HUMAN JOURNEYS IN THE GLOBAL ERA · Dangerous Journeys: Harm and the Vulnerability of Migrants and...

HUMAN JOURNEYS IN THE GLOBAL ERA PERTH | WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST 20181

HUMAN JOURNEYSIN THE GLOBAL ERA

The purpose of this one-day interdisciplinary workshop is to explore, from multiple perspectives, the movement of people across borders that is a characteristic of today’s hyper-mobile world. In the context of global networked activity and unprecedented levels of forced and voluntary mobility and migration, there is a need to consider the impacts of today’s fluid populations and permeable national boundaries on people’s culture, personal and national identity, citizenship and security. The workshop will explore the themes of multiculturalism, refugees, colonialism, the relationship between migration, development and the environment, and how human journeys can be expressed through mediums such as art, film and literature. In doing so, the workshop will provide opportunities for considering issues such as race, gender, human rights and inequality in the context of specific historical and contemporary human journeys. The program includes a guest public lecture by Prof. Jeffrey Schnapp (Harvard University) on the profound impact of the digital revolution on research across all disciplines. This event is part of a national series of workshops sponsored by the Australian National Commission for UNESCO, Australia-Germany Joint Research Cooperation Scheme (UA/DAAD), Australian National Maritime Museum, Edith Cowan University Centre for Global Issues, and the ANU Centre for European Studies Jean Monnet Network on Migration and Integration.

PERTH WORKSHOP BORDER CROSSINGSCONVENOR Dr Jamal Barnes, Edith Cowan University

DATE Wednesday 22 August 2018

VENUE Building 17, Room 17.103, Edith Cowan University, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley WA 6050

Australian National Commissionfor UNESCO

United NationsEducational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization

C-GlobalEdith Cowan Centre

for Global Issues

@cglobal_ECU #humanjourneys

www.ecu.edu.au/global-issues


TIME PRESENTATIONS VENUE8:30-9:00am Registration Building 17,

Room 17.103

9:00-9:15am Introduction Building 17, Room 17.103

9:15-10:15am PANEL 1: MIGRATION JOURNEYS Chair: Professor Paul Arthur, Edith Cowan University

International Law’s Changing Relationship with Migration Dr Fiona McGaughey, University of Western Australia

5 ½ Myths about International Migration Dr Christopher Parsons, University of Western Australia

The Psychological Impact of Environmental Decline and its Role in Migration Decisions Dr Zoe Leviston, Edith Cowan University

Building 17, Room 17.103

10:15-10:40am Morning Tea Building 17, Room 17.103

10:40-11:40am PANEL 2: HUMAN JOURNEYS THROUGH FILM, LITERATURE AND MEMORY Chair: Professor Beate Neumeier, University of Cologne, Germany

‘the passage was both like dying and like being born’ – Human Journeys and Literary Counter-Narratives in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Randa Abdel Fattah’s The Lines We Cross (2017) David Kern, University of Cologne, Germany

Verlander: The Dutch Diaspora into the Indian Ocean Region from 1595 – 2018 Dr Nonja Peters, Curtin University

Missing Boats: ‘Boat people’ in Asian-Australian Filmmaking Dr Victoria Herche, University of Cologne, Germany


11:40-12:30pm Lunch Building 17, Room 17.103

12:45-1:45pm PUBLIC LECTURE:

Knowledge Design Professor Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard University, USA


2:00-3:00pm PANEL 3: THE POLITICS OF BORDERS AND HOSPITALITY Chair: Professor Alfred Hornung, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Dangerous Journeys: Harm and the Vulnerability of Migrants and Refugees in International Society Dr Jamal Barnes, Edith Cowan University

Politics and Punishment: The Impacts of ‘Stop the Boats’ on People Seeking Asylum in Australia Dr Lisa Hartley, Curtin University


3:00pm Discussion and workshop close (Afternoon Tea provided) Building 17, Room 17.103

PROGRAM


ABSTRACTSPANEL 1: MIGRATION JOURNEYS

International Law’s Changing Relationship with Migration Dr Fiona McGaughey, University of Western Australia

In an increasingly globalised world with mass migration, we often look to international law to provide solutions for international peace and security and for the protection of people’s human rights. Yet, the primary actors in, and subjects of, international law have traditionally been states, not people. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia established the principle of state sovereignty, which remains integral to our international legal system today. This principle though has implications for migration, including the migration of vulnerable populations such as asylum seekers. It was only post World War II that international law began to engage in a concrete way with the questions of migration and human rights.

