Paper short abstract:

Although mobility is highly valued and aspired by anthropologists for their work, contemporary visa and residency regulation can act as career obstacles. My paper analyses mobility impediments faced by non-Australian anthropologists in Australia based on auto-ethnographic experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Mobility is a basic necessity for those who want to study others. Anthropologists have embraced temporary migration (ideally in should still spend 1 year in the field) as an essential ingredient of their methodological tool kit, ever since arm chair anthropology was denounced as insufficient and superficial. In order to keep mobile and thus be able to conduct ethnographic fieldwork, anthropologists also need time and funding, often more than other social scientists might require for similar studies. Time is limited due to teaching commitments and receiving grants is getting ever more competitive nowadays. So when the chance (funding and time) materializes, one has to make use of it.

However, there are additional obstacles to mobility for some anthropologists. For example, Muslim anthropologists have been blocked from attending conferences in the US. Moreover, anthropologists who happen to have a migrant background themselves face impediments to their mobility, such as having to meet the residency requirements for the visa they are on that allows them to work legally at a university that is in a country which is not their country of citizenship. For those who aspire to convert their precarious migratory status as a temporary resident into a permanent citizen, residency requirements make intense fieldwork impossible. Based on auto-ethnographic experiences I will analyze the mobility impediments faced by non-Australian anthropologists in Australia.

Paper short abstract:

Australian Jewish communities are home to many Israeli migrants, and have deep ties to Israel. Yet the value on Israeli culture is not extended to Israeli migrants into Australia, who are deemed foreign. I will examine the values placed by the Jewish community on migrant Israeli culture and people.

Paper long abstract:

Jewish communities worldwide are home to many Israeli migrants, who leave Israel over security concerns, religious and political differences, or in search of an easier standard of living. Australia has an Israeli expatriate population of over 15,000, 1/10th in Queensland.

In these Jewish communities, political and cultural ties to Israel are strong. They are staunchly Zionist in their politics and connected to Israel through tourism, family and philanthropy. Israeli culture has also been highly valued within Australian Jewish communities since the early days of multiculturalism. Israeli food is upheld as quintessentially Jewish, Israeli dance and music are embraced, and images of Israel are prominent in the visual rhetoric of Australian Jewish institutions.

However, this value is not extended to Israelis who migrate to Australia. Israelis are often cut off from the mainstream Jewish community, seen as exclusive and non-participatory by community members and leaders, denounced for their secular lifestyles and branded "complainers" and "freeloaders". Many Israeli migrants also experience poverty and integration issues over language and employment restrictions, yet lack the support from the Australian Jewish community previous waves of Jewish migrants were given.

In this paper, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Queensland to examine the differential values placed by members of the Australian Jewish community on migrant Israeli culture and people. I outline the prominence of Zionism and Israel in the identity, activities and material culture of Australian Jewish communities, and theorise the reasons behind the corresponding devaluation of Israeli migrants by their host communities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is a reflection on the values associated to refugee background women's entrepreneurship. In this paper I describe how refugee background women are coming up with their own solutions to livelihood issues and discuss the value entrepreneurship offers to refugee background women themselves.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a reflection on the values associated to refugee background women's entrepreneurship. Refugees are not chosen under the economic logic of migration and therefore are considered to be a separate category of migration. Refugees are chosen because of legal obligations following humanitarian logic and should therefore be considered according to the forced circumstances of their movement. Studies on refugee entrepreneurship are creating evidence that rather than representing a burden or threat to host societies, as sometimes political discourses may imply, refugees are likely to make positive contributions to the economic life of host countries. The multidisciplinary field of refugee studies is rather policy focused and place much emphasis on the value of refugees to host societies. Alternatively, in this paper, I discuss the value entrepreneurship offers to refugee background women themselves. I present the findings of my multi-sited ethnographic research with refugee background women's entrepreneurs in Brazil and in Australia. I describe how refugee background women are coming up with their own solutions to livelihood issues, especially through informal economy. I then argue that women's income generating practices contain political value and can be interpreted as everyday acts of defiance to integration policies prescriptions, hence, restoring value to refugee women's political and biographical lives.

