Evelina Sironen: University of Jyväskylä: Resisting Occupation through Social Work Practice in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon
In my presentation, I will explore the dynamics of resistance and social work within a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, focusing on the roles social workers play in fostering community resilience and resisting occupation across borders. The presentation is based on my PhD project, conducted in a community center of a local NGO providing social services to marginalized people in the Palestinian camps and surrounding areas in Lebanon. These camps host marginalized populations, including refugees, migrant workers, and Lebanese, affected by occupation, wars, and the socio-political climate of Lebanon.
Over six months of ethnographic research, I followed the daily work of social workers during a time when war was being waged, and continues to be waged, in Gaza, and clashes between Hezbollah and Israel were occurring almost daily in southern Lebanon. The concept of “endings” in this context is multifaceted, encompassing both individual and collective transformations. How did the social workers challenge and resist settler colonialism and occupation in their daily work? How did they perceive their work as contributing to social change, justice, and resistance within the context of Palestinian camps in Lebanon?
I will address the creative ways social workers challenged and resisted settler colonialism in their daily work. By examining the interplay between resistance and social work, this research highlights the critical role of social workers in addressing immediate needs under precarious situations, while fostering long-term, sustainable endings in refugee contexts.
Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar, Migration Institute of Finland: Re-defining refugeehood and its possible endings? Experiences from people who navigate(d) refugeehood living in Finland.
What does refugeehood as an experience mean to different people who have navigated it? Does the experience of refugeehood ever end? If not, what contributes to ending it?
This presentation explores the experiences of various people who have lived in refugeehood. In particular, it raises their acts of resistance and their agencies by attending to their own (re-)definitions of refugeehood, their possible compliance with this term or outright refusal to use it. Further, it centers their accounts of what supports the agency and life of people navigating refugeehood, and what instead restricts them. Last but not least, it amplifies the solutions and strategies that these people create to deal with the restrictions imposed by refugeehood.
The presentation is based on the results of an ethnographic study that I have carried out in 2024 with people of various ages, nationalities, ethnicities, genders and legal statuses who have known refugeehood in the first person. My work is part of the project “Endings – Refuge, Time, and Space” (funded by the Kone Foundation).
Erna Bodström, Migration Institute of Finland: Legal resistance in ending the refugee status
This paper looks at legal resistance in ending the refugee status. Many scholars agree that the refugee status is not meant to be indefinite, yet until recently many states in Europe have primarily treated it as such in the name of integration. However, recently the states have turned their focus from providing stable and sustainable solutions to ‘reviving the Refugee Convention’s cessation provisions’ in what can even be seen as a the Return Turn (Schultz 2020). This makes the endings an increasingly topical issue.
Academic research has paid a great deal of attention to how refuge as a legal status begins as well as how the asylum determination processes are resisted by, for example, demonstrations. When it comes to endings of the said status, much of the research has concentrated on group-based decisions, for instance in the case of Rwanda. The Return Turn most likely indicates that an increasing number of decisions on endings will be made to individual refugees, yet research on this is scarce.
Ending of the refugee status is a legal-administrative process, and consequently much of the resistance to it is also legal. Therefore the current paper asks: how is the ending of the refugee status legally resisted? The paper answers this through analysing 200 decisions and related documents on terminating international protection status made by the Finnish Immigration Service in years 2015-22. By doing so, it contributes to the existing literature on both ending the refugee status and resistance in the refugee status determination at large.
Ahmed Zaidan, Migration Institute of Finland: Art: A Vital Tool for Activism
Art is a vital instrument for enacting change in societies, as it emanates from the essence of humanity, extending us into a realm where the impossible becomes possible. It transcends societal boundaries, stretching our resilience to new limits, and enabling us to incorporate the outcomes of our rapidly changing world into a broader understanding. Art operates as an instrumental tool of activism, empowering individuals to resist and fight, as it is the best means to ignite our senses and stir our emotions. Yet, revolution with no thought is like a torch of fire without light.
For this reason, I believe that art and science should go hand in hand, spanning the trek of activism and resistance. In our project “Endings: Refuge, Time and Space,” my poetry becomes activism, showcasing the humanitarian dimension of legal documents and their impact on recipients. Through this project, I hope to raise emotional awareness, encouraging people to feel the consequences of certain policies on specific groups within our society. I am eager to explore this dimension through my poetry at the ETMU Conference, where I will perform poems that capture the spirit of legal decisions: how a legal decision might appear when viewed from the other side–the humanitarian side.
My poems will express the emotional complexities that can arise from legal documents. Additionally, during my poetic presentation, I will briefly delve into the process of creating my art, emphasising the importance of merging research and art to form a vibrant and deeper horizon teeming with colours and opportunities, where art becomes the wings and science the compass, guiding us to unlock new dimensions as we navigate with the hope of reaching the shores of knowledge.
