Short Abstract:
This panel looks into the production, dissemination and use of anthropological knowledge in voluntary migrant organisations. It probes the practicalities and morality of ideologically informed anthropological practice in addressing the immediate needs of the organisations and migrants alike.
Long Abstract:
Migration, diversity and integration are high on the agenda of policy-makers and voluntary organisations alike. As national sympathies, economic and political rights and privileges mix in the debates surrounding migration, it remains a highly contested and politicised area. Organisations working with and on behalf of migrants through such engagement place themselves on a specific side of the ideological barricade.
Anthropology on the other hand, has been determined to remain as politically or ideologically neutral as possible. Yet anthropologists assume professional positions in politically non-neutral organisations working on behalf of migrants where the anthropology they 'do' is explicitly harnessed towards achieving politicised goals. How do, therefore, anthropologists reconcile their inculcated commitment to value-free thinking with the need to position their work in support of migrants' interests and in opposition to the world-views represented by other agents such as state institutions or the host society's values? What tactics help anthropologists negotiate the rigour of 'academic anthropology' based on prolonged ethnographic research and the need for tuning it to the requirements of a temporal immediacy of the migrants' lives? Is such 'humanitarian anthropology' possible? Finally, what are the risks related to the interpretation, dissemination and use of ethnographic knowledge in the working context of migrant-focused organisations, and what is the scope of the anthropological responsibility for the end results of the actions taken on the basis of the knowledge produced?
This panel welcomes contributions from anthropologists working 'on migration' within and without academia. Paper-based talks, visual presentations, demonstrations, and other formats are welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1
How have community development approaches aided our understanding of "community building" for newly arrived Portuguese migrant workers in Great Yarmouth?
Robert Gregory
(Great Yarmouth Borough Council)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropological inquiry has helped to better formulate a more nuanced approach to the migrant worker experience in Great Yarmouth, UK. Initially forming part of a masters dissertation, this paper provides a practical appreciation of the migrant worker experience in a semi-urban British setting.
Paper long abstract:
Since their arrival in the early 2000s the influx of Portuguese migrant workers to Great Yarmouth has heralded a significant re-constitution in the demographic makeup of the town. Early community development responses initiated both through local public and voluntary sector structures have sought to engage, involve and empower the newly arrived 'Portuguese community' to moiblise and integrate into the wider social, cultural and economic life of the town.
In this paper I argue that by reducing the impact of migration to the need to integrate bounded communities into a wider social arena we ignore the very complexity of re-negotiating identity between migrant workers. By drawing upon a short period of ethnographic research and reflecting on wider theoretical debates around migration I will suggest that concepts of belonging and communal solidarity are constantly re-negotiated between Portuguese-speaking migrants in the town. Questions of home, affiliation and belonging offered through anthropological inquiry will suggest that community development responses to date have overlooked the intricacies of the migrant experience. This highlights an urgent need for government and non-government workers to reconfigure their understanding of "community" to respond far more succinctly to concepts of association and social networks as they are created and understood by these new arrivals to the town.
Social work and anthropology: Moroccan female immigrants in Spain
Theresa Thao Pham
(University of Maryland)
Paper short abstract:
Access to government assistance is paramount to the survival of Moroccan female immigrants in Spain. This paper addresses the value negotiation between anthropology and social work and is drawn from the volunteer effort of an anthropologist functioning as a social worker in Madrid.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropology's history has ties to colonial projects, and anthropology today still has association with the ruling bodies. The case cannot be any truer than in Spain where non-governmental organizations do not exist since all organizations have to register with the local government and funding is also funneled through them. Nevertheless, new immigrants with scant social network in Spain often approach civic organizations for resettlement assistance. For Moroccan immigrant women, access to government assistance is paramount to their survival in Spain. Advocating for these women is the core job of social workers while providing cultural insights into their predicament is the heart of applied anthropology. This paper addresses the value-conflict between anthropology and social work at a Spanish-Moroccan civic organization in Madrid. This presentation is drawn from my volunteer effort as a social worker with access and cultural knowledge of the Moroccan immigrant community in Madrid. Since I have conducted long-term research on the Moroccan community, particularly with Moroccan female immigrants, I have access to in-depth cultural and personal information that other social workers do not have. I frequently have to weigh my ethical stance as an anthropologist with the obligation to share privileged information during staff meetings. Sometimes the sharing of information benefits the immigrants while other times it jeopardizes their access to resources.
