Slide 1
Where were you?
Hard words for hard times languages and justice in a time of war
on refugees.
Alison Phipps, University of Glasgow
1
Lampadusa 2013:
Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? in that gray
vault. The sea. The seahas locked them up. The sea is History.
(Derek Walcott)
Australia and Boat PeopleBarat Ali Batoor
Silence & Vigils
Chronic humanitarian situation facing refugeesChronic situation
of well over 15 years.-UK dispersal policyUse of detention and
deportationSuccessvie Immigation ActsDevelopment of a culture of
disbeliefSystematic abuse of human rights in UK
Refugee Crisis2 Events (Badiou)
The change of heart by a politician and a country.
Aylan Kurdi image
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9kv-rmvGKg
(TM1.20)
Refugee Crisis responsesWe have RoomGlasgow sees SyriaTask
ForceResettlement (VPR) schemeLesvos/Calais AidMSFRefugee/EU/ UK
policy based on Australian Solutions
RefugeesDesignated as in need of special care under UN
convention, 1951.
Until status is granted there is no escape from the liminal
state and the danger it poses.
Categories of protection.
Refugee MigrationsTwo-thirds of the world's 61 million refugees
(2015) are living in developing countries. Many are living in large
refugee camps. (Source: UNHCR.) In 2012 Scotland hosted around
2,000 asylum seekers- a tiny proportion of the world's refugee
population, and around 10% of the total number of asylum seekers
making claims in the UK. (Source: UK Government, 2013.)
Contd/Asylum seekers make up less than 0.5% of the population of
Glasgow (where the vast majority of asylum seekers in Scotland
live). If all the refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland gathered
at Hampden stadium it would be less than 40% full. In Europe, in
2012 the UK ranked 11th in the European Union in terms of asylum
applicants per head of population. In terms of absolute numbers of
applications, France, Germany and Sweden all received more thanthe
UK. France and Germany both received almost three times more than
the UK. (Source: UK Government, 2013.)
Human Capital vs Human Lives
Lederach & Lederach Project-driven mentalities &
logistical sequencing of events for addressing change misses out on
the metaphors of lived experience.
Underlying Stories: Languages, justice & healing?
You are stingy with your language. You do not speak to us in the
street
Where were you?
The Churches: Ambivalence and Courage
Presence and AbsenceSt Andrews MaltaCaritasNight ShelterGosford
AnglicanBute
Where were you?
Hell exists and its Destitution/ Detention/ Deportation
Sharing the World: Crossing again
Meeting a stranger outside of our own boundaries is rather easy,
and even satisfies our aspirations, as long as we can return home
and appropriate between ourselves what we have in this way
discovered. To be forced to limit and change our home, or our way
of being at home, is much more difficult, especially without being
unfaithful to ourselves. (Irigarary, 113)
You have to Change your LifePractice of hospitalityLoss of an
innocenceChurch & CommunityConversion to the way of the
poor.Miracles, faith, hope.Justice not charity.
An Open Letter
Its War
Where were you?: GRAMNetPTC principlesEvents, networks,
projectsPolicy interventionsMediaArt
Singing Good-bye to Red Road
AHRC: Researching Multilingually at Borders
Languages as a social categoryLanguages under Pain and
Pressure.Troubling the cult of English/monolingually masked
research.
Languages and Creativity in the Pursuit of HealingLanguages as
data-bytes or languages as the primary facilitators of social
integration and healing.
Liturgies of welcome and prayer as an antedote to Babel
Multilingual DemocraciesTo the forces of monolingualism and
English-only policies the multilingual subject stands as a quixotic
figure.
A killjoy.
Sanctions. Deportations based on language (& gender)
A condition requiring artistry. And defiance.
Good English
How to become a multilingual DemocracyESOL provisionLanguage
deficit modelsLearn from International Relations and diplomacyStop
using languages as a proxy for diversity.Learn from multilingual
contests and places of pain and pressure.
Learning with Gaza
1 month later: Designing Arabic Training in GazaNazmi Al Masri
TEFL model/ AFL qualityEmployability/peace projectConflict and
Compassion are central concerns
Notes for ALison
Describe in brief the context of the project i.e. attempt to
create an SME out of an EU funded programme of reflection and
benchmarking from which Arabic training for language teachers for
work in online environments, but which was highly contextualised
and meeting those moved to compassion and humanitarian work.
Noticable points- Highest regard for EFL/ESOL programmes and in
a context of academic scarcity of articles and electricity/material
resources a desire to use Western CCC methods uncritically to
quickly establish a marketable product. Internationalisation linked
with Saudi and EU partners etc.Partnership working and the
insertion of critically framings both regarding digital resources
but also regarding the postcolonial context have allowed the
aspects of conflict and compassion and context to be brought front
and centreCreativity in response - sign language; alos Chomsky
classes.
IUG Multilingual campus: 6 languages English BrailleArabic sign
languageArt, Languages & technology designing gifts &
furniture by engineers & physically impaired people (Mosaic
Works, Arabesque work)
Gaza teaches back
Language and the Arts of Resistance
We Refugees: ArendtThe concomity of the European peoples went to
pieces, when, and because, it allowed its weakest member to be
excluded and persecuted. (p119).
AgambenIf in the system of the nation-state the refugee
represents such a disquieting element, it is above all because by
breaking up the identity between man and citizen, between nativity
and nationality, the refugee throws into crisis the original
fiction of sovereignty. (Agamben, Symposium, We Refugees p.117)
Where were you? What did you do?Reverential Contexts
(Sontag)Cultural actionsChanging language and languagesArtistryNew
theologies of hospitality.Prayer & Protest on the streetsAnd
the church?
The Academic Border Guard
Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body,
Law and the State
[email protected]@alison_phipps
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com
