The Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at UEL have just announced the following events for the 2010 Autumn semester:
Research Seminars:
Thursday 14 October: 2-5pm in room BS.3.04
“What’s happening in political asylum in 2010”?
Speaker: CMRB Visiting Fellow, Prof Carole Bohmer
Competing discourses of protection and control are predominant in present day asylum rhetoric. Satisfying these conflicting goals is impossible; states therefore must find a way to appear to meet both of these goals. How do they do it? This paper will attempt to answer that question and illustrate the sometimes absurd effects of this process, using the cases of the US and the UK which have been the focus of my research.
Wednesday 17 November: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10
"Blaming the victims - Sarkozy and the plight of the Roma".
Speaker: Dr Jim Wolfreys, Kings College London.
Wednesday 24 November: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10
“Muslim Women and Marriage in Trans-jurisdictional Contexts” Speaker: Dr Prakash Shah, Queen Mary, University of London How do immigration officials and judges manage when judging the validity of acts of marriage solemnisation, which take place on trans-jurisdictional terms? How do we explain their responses? These are some questions raised by this paper, which presents evidence gleaned from the writer’s own work as an ‘expert’ witness in immigration cases. Two case studies have been selected on the basis that the chief issue in contestation is the validity of a trans-jurisdictional marriage among South Asian Muslims, and therefore raise the issue of whether the marriages are valid according to Muslim law. The paper also raises some questions for future research, given that we know little as yet about how recognition of minority trans-jurisdictional marriages takes place across European legal systems and, in particular, the role of experts who get involved in the legal processes in which such marriages are contested.
Wednesday 1 December: 2-5pm in room EB.G.10
"Migrants and the security agenda: the global picture".
Speaker: Dr Khalid Koser, Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Imaging Migrants Seminar Series
Imaging Migrants seminar series is collaboration between the Centre for
Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB), and Matrix East
Research Lab (MERL).
Monday 15 November: 4.00-5.30pm, Matrix East Research Lab, EB.1.37
"Journeys of Identity and Place"
Speaker: Jill Daniels
I will explore the representation of identity and place in exile and loss in my documentary films Next Year in Lerin (2000) and Lost in Gainesville (2005). The subjects in Next Year in Lerin are Macedonians, who as children were taken without their mothers from northern Greece by the Greek Communist Party during the Greek civil war (1943-1948) and are not
allowed by the Greek State to return to Greece. In Lost in Gainesville subjects from the Mexican diaspora located in a small town in Georgia in the south of the US face racist hostility, leading to the geographical division of place. I will also reflect on the way film may be used in the debate around minoritarian discourse through the way Next Year in Lerin has been taken up by the Macedonian diaspora and Greek nationalists as a tool for political
debate on YouTube.
Monday 29 November 4.00-5.30 pm, Matrix East Research Lab, EB.1.37
Speaker: Agnieszka Piotrowska
Agnieszka Piotrowska is a BBC trained, award winning and highly acclaimed documentary maker, nominated three times for an EMMY as well as for BAFTA for her film about domestic violence (2000). She has been the winner of the Fred Wiseman Master Class Award in Dublin (2005 for her film The Bigamist) as well as receiving distinctions and prizes at other
festivals. Her film last summer The Best Job in the World (BBC1 2009) was the highest rating programme for the whole week across all channels. Her CUTTING EDGE for Channel 4 about domestic violence (2000) has been called a definitive piece on the subject and was nominated for BAFTA. Her recent work includes a highly acclaimed documentary about a co-dependent relationship between anorexic female twins: Trapped by Mytwin (A Cutting
Edge for Channel 4) and a film about women who fall in love with objects and not people: Married to the Eiffel Tower (2008) which has become a cult documentary all over the world. She will show us clips of her films and talk about migrating both internal and external.
Monday 6th December 4.00-530pm, Martix East Research Lab, EB.1.37
"Digitizing Palestinian refugee narratives"
Speaker: Dr John Nassari
This session will explore the role of multi-media interactive technologies in the representation of Palestinian life and history in refugee camps in Lebanon. The session will examine work I produced in 2007-2008 that presents refugee camps in 360-degree QuickTime panoramas. The viewer navigates from alleyways to alleyways to homes where three generations of Palestinian refugees tell their life histories. The session will explore
methodological challenges of representing refugee lives.
Monday 13 December: 4.00-5.30pm, Matrix East Research Lab, EB.1.37
"The Powerless Image."
Speaker: Dr Anat Pick
The post-Soviet films of Artur Aristakisyan include some of the most striking images of poverty and up-rootedness of recent cinema. These images, however, function neither as documentary evidence of nor even as a bearing witness to post-Soviet realities. Pitted against the revolutionary modernism of Vertov and Eisenstein, I read Aristakisyan's cinema as an articulation of a paradox at the heart of leftist emancipatory politics: the desire for justice as sovereignty without power.
Spring and Summer Events 2011
Full dates and details to follow. However, in the new-year there will be a
conference on ‘Secularism, Racism and Contemporary Politics of Belonging’, jointly organized with the Runnymede Trust. In addition, CMRB will be in collaboration with the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University, organizing a seminar series dealing with key conceptual issues in forced migration.