Dilemmas and contributions of anthropologists working for migrants in violent contexts
Isabel González Enríquez
(U.N.E.D.)
Paper short abstract:
This paper is the result of my personal experience working as an anthropologist for the UNHCR with forced migrants during a year in Bogotá, Colombia. I realized how anthropologists can be useful intermediaries between voluntary migrant organisations and the migrant community.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is the result of my personal experience working for the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) with forced migrants in Bogotá. I carried out a research on the government assistance programs for displaced families in order to improve them.
There are around 3 million people who have been forcefully displaced from their homes as a direct or indirect consequence of the armed conflict in Colombia. Threats, human rights violations, forced recruitment and armed confrontations have pushed millions of people, into moving to major cities in search for opportunities or state help which often isn't received or isn't enough. In Bogotà, as the city that receives the most of both displaced and economic migrants, they don't encounter any type of basic service so they are forced to relocate illegally and manually construct temporary shelters that have become shanty towns on the outskirts of Bogotà. Armed groups continue to operate in these neighborhoods. The implications of violence in the fieldwork process of anthropologists depend on considering them as academic researchers or as social workers. Dealing with this ambiguity is one of the main challenges applied anthropology workers have to face day after day. But it could be also, from my personal point of view, one of their main strengths and unique contributions to voluntary migrant organizations.
The union of these two perspectives turns the anthropologist into an useful intermediary between voluntary migrant organisations and the migrant community itself, and could enrich the academic contributions of these anthropologists too.
A gendered post-screening discussion of Maasai migrants
Peter Biella
(San Francisco State University)
Paper short abstract:
Films produced through a collaboration with Maasai-led and other NGOs are screened in Maasai regions throughout Tanzania. The purpose is to prompt viewers to engage in important - though otherwise rare and uncomfortable - conversations about poverty, migration, and sexual practices
Paper long abstract:
I begin the session with short excerpts from Maasai Migrants, a film produced to 'trigger,' in rural audiences, dialog about HIV and the dangers of city life. I will then show Longido Homestead which depicts rural viewers responding to a screening. At first, only male elders speak, restricting the discussion to a minor theme, the pessimism of returning migrants. Also, at first, only one old woman speaks, and she echoes the men's words. Traditional Maasai culture is highly segregated by gender, and so we ask the men to leave. Immediately, young women take up the film's primary theme, the spread of HIV transmission in rural areas by returning migrants. The young women not only dissect the film's key issue - HIV - that their husbands were unwilling to consider, but also correct misconceptions that older women hold about the disease. Maasai Migrants is most successful as a trigger for beneficial conversation when the traditional gender hierarchy is avoided by separating female viewers from their husbands.
Making space for dialogue and critical reflection through work with diverse stakeholders on migration
Rebecca Kay
(Glasgow University)
Moya Flynn
(University of Glasgow)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the process of designing a research project to engage critically with and facilitate dialogue between a variety of stakeholders, who do not share a singular discursive or strategic approach to questions surrounding migration and settlement in Scotland.
Paper long abstract:
The proposed paper is unusual in that it explores plans for and design of a project which will not begin until September 2012. This ESRC-funded study aims to explore perspectives and experiences of 'social security' amongst migrants from Central Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union in Scotland and to examine the impacts of these on their longer term intentions and opportunities for settlement. The project will incorporate close collaboration with and participatory action research amongst both migrant associations and a range of third and public sector service providers and policy makers. As such the paper explores the process of developing and designing a research project to engage critically with a variety of stakeholders, who do not share a singular discursive or strategic approach to questions surrounding migration and settlement in Scotland.