Paper short abstract:

Here I will compare two large research projects on transnational movement between Australia and Brazil in order two show that movement may generate different kinds of symbolic and material value according to motivations and places of origin and arrival.

Paper long abstract:

Here I will compare two large research projects on transnational movement between Australia and Brazil in order two show that movement may generate different kinds of symbolic and material value according to motivations and places of origin and arrival. The first research project is the globalisation of a NRM headed by the Brazilian faith healer John of God. In this project, I followed Australians going to see John of God in Brazil in search of healing -- bodily, emotional, spiritual, of relationships, and the planet. Ultimately, their mobility is due to nostalgia for a pre-industrial world redolent of spirituality. The value of travelling is about connecting with the spiritual world, self-transformation, and turning back the clock - even if they do this using the latest technologies. The second project investigates the migration of young middle-class Brazilians to Australia. Since the early 21st century, they have arrived as international students in ever higher numbers (Brazil is among the top-five suppliers of students to Australia). Most are tertiary educated and enrol in English courses; many intend to migrate to this country. They travel in search of the opposite values. They seek the future: speaking English, becoming cosmopolitan, living in an industrialised society. In both cases, the value of mobility is deeply entwined with a power geometry in which the Global North is imagined as thoroughly industrialised and the site of the future, while the Global South lags behind as the site of the past in which all people are deeply spiritual.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I put into conversation the movements of one of my close refugee interlocutors from the field with my own movements to study anthropology and conduct research amongst refugees in Southeast Asia.

Paper long abstract:

Movement is foundational to the anthropological project of writing about 'them' for 'us'. The movement to the field has been challenged by broader mobility and the possibility to do fieldwork at home and online. In this paper I put into conversation my own movements to study anthropology and conduct research amongst refugees in Southeast Asia with the movements of one of my close interlocutors from the field. He is a former refugee who had to flee his homeland due to persecution and has been resettled. Much of our further mobility shares aspirations and opportunities afforded by movement over staying. Through case studies and personal reflection I attempt to theorise the value we attach to our moves and how people's hopes, values and the politics of containment and movement collide.

Paper short abstract:

Tibetan experiences of diasporic mobility and intercultural encounters are examinable through transactional relations that position Tibetan subjects as recipients of White/Western support. Patron-client moral economies can configure Anthropologists' work into valued labour for Tibetan communities.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational migration is recognised by Tibetan diasporic subjects as facilitating various mobilities, encompassing possibilities for social, economic, cultural and political advancement. The role of patron-client relationships in mediating mobilities is an important field of enquiry in Tibetan Studies and Anthropology of Tibet. Rooted in historic traditions, contemporary sponsorship of individuals and institutions generates opportunities for education, support for monks' and nuns' spiritual practice, preservation of cultural traditions, and political advancements towards national autonomy. The "value of value" in this context is framed through both Buddhist ethics and secular norms, enabling varied interpretations of what constitutes patronage by Tibetans, potential sponsors (who are usually White/Western) and researchers. However, researchers' positionality within this system of value exchange is rarely explicitly considered.

This paper situates research practice as labour within a moral economy of Tibetan patronage, examined through the researcher's geographic immobility and positionality as a white, educated, middle-class woman. Unable to obtain research permits for fieldwork abroad, the expanding Tibetan diaspora in Australia provides opportunities for engagement with local Tibetan communities. The research examined fields of encounter through which intercultural exchange is made possible. The findings reveal that acceptance of the researcher's presence may be mediated via what they can do with and for the community, signifying conversion of research activity into a productive means for advancing the community's agenda. Therefore, this paper demonstrates multifaceted understandings of how research activities constitute affective, moral and visibility labour as a means of generating knowledge about Tibetan culture, people and political agendas.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses migration stories from Christians in suburban Melbourne. It describes three multicultural churches and explores the faith-ful way in which my participants think about ethnicity and migration, and how these migrants recreate a sense of home in a new environment.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses everyday multiculturalism in Christian churches in suburban Melbourne. It focuses on how migrants recreate a sense of home in a new church setting. In particular, it explores how they prioritise the values they bring with them and open themselves up to new values through the migration process.

