The purpose of this paper is to engage theoretical displacement with the actual identifications of human displacement caused by dire circumstances of war and economic oppression…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to engage theoretical displacement with the actual identifications of human displacement caused by dire circumstances of war and economic oppression and environmental degradation as indicated in UNHCR Global Trends documents.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach includes a comparative analysis of the theoretics of dislocation through close reading, cultural and textual analysis.
Findings
Earlier forms of forced migration due to enslavement replay themselves in the current forms.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides the means for subsequent scholars to do the kinds of analyses which move from the theoretical to the practical.
Practical implications
The study can be a good research tool for practitioners in international relations.
Social implications
Scholars and activists of displacement, deportation, refugee status have additional material for their projects.
Originality/value
This study is the only one of its kind as it links the issues of African diaspora to the Mediterranean.
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This chapter examines the current incarnation of African literature as written by a younger generation, less concerned with writing back to the colonial empire, and more with…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter examines the current incarnation of African literature as written by a younger generation, less concerned with writing back to the colonial empire, and more with examining issues of migration and the consequences of living in diaspora. It contrasts the concerns and experiences of the older generation of African writers such as Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiongo with the current generation, especially Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Mukoma wa Ngugi.
Design/methodology/approach
It engages in literary and cultural analyses of selected texts, revealing how a range of current issues, such as women’s rights, are discussed therein.
Findings
A new generation of African writers, many having already been through the migratory experience before writing, are engaging a range of issues that are no longer identical to those concerning writers of the immediate colonial experience. Issues of sexuality, migration and post-independence challenges become prominently articulated.
Originality/value
Women’s rights were raised by an earlier generation of African women writers and are seen now not so much as radical positions but as assessments of how men and women are socialised. The ways in which people are encouraged or discouraged from articulating full equality as part of the larger critique of post-independence African states is a focus.
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Based on a performance of a conversation between my white mother and myself – her mixed race black daughter – the purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the complexity of the…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on a performance of a conversation between my white mother and myself – her mixed race black daughter – the purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the complexity of the intersection of migration, racism, sexism, disability, and class within the space and place of the dynamics of our relationship. “Migration” and “borders” metaphors explore the “in between space that is neither here nor there” addressing key issues such as “migratory subjectivity” or, in other words, the translation of the process of inclusion and exclusion across the borders of oppressive social constructions to the lived emotional experience of being a mother and a daughter.
Design/methodology/approach
I explore my lived experience as black woman raised by a white Mum. My decision to use intersectionality as a tool with which to explore my personal experiences was based on me finding it enabled me to fully engage with the freedom of exploration, without feeling the need to “fit” with what was expected, in other words to be free to be able to express the “[…] lived experience of a presumed ‘Other’ and to experience it viscerally” (Orbe and Boylorn, 2014, p. 15).
Findings
A truthful account to aid the understanding of the complexities faced in the lived experience of a white mother and her black daughter.
Research limitations/implications
This piece has no limitations, and contains far reaching implications for social work practice and research methods.
Practical implications
This piece is embedded in social education and can be used as a research tool for best practice in anti-racist, black feminist practice.
Social implications
Social implications include a potential impact on diverse communities, with relevance to community engagement, social work practice placements, and critical reflection, and also education of the young to help them understand their own journeys.
Originality/value
This is an original report of an evidence-based lived experience, integrating theory to practice.
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This paper grapples with a number of intersecting predicaments to frame a necropolitical question of who is allowed to inhabit and survive the locations of research, writing and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper grapples with a number of intersecting predicaments to frame a necropolitical question of who is allowed to inhabit and survive the locations of research, writing and the academy? Drawing on Lorde’s thinking about “historical amnesia” as an example of the mutually constitutive relationship between content and method, the purpose of this paper is to argue that putting a hypervigilant anti-racist remembering to work tells us that there is nothing contemporary about questions of: “why isn’t my professor black? And, why is my curriculum white?”.
Design/methodology/approach
The intersection of diverse theoretical frameworks demonstrate a transgression of disciplinary borders. This paper includes the use of conceptual frameworks such as the impossibility of hospitality, historical amnesia, habitation and location. The design of this piece also has detailed critical deconstructive discourse analysis of extracts from a published co-written chapter.
Findings
An ethic of research methodology must inhabit the aporia of the mutually constitutive relationship between method and content. Location is an intervention and method rather than a place to go or position.
Research limitations/implications
There is a need to inhabit the tension of implicated necropower relations in research and writing practices.
Practical implications
Practical implications include rethinking methodology and applications of black feminist theory to ethical issues of research and writing with specific reference to co-writing.
Social implications
There are social implications in regards to community engagement and political activism with refugees and asylum seekers.
Originality/value
This paper presents an examination of tension as methodology rather than methodology to resolve tensions based on deconstruction of issue of co-writing.
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Marisela Montenegro, Joan Pujol and Silvia Posocco
Contemporary governmentality combines biopolitical and necropolitical logics to establish social, political and physical borders that classify and stratify populations using…
Abstract
Purpose
Contemporary governmentality combines biopolitical and necropolitical logics to establish social, political and physical borders that classify and stratify populations using symbolic and material marks as, for example, nationality, gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, social class and/or disability. The social sciences have been prolific in the analysis of alterities and, in turn, implicated in the epistemologies and knowledge practices that underpin and sustain the multiplication of frontiers that define essential differences between populations. The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategy that analyze and subvert the logic of bordering inherent in the bio/necropolitical gaze. In different ways, this paper examines operations of delimitation and differentiation that contribute to monolithic definitions of subject and subjectivity.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors question border construction processes in terms of their static, homogenizing and exclusionary effects.
Findings
Instead of hierarchical stratification of populations, the papers in this special issue explore the possibilities of relationship and the conditions of such relationships. Who do we relate to? On which terms and conditions? With what purpose? In which ethical and political manner?
Originality/value
A critical understanding of the asymmetry in research practices makes visible how the researcher is legitimized to produce a representation of those researched, an interpretation of their words and actions without feedback or contribution to the specific context where the research has been carried out. Deconstructive and relational perspectives are put forward as critical strands that can set the basis of different approaches to research and social practice.