An incremental, phased approach to the research including both a range of qualitative methods and the gradual development of increasingly participatory and action focused research [PAR] is designed to facilitate the building up of relationships of trust and to encourage increasingly active engagement of migrants and other research participants in the investigation. Rather than compromising the academic rigour of anthropological study, the project applies an extensive research design in order to provide facilitated spaces for dialogue and critical reflection, bringing together participants who are frequently politically 'opposed' as a starting point for action. Nonetheless, the need to develop and maintain credibility and trust amongst these diverse partners will certainly throw up challenges to the research.
Film screening
Shamia Sandles
Paper short abstract:
Subject to Change: A Freirian Case-Study in Applied Visual Anthropology, directed by Shamia Sandles.
Paper long abstract:
It is a film that documents the history of a participatory action research project. In 2008, Tanzanian NGOs and visual anthropologists collaborated to produce an action research film, Maasai Migrants. Maasai Migrants' collaborative film script design was influenced by Freire's theory of conscienzation, while its screenings adopted the model of facilitated group discussions. Subject to Change documents the challenges and successes we encountered producing and screening Maasai Migrants.
This film offers a behind-the-scene experience of collaboration, conscienzation and film screenings for those who wish to use visual anthropology as an applied tool. It illustrates some unexpected obstacles we experienced as participatory action researchers, including the reluctance of our Tanzanian collaborators to promote sexual education or how to formulate the role of a post-screening facilitator. We met difficulties justifying to our Maasai collaborators the use of documentary film vignettes as educative tools. We also found that the location of where we choose to screen the film had a huge impact on the quality of post-screening discussion.
Subject to Change can be a useful tool to help students understand some of the challenges that are part of any participatory action research. In between vignettes documenting the different stages of researching, producing and screening Maasai Migrants, there is commentary discussing some theoretical implications of what was happening. As an educative tool, this film can be watched in its entirety without interruption, or separated by the different vignettes.
Subject to Change: strengths and struggles of using film to empower urban Maasai migrants
Shamia Sandles
Paper short abstract:
Subject to Change is film that documents how film was used to educate and empower disenfranchised Maasai migrants in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This session will concentrate on the successes and challenges of using post-screening discussions to provoke the audience to take action to help themselves.
Paper long abstract:
Subject to Change is a student film that demonstrates how visual anthropology was used to educate and empower disenfranchised Maasai migrants in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It chronologically documents the production of Maasai Migrants, an action research film made in collaboration between American anthropologists, a Tanzanian Maasai-focused NGO, and members of the Maasai migrant community. Conflict, uncertainty, misunderstanding, and revelation are highlighted in clips of meetings between the film's stakeholders. However, the most revealing clips of Subject to Change are from facilitated post-screening discussions with audiences of Maasai migrants.
This sesssion will concentrate on how the venues and facilitators of these post-screening discussions impacted the audiences' ability to find a meaningful connection to the film. Subject to Change focuses on three different facilitated post-screening discussions with urban Maasai migrants in Tanzania. The first two screenings, one at a church and the other at a school, were held in Dar es Salaam. The third screening was held at a rural homestead. I will screen clips of urban Maasai speaking about their personal experience in each of these venues. I will then examine the different successes and challenges we faced using film to encourage Maasai migrants in Dar es Salaam to reflect on what actions they need to take to improve their situation.
Migrant workers against institutions
Francisco M. Arqueros
(ESIC Business and Marketing School, Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
NGOs working with migrant workers tend to develop interests that depart from those of the people that they represent. "Insider ethnographies" can highlight this contradiction and contribute to efforts to empower migrant workers. However, they also can 'damage' the reputation of these organisations.
Paper long abstract:
As social institutions, NGOs working with migrant workers, like trade unions, tend to develop interests that depart from those of the workers or members that they represent. This is reflected in the contradiction between "institutional efficiency" and "popular power".
"Insider ethnographies" by anthropologists working with NGOs can highlight this contradiction and contribute to efforts to empower migrant workers. However, they also can damage, in the eyes of representatives from NGOs, the reputation of these organisations and their staff.
This paper describes and analyses the campaign of an Irish NGO between 2006 and 2008 to empower migrant workers in the Irish Mushroom Industry. Mushroom workers did not elect any of those who became their representatives. They had felt powerless in relation to their employers, and normally could only assent, accept and consent. Trade unions also looked distant to them. The NGO working with them achieved important results for the workers (for example in terms of getting back wages), but on their behalf. The Mushroom Workers Support Group created by this NGO was not workers' led as it was claimed.
