated that life in the UK, with a relatively vibrant LGBTQI+ community, enabled them to achieve an integrated and fully open queer life. Those who came to the UK to study at university, found “freedom” that made them “ignore a lot of shit in those few months [when they first arrived in the UK]” (João, Portuguese, non-binary). This positive experience was shared by ethnic minority participants who could ‘pass’ as White, highlighting how intersections of race, sexuality and gender identity matter in the participants’ experiences of settlement. Kai (American, Latinix, trans*) says:

[City] is a much better place for me to live. I think people just see me as Italian […] the racism that I experience is markedly lower than back home […] And also, I noticed that […] people, rarely gender me. […] this is the ultimate space for transmasculine people.

The opportunity to socialise in queer spaces is welcome by many, but some Black and ethnic minority interviewees report instances when socialising in queer spaces is mediated by race and their migration background. They describe the British queer scene as predominately White and several participants recounted being “objectified” (Christophe, French, black gay man) and “fetishized” (Drew, Arab-Danish, gay man). They also describe not fitting in culturally:

I’ve loved what [city] has given to me [but it is] too small […]I think more than just [city] it’s just probably British culture and I just… even the pop culture I don’t really enjoy… you know, having a beer at the pub I don’t enjoy it so much or, you know, the gay scene… so many people  just…they always tell me to just go to a drag show and that bores me. (Connor, Caribbean-Canadian, mixed race, gay man)

Living in predominately White spaces, where there is not only a risk for objectification and racism but also a cultural disconnect, has made these participants look for specific places of belonging and solidarity outside mainstream White British queer culture. To Christophe, this means socialising in local networks for Black and brown LGBTQI+ (which can however be small and run by gossip, as Connor hinted to) and in London, which offers more diversity. Others searched for “people that had the same story, had the same past, and hopefully have the same future” as Drew described his network which includes predominately Black, Brown and Arab queer people.

Navigating unfamiliar territory

The participants underline that it takes time to find and become part of safe (queer) networks and that the first years in a new country, making contacts, and navigating the unfamiliar rules of the local queer community could be challenging. Paolo, despite living in the UK for five years, has not yet found a social space where he can share interests and “be myself, but in a gay environment”. Drew describes his first years in the UK as frustratingly “trying to fit into a group that I did not belong in” and in hindsight he says he was being “white-washed”.

Raphael’s (Polish, White gay man) experience points to more concerning implications of navigating unfamiliar queer territory. He recounts that, as he moved to the UK, he was drawn to what seemed exciting gay venues and bought into a lifestyle which involved partying and chemsex. Years on, having left those circles, he is adamant to stress the risks for young gay migrants. Especially those coming from highly heteronormative societies and with limited experiences of queer identities, can get “lost”:

If a young migrant from Eastern Europe who didn’t have any experience in the gay community before, because there was no gay community, comes to London and finds himself straight into the darkest worst part of gay community like Vauxhall nightclubs and everything. That is a very drastic, extreme change. So sometimes they might get lost in that new world. Because it’s exciting, of course. But it’s also something that they probably can’t handle, […] if you’re surrounded by wrong people who are only dragging you down, it’s very difficult to find yourself back. If you don’t have that somebody, if you don’t have good friends around you, and you are only relying on yourself, it might be more difficult, it might take more time.

These examples speak to specific needs of parts of the queer migrant community that are not fully attended to. On the one hand, a desire to ‘fit in’ – often identified in research on migrants’ ‘integration’ – and the strategies adopted by participants to find a place of belonging. On the other, the need for safe spaces for young LGBTQI+ migrants where they can find advice.

The initial findings from the research emphasise how the participants’ experiences of settlement in the UK are not only shaped by their sexuality and gender identity. Their ethnicity, class and migration status are equally important in influencing their migration journey. These intersecting social locations give them differential abilities to navigate life in the UK and attention to these intersections can contribute to a more holistic understanding of the life experiences of LGBTQI+ migrants that avoids treating these migrants simply as sexual subjects.

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The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the individual authors and do not represent the Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR).