Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how displaced peoples use arts in three contexts to better understand the cultural impacts of migration, the creativity and entrepreneurial initiatives of “refugees,” and what structural systems are needed to better address migrants’ well-being and cultural sustainability.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the strategic use of the arts (music, dance, visual arts, poetry, and photography) by displaced peoples in three very different contexts in order to better understand the cultural impacts of migration, the creativity and entrepreneurial initiatives of “refugees,” and what structural systems are needed to better address migrants’ well-being and cultural sustainability. It draws from my ethnographic research with Syrian migrants in Turkey, Uyghur refugees in France, and Burundian, Rwandan, and Congolese people living in the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi. The project is centered on efforts by refugees who have landed temporarily or permanently to use arts to promote something positive within their own migrant communities or within the larger social context in which they find themselves. It thus offers counternarratives to the pervasive negative rhetoric about refugees by emphasizing strength, initiative, joy, and community, while bringing into relief the complex and very real challenges of forced migration. It also highlights that institutional support too often neglects the cultural dimensions of trauma and displacement, thereby missing a critical means of understanding the needs and potential of displaced peoples. In this short presentation, I offer one example from each country to illustrate how “vernacular artistic expression has been used as a way to address current problems and confront personal and societal trauma,” while offering a nuanced and complex perspective on the “refugee crisis” from hyper-local to global perspectives.