This paper will discuss the current developments in international law with reference to migration. It will set the context with regard to movements of people and the international legal framework, reflecting on how Australia and other states respond to this international legal framework. Using examples from the United Nations system, the strengths and weaknesses of international law will be discussed. It will conclude that civil society plays an essential role in holding states to account on their international legal obligations.

5 ½ Myths about International Migration Dr Christopher Parsons, University of Western Australia

International migration is an increasingly topical subject matter and a central theme of many recent elections worldwide. Despite the importance of international migration for both sending and receiving countries (as well as the migrants themselves) however, a number of misconceptions persist in the public eye. In this presentation I will discuss five and a half of these common myths, namely: the myth of the migrant masses, the myth of the invading hordes (affecting labour markets), the myth that we do not need unskilled labour, the myth that barriers keep immigrants out (and the perverse consequences), the myth that development in migrants’ origins will lower emigration and finally the (partial) myth of the Brain Drain.

The Psychological Impact of Environmental Decline and Its Role in Migration Decisions Dr Zoe Leviston, Edith Cowan University

Humans are often deeply attached to place. We often derive meaning through the built and social worlds we inhabit, but our natural environment also profoundly shapes our sense of belonging, our spirituality, and our identity. This attachment to our natural environment is functional. Ecosystems provide us with basic living necessities – shelter, food, and clean water for instance – but they also nourish us in less obvious ways, providing us with a place to recreate, promoting mental wellbeing, and conferring on us a sense of mastery and control over familiar environments. What happens to us when our natural environment declines, and what impact does this decline have on decisions to migrate away from home? A growing body of research explores the role of environmental decline in changes to our psychological state. Concepts such as ‘place attachment’ and ‘solastalgia’ (a sense of human distress induced by environmental decline) underscore the importance of human-environment connections, but there is more to be learnt about how these connections constrain and compel people’s decisions to migrate or stay. I will discuss how the psychological impacts of environmental disruption on human-environment connections might i) act as a barrier to adaptive migration; ii) prompt migration under conditions of intolerable loss; iii) influence where people migrate to; and iv) influence the attitudes of potential host communities toward people fleeing environmental collapse.


PANEL 2: HUMAN JOURNEYS THROUGH FILM, LITERATURE AND MEMORY

‘the passage was both like dying and like being born’ – Human Journeys and Literary Counter-Narratives in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Randa Abdel Fattah’s The Lines We Cross (2017) David Kern, University of Cologne, Germany

Arguably, human journeys across national and, markedly, ideological borders in recent years, have caused a media and policy war over who is and who is not welcome in this imaginative space called ‘the Global West.’ Movements of migration from zones of conflict, especially to Western Europe and Australia, then, are a trigger for much-needed reflection on the largely undertheorized affective politics of multiculturalism and the ‘right to belong.’

I will address how migration and human journeys from zones of conflict to ‘safe countries’ have been taken up in recent works of narrative fiction: which images of moving across and passing between borders under precarious conditions are sketched, and why is it that people leave their homes in the first place? Literature, I argue, is in the unique position to offer answers and visions in the process of interpreting a global present, and that the capacity to critically re-visit the premises of our thinking about a global future is decisive for its very possibility to happen in the first place.

In discussing Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Randa Abdel Fattah’s latest novel The Lines We Cross (2017), I contend that literature generates direly-needed counter-narratives about ‘mass migration,’ ‘refugees,’ and ‘floods’ of foreigners ‘invading’ national economies. These texts call into question the affective-ideological foundations of political decision making – foregrounding human experiences and new ways of thinking towards a philosophy of global belonging. I ultimately argue that literary practice thus constitutes a profound act of political-cultural activism and intervention in its resistance to inhumanity, and in writing hence exposing the ‘refugee crisis’ as a humanitarian crisis of silence and absence.

