The Migrant Archive

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Marie Gillespie - The Migrant Archive: Chronicling Religious and Spiritual Experiences during The Pandemic 2020-23

This presentation focusses on Covid Chronicles from the Margins – a digital, participatory, community-based archive project the main purpose of which was to provide a platform for marginalised migrant to document their experiences of the pandemic using the creative affordances of smartphones. The archive was co-produced by asylum and refugees with community organisations, academics and artists. It was launched during the first lockdown in the UK in March 2020 and ran for three years until June 2023. Covid Chronicles is analysed as a ‘migrant archive’ focussing on what it tells us about the value and meanings of religious and spiritual practices during the pandemic for migrants whose voices are often not heard in public life. Like other vulnerable groups, asylum-seekers and undocumented groups suffered disproportionately from the impact of Covid and pandemic restrictions as well as from the long-term impact of the UK’s hostile environment for migrant policies. The archive provided a socially engaged means of collectively documenting to worsening inequalities. At the same time, it bears witness to the strengthening of existing solidarities and the creation of new kinds of connectivity at a time of existential crisis. The presentation explains how it evolved from a highly localised to a transnational project, how it generated transversal dialogues among contributors, and provided a means of challenging the hostile environments experienced by many migrants across the world through artful and creative forms of resistance that nurtured a politics of hope. A﻿bout the speaker: <a href="https://www.open.ac.uk/people/mg2642" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://www.open.ac.uk/people/mg2642 </a>Online Lecture Series for 2023-24: Resisting the Hostile Environment
The Language, Literature and Politics Research Group will host 10 one-hour online talks on ‘Resisting the Hostile Environment’. The context for this lecture series was created in May 2012, when Britain’s Home Secretary, Theresa May, declared in an interview: ‘The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration .... What we don’t want is a situation where people think that they can come here and overstay because they&#x27;re able to access everything they need’. From different disciplinary perspectives, the speakers in this series address how the state’s efforts to foster a hostile environment for asylum-seekers and refugees in Britain has been enforced, managed, negotiated, and resisted.
F﻿ind out more about the Language, Literature and Politics Research Group here: <a href="https://fass.open.ac.uk/research/groups/llp" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://fass.open.ac.uk/research/groups/llp</a>

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