Time and Place
Asynchronous Session
Understanding Dislocation, Memory, and Refugee Journeys through Fiction: An Analysis of Selected Refugee Narratives
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anindita Shome
Refugees and asylum seekers have been the focus of political and social debates and developments in recent times. With increasing conflicts in several parts of the world, the number of displaced individuals, in search of a safe and new home, keeps growing. Memory plays a significant role in the ways in which refugees and asylum seekers rebuild their lives in the host nations. Memories of the sights and smells of the homeland live with the refugees through their gruelling journeys. Fiction opens up spaces of discussions on how homeland memories form an integral part of their lives away in the host lands. This paper would consider Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) and Nadia Hashimi’s When The Moon is Low (2015) to comprehend the role of memory and refugee experiences, and how these find reflection in fictional narratives. Behind the data and media news reports on the refugees and asylum seekers, are the human stories of loss, pain, suffering, and trauma. These are stories of humans in search of a host land that would help them reconstruct their lives. Fiction can be a constructive platform to initiate conversations and dialogues on the journeys of the people displaced due to conflict-ridden homelands. The use of unconventional narrative techniques and literary devices help in providing a voice to these displaced individuals, and form powerful, alternate narratives. This paper, through content analysis, attempts to understand how fictional narratives provide a glimpse into the lived experiences of the refugees and asylum seekers.
The Trajectory of Local Migration in the Mekong Delta Since 1975
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Susan Samardjian
The multiethnic society in the Mekong Delta, bordering southern Vietnam and Cambodia, has been subject to considerable sociopolitical and natural disasters over the decades. Known by the Vietnamese as the “Nine Dragon” River, the Mekong Delta's rich agricultural and aquacultural landscape is vital to the local and regional livelihood and economy. It stems from the Tibetan Plateau to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and the South China Sea, making it one of the largest deltas in the world and home to ethnic groups including the Vietnamese, Chinese, Khmers, and Chams. These regional compositions have produced many disputes over control of the delta, from France’s conquest of Cochinchina to the American Invasion and the subsequent Cambodian-Vietnamese War. Beginning with mass migration following Vietnamese reunification under Communism, this paper reviews the trajectory of issues resulting in local migration in the delta. Namely, the mass exodus of civilians during the 1975 Vietnamese socialist transformation, the border contentions with the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s purging of the regional ethnic Vietnamese leading to Vietnam’s invasion of the Democratic Kampuchea in 1979. Along with the sociopolitical and military issues, the presentation will explore the delta's current climate change crisis, which has caused as many as one million farmers to flee the once abundantly arable land. The rising sea levels and mass-pollution have and will continue to cause profound implications for the livelihood of local civilians. Consequently, migratory struggles in the Mekong Delta require earnest attention as it has a dramatic impact on regional stability.
Unexpired: Race, Imperial Futurity, and Undocumented Korean Youth Temporality
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ga Young Chung
This paper considers how young undocumented Koreans in the U.S., uniquely positioned as a nearly invisible and undesirable model minority, engage with competing futures. Drawing on ethnographic research on their immigrant justice activism, I explore relations of power that reproduce the U.S. state’s imperial prosperity through the labor of young people of color. Undocumented youth temporality is a core theme of this project. In coining this term, I reference a captive state in which they are haunted by the past and constantly disparaged as an underclass undeserving of a stable future. In examining undocumented youth temporality, I theorize what I call imperial futurity, an oppressive system that sustains the prosperity of the U.S. and is predicated on white supremacist and settler colonial mentalities that trap undocumented youth of color in a liminal state. I explore these young people’s political reworking of imperial futurity into critiques of exclusionary citizenship, which have inspired creative and radical efforts to dismantle systems and launched a movement for collective liberation. Unexpired is timely, as this group has become a leading force in undocumented immigrant activism. A critical examination of their work and achievements is overdue.
Conceptualising ‘The Migrant Child': Reflections from Feminist, Post-structural and Posthuman Perspectives View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nicola Yelland, Kylie Smith, Sonja Arndt
This conceptual paper responds to contemporary concerns with research involving migrant children and childhoods in an Australian context. Migration is increasing across the world and researchers and teachers’ attention is being drawn to how we can best respond to the cultural wellbeing, identity and belonging of young children. Here, we ask the question: who is ‘the migrant child’? In our response, we disrupt expectations that are simplistic, homogeneous in views of children of migrant families or backgrounds, including confronting such notions as vulnerability, neediness and a deficit approach. Adopting a feminist, post-structural and posthuman theoretical framing we draw on Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze and Rosi Braidotti to argue for foregrounding the complexities regarding conceptions of migrant children’s powerful and agentic engagements. Potential ways in which ‘the migrant child’ is implicated by diverse social, environmental and political factors are considered. These include the variety of ways in which children might demonstrate their autonomy and participation. In Australia contemporary migration discussions remains clouded by policies such the overturned ‘White Australia’ policy and more recently, the so-called ‘boat turnbacks’. Australia simultaneously depends on migrant workers in many fields and celebrates what is superficially seen as ‘successful’ multiculturalism. These multiple perspectives offer a deeply concerning social and policy context for researchers. It is in this context that we raise questions and speculate towards potential conceptualisations of ‘the migrant child’ which recognise, rather than negate, the powers and insights arising from the child’s experiential, relational and deeply entangled onto-epistemological perspective/s.