Social science exhibits a tendency to limit studies to a particular ethnic group as a convenient way of limiting scope, which reinforces the assumption that ethnicity is people's primary organising principle. This is confounded by denominational commitment among migrants and the ensuing multicultural congregations this commitment can result in. In contrast, my project is a local Australian ethnography, not one oriented to people of a particular ethnic background.

I participated in worship at three churches in Preston, a middle ring suburb in the north of Melbourne; a multicultural Catholic congregation that worshiped in English, a multicultural Seventh-day Adventist congregation that worshiped in English, and an Arabic Baptist church that worshiped in Arabic and was home to people from a range of countries but mostly Iraq and Egypt. This project describes these multicultural churches and the intertwined lives and loves of people from different cultural backgrounds is uncommon in the literature. I consider the faith-full way in which my participants think about ethnicity and migration. While not always explicitly theologised, this tendency reflects a deeply-embedded 'theological disposition' that results from Christian liturgical formation. The effect of such formation raises tantalising questions about the moral valuation of the migration experience.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines shifting regimes of value in a British child migration project to colonial Rhodesia. Focusing on shifts in affective state processes at specific political moments, the paper explores historically contextualized transformations in ideas of hope, value and future

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines a British child migration scheme - a project which sent and resettled select, white children from the UK to Southern Rhodesia between 1946 and 1962 - as an example for analyzing shifting regimes of value related to late colonial child migration. Regarded as "Imperial investments", the children were emigrated with the intention that their movement would both enable a better future for themselves, and secure the continuity and improvement of the racially segregated colonial regime. Considering migration as a symbol and an enactment of hope and faith in the future, as well as an act of despair and loss in the present (Pine 2014), the paper examines how ideas of hope, value and imaginings of future transform over the course of time. Locating the migrant children's histories into broader social and political formations and value regimes of which they are part, I focus on shifts in affective state processes at two specific historical moments and political contexts. I first consider the political and moral values at play in rationalizing and motivating the migration project as it was launched in the aftermath of the Second World War. Secondly, I examine the shifts in conceptions of what is good and morally desirable in a society at the moment of public denunciation of child migration in a state apology in 2010. From being represented as the embodiments of imperial hope and futurity, the child migrants are now depicted as symbols of loss and victims of failed and misguided state policies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the status of movement and migration in anthropological research. Making the role of movement and migration within multi-sited fieldwork explicit can have important methodological advantages as it helps clarify the comparative dimensions of ethnographic practice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the paradoxical role of movement and migration in anthropological practice. On the one hand, travel appears central to the discipline's methodology in the sense that fieldwork presupposes spatial movement to our field sites. Yet, the discipline's methodical arsenal remains wedded to notions of sedentary epistemologies: the "field" and participant observation require anthropologists to "be there", thereby privileging bounded Malinowskian slowness. At the same time, anthropological practice is also thought of as a comparative method which necessitates juxtaposing spatially dispersed social worlds. Hence, moving between cultural and social milieus enables anthropology's comparative method. However, comparative analysis typically either takes the form of contrasting textual material, or vacillating between "the field" and the production of texts "at home". This leaves the value of movement and migration ambiguous in terms of their methodological profit within ethnographic work. Drawing on my research on cross-border migration and migration governance this paper reflects on the vague and ambiguous status of movement and migration in anthropological research and the methodological possibilities and constraints they pose for our discipline. The paper suggests that making the role of movement and migration within multi-sited fieldwork explicit can have important methodological advantages as it helps clarify the comparative dimensions of ethnographic practice.