Thurs 24 Jan 2013, 16.00 - 17.30

CRCEES seminar room at 8 Lilybank Gardens

"Making space for dialogue and critical reflection through work with diverse stakeholders on migration"

Prof. Rebecca Kay and Dr Moya Flynn, CRCEES, University of Glasgow

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.  It is based on the ESRC-funded study that 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. 

Wed 30 Jan 2013, 17.30 - 19.00 

CRCEES seminar room at 8 Lilybank Gardens

"Struggles for movement, new forms of disconnect. Roma migrations from Central Eastern Europe to Great Britain"

Dr Jan Grill, University of Manchester 

West Coast/ GRAMNet joint event

Based on a long-term anthropological fieldwork among one network of Roma/Gypsy migrants from Slovakia, this paper explores their struggles for viability on migratory pathways in urban areas of Great Britain.  Following the accession of new member states to EU in 2004, many Slovakian Roma migrated to Britain in search of a ‘better life.’  The paper starts by ethnographically unpacking what does this striving for betterment mean, how is it imagined and what the key tropes through which Roma experience these movements are.  I show how migration to Britain crystallised as one possible avenue for socio-economic and existential mobility among Roma living in conditions of growing inequalities, unemployment and poverty in eastern Slovakia.  By analysing social trajectories of migrants the paper shows how unequally distributed social connections and other forms of capital translate differentially into degrees of success and failures in migration.  The paper illustrates how recent Roma migrations re-configured some of the established hierarchies, inequalities and dependencies embedded within the conditions of marginality, but how the migration dynamics simultaneously accentuated new forms of disconnect and abject among those who do not migrate or those who return from their migrations more impoverished.  The talk also reflects on the uncritical assumptions often made in relation to Roma/Gypsy migrations to Western Europe. 

Wed 13 Feb 2013, 16.00 - 17.00

Room Seminar Room 355 Main Building, University of Glasgow

"What the hell has Philosophy got to do with peace and justice for Palestine?"

Mr Keith Hammond, University of Glasgow 

Philosophy has traditionally been associated with the practice of democracy.  Not necessarily representational democracy, but democracy as a public space that invites in everyone's words.  A number of contemporary and especially women philosophers have explored this idea in recent years.  It was the kind of idea that Gayatri Chaveavorty Spivak asked many years ago with: Can the Subaltern Speak?
I will look at this paper with a view to Palestine.  I will say we must at least, attempt to draw out the implications of this paper.  It is not just a paper that is read and placed on one side.  For people who think democracy is incomplete without the voice of people like the Palestinians, the paper says there a lot of work to be done on our democracy.  I will talk about current work being done on Lifelong Learning in Palestine. 

Thurs 28 Feb 2013, 16.00 - 17.30 

CRCEES seminar room at 8 Lilybank Gardens 

"Translation and Asylum Claims: Matters of law, language and silence"

Ms Sarah Craigh, University of Glasgow

The asylum decision-making process involves translation and interpretation and raises issues about the reliability of the interpretation provided, and of the language tools that are used when decision-makers communicate with applicants and make decisions about the validity of their claims. GRAMnet members are currently pursuing an AHRC funded project, which aims to explain some of the issues of miscommunication and silence, which arise.  This seminar will explore some of those issues. 

Wed 13 March 2013, 16.00 - 17.30

Room TBC

"Its more than just language: Understanding the intersections that shape health care for migrants"

Prof. Kate O’Donnell, Institute of Health & Wellbeing, University of Glasgow

Providing health care for new, and established, migrant populations is a key challenge for the NHS across the UK. Much attention has focussed on the provision of interpreters and finding ways of supporting language, but this is only one part of the picture.  Drawing on a programme of completed and on-going work taking place in both Scotland and the EU, I will discuss some of the key issues and challenges that need to be acknowledged and addressed, particularly within primary care. 

Wed 27  March 2013, 16.00 - 17.30

Sir Charles Wilson Basement seminar rooms

"Deportation, non-deportability and precarious lives: Undocumented migrant children and families in contemporary Britain"

Dr Nando Sigona, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford

An estimated 120,000 undocumented migrant children live in the UK.  A large majority of these are either born in the country or migrated here at an early age.  These children were brought up in the UK, educated in British schools and many speak English as their main language. 

Successive British governments have provided undocumented migrant children with some entitlement to public services.  However, contradictory and frequently changing rules and regulations, cuts to public spending, and broader reforms in the provision of public services mean that even when legal provisions still exist, access to public services has become limited in practice, which can lead to destitution and social exclusion.  This paper argues that current policies are producing a generation of disenfranchised youth, non-deportable and yet excluded from citizenship. 

Wed 10 April 2013, 16.00 - 17.30  

Forehall, Main Building

"In-work poverty of ethnic minority and migrant workers: challenges and solutions"

Dr Filip Sosenko, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Do informal workplace cultures and employer attitudes pose a challenge to progression into better paid positions for low-paid employees with different ethnic identities?  The paper will present findings from a recent UK-wide research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.  The presentation will be followed by a theory- and policy-focused discussion.

Wed 17 April 2013, 16.00 - 17.00 

Sir Charles Wilson Basement seminar rooms

"Cultivating spaces of intercultural experiment through drama"

Ms Katja Frimberger, University of Glasgow

In this talk I will discuss the potential of drama, especially Brechtian actor training methods, for intercultural education research.  Drawing on critical (intercultural) pedagogy and Brechtian theory and practice, I outline the pedagogical and ethical arguments that underpin my approach. Conceptualizing the research space as an intercultural space of experiment - in which ‘contested’ community is built by researcher and participants - data, findings and representations are seen as becoming within this context of mutual, embodied engagement.

Giving examples from my PhD project, which explored international students’ experiences of strangeness within a weekly drama workshop, I show how relationship-building became an organizing principle for my research and lead to a process-oriented research focus.  I further discuss how Brechtian methods created spaces for ‘emplaced knowing’ in which meaning was negotiated through participants’ embodied engagement in the drama.

The data that evolved from such intercultural space of experiment was thus ‘embodied’, ‘poetic’ and often linguistically elusive. As a consequence, it couldn’t be easily abstracted into an academic, explanatory model on ‘international students’ strangeness experiences. It allowed however for tentative representations with metaphoric gaps and a glimpse into the radically embodied and in flux-nature of intercultural being.