Paper short abstract:

This paper challenges the UK's under-discussed oppression of the British Empire through exploration of British Anglo-Indian place-making in South London - a marginalised community upholding a dual-identity within a country they were closely affiliated with, yet had never visited prior to migration.

Paper long abstract:

In post-Brexit Britain, discussions surrounding nationalism and belonging are at their peak. In 2016, UKIP campaigned "we want our country back", further suppressing the under-discussed imperialism of its country's history. I argue that partial lack of understanding concerning British multiculturalism today is due to this amnesia that exists towards the oppression of the British Empire, and as a result, those people who are products of colonialism. This paper is an attempt to challenge that amnesia by discussing ongoing ethnographic research exploring British Anglo-Indian place-making in South London - a community upholding a dual-identity within a country they were closely affiliated with, yet had never visited prior to migration. Hailing from the Indian subcontinent during British colonial rule, Anglo-Indian came to describe those of mixed European and Indian descent, though loyalty was towards their European upbringing: Western names, Western clothes, English mother tongue. Upon dissolution of the British Raj, many Anglo-Indians left for the UK, feeling a stronger affiliation. However, their reception was not what they expected. "Too British" in India yet "too Indian" in Britain; today many still feel like an in-between. Due to the difficult-to-place, ambiguous nature of Anglo-Indian identity, they have almost assimilated into invisibility in Britain. Ultimately, a mistaken identification results, aided by the lack of common knowledge surrounding Anglo-Indian upbringing and little discussion concerning British colonialism. The paper is accompanied by a visual ethnography of this ageing community: Last Round of Jaldi Five.

Paper short abstract:

The objective of my research is to explore the intersection between memory and identity and to to identify the way in which the political, economic and social changes of the Communist period were reflected in the ethnic and religious identity structure of the Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia.

Paper long abstract:

My research is part of a direction regarding the current situation of the Turkish Muslim Roma in the national states from the Balkans, created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and it is putting forward the description of a Muslim Roma Turkish-speaking community in a post-socialist city in the south-eastern part of Dobruja (Romania), Medgidia (Mecidiye).

The specific objective of the research is to explore the intersection between memory and identity and to attempt to identify the way in which the political, economic and social changes of the Communist period were reflected in the ethnic and religious identity structure of the Turkish Muslim Roma community of Medgidia. Exploring the memory of communism, life histories led our research towards the perspective of nostalgia, understood as a type of memory, a re-creation of the past that goes beyond the mere recovery, reaching political, ideological, socio-economic and personal dimensions related also to the present needs and to desires of the future.

The research demonstrates that during the communist period the industrialisation and urbanisation processes and the rural-urban migration phenomenon has led in the case of Turkish Muslim Roma in Medgidia to a distance from ethnic and religious identity and to an attachment for the social identity focused around their membership to the working class which defined their role in the society, offered them financial security and dignity from their point of view. Their main concerns during the communist period were mobility, adaptation and integration in the socialist society.

Paper short abstract:

Contemporary Wales is a unique post-colonial society given its historical experience of being both colonized and a colonizer. Drawing on my ethnographic study of banter in a post-industrial town in south Wales, this paper illuminates how this legacy of entangled dominant/marginalized power dynamics is enacted in everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary Wales is a unique post-colonial society given its historical experience both as England’s first colony in 1282 and a junior partner in the British imperial enterprise. On the one hand, the Welsh experience of social and spatial marginalization,

impressed upon it by English colonization, has been exacerbated over the years by varying forms of economic and cultural exploitation, most recently through the devastating impact of deindustrialization. On the other hand, the participation of Wales in the British colonial domination of “non-white” colonies enabled south Wales to become one of the centers of the industrial revolution throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This paper draws on my ethnographic study of banter in a post-industrial town in south Wales in order to illuminate how this legacy of entangled dominant/marginalized power dynamics is variously enacted in everyday contemporary life. In attending to the ambiguous functions of banter -- an intersubjective practice of intense back and forth teasing variously described by my interlocutors as “affectionate abuse” and “on the edge of jocular and nasty” -- I analyze how banter enables inclusionary and exclusionary communal dynamics by serving to both naturalize and denaturalize social hierarchies and inequalities. Furthermore, I analyze how heightened polarization in post-industrial, post-colonial south Wales, brought to the fore by Brexit’s protracted “Leave vs. Remain” divide, is underpinned by a “modern banter war” fuelled by two opposed sides with conflicting views on where and when affectionate banter crosses the line into abusive bigotry.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the memory constellations created by the free or forced migrations that have accompanied European colonial empires' expansion, demise and aftermath. It considers seemingly disparate migrant groups in an effort to assess the connectedness of post(colonial) memories.