A critique is made in this paper, not to negate some of the very good work that has been done by this NGO but to make a contribution to the body of knowledge that already exists to help the struggles of the powerless. This paper also deals with the contradiction between the activist and the academic when anthropologists following an "action research" methodology represent both roles.
Anthropological knowledge and advocacy to help migrants
Vijay Prakash Sharma
(National Institute of Rural Development)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropological knowledge on migration needs to be shared with the policy makers because of lack of data, migration is largely invisible and ignored by them.
Paper long abstract:
Internal mobility is critical to the livelihoods of many people, especially tribal people, socially deprived groups and people from resource-poor areas.There is a large gap between the insights from macro data and those from field studies.What data are available attest to the substantial and growing scale of internal seasonal migration. In one district of the rice-producing belt of West Bengal, the flow of seasonal migrants, drawn from tribals, Muslims and low castes, exceeds 500,000 people. Migrants are disadvantaged as labourers and labour laws dealing with them are weakly implemented.
Poor migrants have very little bargaining power. Most migrant labourers are also employed in the unorganised sector, where the lack of regulation compounds their vulnerability. They are largely ignored by government and NGO programmes.
This paper discusses how anthropological knowledge can be used to address the problems related to migration in conjunction with the government and civil society in order to build a strong government and NGO foundation and to aid government planning. This will help the government and civil societies to introduce new strategies for control of illegal migration. A case study from Indian state will be discussed for replication elsewhere.
Women and intercultural cities in Catalonia
Marta Burgos Gonzalez
(University Autonoma De Madrid)
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to address a question of how NGOs and policy makers work with women in intercultural cities and how anthropological tools are used in this context. A Catalonian case is discussed as an example.
Paper long abstract:
The increase of diversity in contemporary cities has led to the emergence of a new kind of city: an intercultural city. According to the Council of Europe, the intercultural city uses diversity as a source of dynamism, innovation, creativity and growth, enabling people from different backgrounds to mix with each other, exchange ideas and interact. However, beyond such conceptualisation, a question that must be addressed is what concrete steps can be taken in order to build an intercultural city. In this paper, this is considered through an investigation of programs which work with women in so defined intercultural cities.
In the project discussed in this paper, six Catalonian cities defining themselves as intercultural have been selected and their intercultural programs studied. The results were supplemented by the interviews with managers and policy makers, who were able to shed light on issues which could not be sufficiently understood via the programs analysis. Finally, a series of indicators taking into account different variables were considered in order to establish what kinds of programs can be viable in the project of building an intercultural city working with women.
Gurdwaras and British Sikh identity: the role of anthropology (-ists) in social cohesion and diversity in a case study of London's Sikh youth
Gurbachan Jandu
Paper short abstract:
Can socio-cultural anthropology assist the Sikh temples understand their role, if any, in the formation of British Sikh identity and the complete participation of Sikh society in London's community? Will a participant ethnologist politicise the outcome? Can this be avoided, and should it be?
Paper long abstract:
In London today, Sikh youth are challenged by the concept of "super-diversity" in the formation of British Sikh identity and their full participation in civic activities. This paper reports on three months of field research based on interviews with 22 "emerging adults" aged 18-30. To this is added the interviews of 12 "transmitters" that consisted of older members of the Sikh community including the gurdwara's management. Participant observation was also used to study the activities of both groups.
This ethnographical study of the Sikh community by a participant observer devoped an innate reflexivity and became "results-driven". The perceived need to assist the Sikh youth in their identity negotiation reduced the "undetermined" nature of the anthropologist's role. This may indicate that a Sikh ethnography based on field research by a community member and trustee will need to seek extraneous stringency to maintain a dogma-free approach. However a pertinent question is, should it? There is a rich interaction between studying the institute, maintaining academic discipline and the altruistic need to ensure the migrant community is attaining its potential.
This paper explores this interaction and reports on the case study's successes and pitfalls in a bid to add to the anthropological study of Sikhs in Britain as post WWII migrants and as "generation 3.0".