Chairs: Ilaria Tucci and Eeva Puumala
Discussant: Angel Iglesias Ortiz
This combined film session and panel discussion focuses on the conference themes “Solidarity, participation, and politics” in the context of forced displacement. The session will address the role of experiential knowledge and visual media in evoking discussion and affective relations to the complex political themes of solidarity and participation – and also the politics of exclusion both at Europe’s borders and within our societies.
Through the films, we want to illustrate the multiple struggles and chances that are involved in seeking refuge and finding places for oneself in the receiving society. We will show how transnational and mutual solidarities create in-between spaces of intercultural integration at the individual and collective levels. Furthermore, we will discuss social paradoxes that are not often taken into consideration or recognised. These paradoxes include the relation between social worlds and privileges that have to do with unequal economic and power structures and that have very concrete effects.
The film session will be followed by a panel discussion where refugees, asylum seekers, activists, researchers and artists engage in discussion. The purpose of the panel is to think about the possibilities and challenges of including experience-based knowledge into the debates around migration and ethnic relations. What is the value of visuality in evoking affective horizons that illustrate the multiple struggles that are enacted in migrants’ lives? How do we disseminate these kinds of projects? In times full of hate and racism, how do we get empathetically to a wider audience? When we speak about participatory approaches and/or giving the voices to refugees and asylum seekers, which kind of ethical issues and practical challenges are we facing? What are the common responsibilities in sharing individual and collective stories about people on the move?