Paper long abstract:

Colonialism and decolonization had important consequences with respect to migration, which extend to today's migrations from the previous colonial world. This is not only a national and empire specific phenomenon, but one with supra-local dynamics and global effects, which include forms of transnational connection, changing conceptualizations of community, and discrete memory cultures that outlast the formal end of empires (De l'Etoile 2008). In line with Rothberg's concept of Multidirectional Memory (2009) this paper is interested in the intersections of memory, migration and postcolonialism and questions what new constellations of remembrance are produced through the uneven encounter between different migrant populations that have moved in the course of European colonial empires' expansion, demise and aftermath. These migrant groups occupy a shared space, marked by an experience of unsettling created by colonial relations. Also, their respective collective memories are conscripted by a postcolonial "aphasia" (Stoler 2011) related to the enduring and troubling legacies of the imperial past. Yet, although connected, this is a divided space characterized by power asymmetries and racial violence. Going beyond the container thinking that is present in the methodological nationalism implicit in Memory Studies, this paper intents to provide a "displaced angle" on the canons of cultural memory as a way of bulwarking (ethnocentric and racialized) national traditions in the face of postcolonial diversity, while at the same time acknowledging that the national as a framework for identity and memory-making is still a powerful one.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the genesis of 'tiers-exclus' from the colonial world and their ambiguous legacies, caught between several populations, histories and territories, through the case of the Europeans of Algeria.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the genesis of 'tiers-exclus' from the colonial world and their ambiguous legacies, caught between several populations, histories and territories, through the case of the Europeans of Algeria. These Europeans of Algeria represent a host of different groups, some of them with no common ancestry or territory apart from those forged in Algeria. On leaving Algeria they found themselves lumped together according to their links with the past and labeled Pieds-Noirs. Following decolonization, however, this unifying past became totally anachronistic and was regarded as morally indefensible.

This communication follows the thread of the matrix spaces of these Pieds-noirs, through the paths of memory and their multiple translations, over less than two centuries and a few generations, between several territories. I show how these populations were first defined as forms of 'nations within the nation' or subaltern groups associated with the colonial powers, then as exogenous elements once Algeria was on the path to independence, and finally as marginal and 'tiers-exclus' in the countries they moved to. How did this assimilation to an exogenous element, revealing a deficit of belonging that goes beyond inclusion in a nationality, remain so persistent? What does it tell us about the paths of integration and the non-formalized modalities of social recognition ? These questions lead me to focus on the logic of local inscription of these populations in order to grasp the fragility of the relations and conditions of belonging, seen here as a process and not as a status acquired forever.

Paper short abstract:

For the Greeks of Turkey, citizenship is not simply inert and formal but is also a lived and affective phenomenon through which they construct their sense of self and belonging. It is subject to agency, adaptation and manipulation, serving mutable and sometimes subversive functions in everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

Faced with discrimination on the basis of their ethnic/religious identity, the Greeks of Istanbul and Imbros left Turkey in droves in the years after 1955. Most resettled in Greece, where they received a lukewarm reception from a government and populace that viewed them with suspicion due to their Turkish birthplace. My research explores how the expatriated Greeks respond to this dual alienation by constructing a sense of belonging that enables them to be simultaneously included in, yet distinctive within, the Greek nation state. By drawing on the particularities of their own local heritages and memories of living in Turkey, the expatriates seek to demonstrate that they are not just legitimately Greek but particularly Greek; more Greek, even, than the Greeks of Greece. In this paper, I focus on expatriate experience of citizenship as a lived category. Some of the expatriates hold Greek citizenship, some Turkish. I demonstrate that their expressions of self and identity are altogether more complicated and malleable than the apparent fixity and exclusivity of citizenship status as prescribed by the state. Nevertheless, citizenship looms large in their experiences, in both pragmatic and affective dimensions. The acquisition, loss, and performance of citizenship - even the very materiality of identity documents - are intimately connected to expatriate efforts to navigate the everyday experience of migration and belonging. Whilst the significance of citizenship thus goes far beyond mere words on an official document, these formal aspects of citizenship are nevertheless a part of, not something apart from, the lived experience of citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how a sense of Italianness developed among Libyan Jews in colonial and postcolonial times; how it was mobilised to obtain Italian citizenship once they migrated to Italy in the late 1960s; and how it contributes to current debate on borders and boundaries in contemporary Italy.

Paper long abstract:

Between the 1940s and the 1970s, some five thousand Jews from Libya, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria settled in Italy and their arrival deeply affected, especially in demographic terms, the profile of the Jewish population of the country. As a whole, these migrations unveil the social and cultural entanglements between Europe and the Middle East and North Africa region and their long-lasting legacies as they emerge in the performances of memories and identities of the migrants.

The paper questions to which extent these migrations were a 'return home' for Jewish subjects who often perceived themselves as 'European' in their country of origin and yet became 'Easterner or Arab' in their country of destination. Which ruptures and/or continuities in terms of cultural affiliation and social and religious ties did they experience? How did they challenge the national belonging from the perspective of its margins?

The paper discusses in particular the case of Jews who arrived en masse from Libya to Italy during the summer 1967: I explore how a 'sense of Italianness' formed among Jews in Libya during the Italian colonial period and in the decades following its formal end; how this sense of belonging was mobilised to claim Italian citizenship after the emigration; finally, I argue that this case study represents a source of reflection to consider contemporary issues of borders and boundaries, human mobilities and right to citizenship in particular for the case of Italy which has one of the strictest legislations in Europe concerning citizenship.