Verlander: The Dutch Diaspora into the Indian Ocean Region from 1595 – 2018 Dr Nonja Peters, Curtin University

Astronomer Carl Sagan reminds us that [although], ‘We cannot... see or touch “time” however, we can, see its “effects”’. Vêrlander is an exhibition about the ‘effect’ felt today – four centuries later – of two centuries of trading behaviour, by the Dutch East India Company (Vereeinigde Oost-Indische Compagnie - VOC) on the ‘sense of place, identity and belonging’ of indigenous minority groups on three continents: South Africa, Australia and Indonesia. We ethnographically narrate the story of this impact with reference to personal accounts, archival documentation and portraits.

This period of unparalleled riches was when the Netherlands established, virtually unhindered, the most powerful fleet of ships – worldwide – to pursue the lucrative East Indies spice trade. This wealth, in turn, generated the economic, technological, scientific and socio-cultural developments the Dutch call the ‘Golden Age’. This was the catalyst, for the period of vast Colonial expansionism that followed. World War II’s end saw the demise of colonialism, followed by a period of mass migration to Australia from various parts of Europe, which included 135,000 Dutch.

None of the groups in this book have ever met, nor do they know about each other. Yet, each of them have, or are, reinventing a sense of self and group identity that harks back to a past Dutch presence in their region, to distinguish themselves from other indigenous groups. This was by way of Dutch names, marital behaviour (endogamy) and items of dress, beliefs or language.

A desire to understand these phenomena motivated our research. The main question we sought to answer was – ‘to what extent,’ if any, was it possible to link the behaviours of the Eurasians, Africans and Aboriginals we isolated, to Dutchness of sorts or Dutch origins? In essence, the Stockholm Syndrome provides a kind of reference point. Identified in 1973, it observes how an emotional attachment to a captor, can be formed by a hostage as a result of continuous stress, dependence, and a need to cooperate for survival.


ABSTRACTSMissing Boats: ‘Boat people’ in Asian-Australian Filmmaking Dr Victoria Herche, University of Cologne, Germany

In cinematic accounts of the plight of asylum seekers, the image of the boat usually functions as a metonym for the bodies on the boat that are rarely shown. In particular the Vietnamese refugee experience is inevitably linked to the indistinct notion of ‘boat people’. In this context this paper would like to discuss contemporary Asian-Australian films on refugees and the filmmakers’ decision to literally erase the visual iconography of the boat. In reference to Probyn’s concept of the ‘no road’ film genre, the film Mother Fish (Khoa Do, 2010) will hence be analysed as a ‘no boat’ film.

Despite telling a personal (loosely autobiographical) story of the agonising journey of four Vietnamese refugees drifting to Australia in an unseaworthy riverboat in 1980, Mother Fish is strongly referring to recent political debates on asylum seekers. This drama, having induced little academic reception in comparison to other recent Australian films addressing migration, recreates the refugee’s journey entirely within the setting of a sweatshop as a memory of Kim, with the boat and ocean visually missing. Instead of depicting the action of the physical movement on the sea, the film depicts the personal, inward and traumatic journey of one refugee. In accordance with Olivia Khoo, it could be said that this cinematic decision achieves a greater imaginative investment and empathy by the spectator. It can further be argued that the film’s approach emphasizes the dialectical relationship between the spectator’s and the refugee’s gaze (Loshitzky). By its enforced inward-looking the film returns and decolonizes the gaze of ‘otherness’ (Bhabha) and thereby destabilizes the subjectivities of observer and observed.

GUEST PUBLIC LECTURE

Knowledge Design Professor Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard University, USA

The phrase ‘knowledge design’ describes the situation that animates much advanced work in the digital arts and humanities: the fact that the form that knowledge assumes can no longer be considered a given. The tools of humanistic inquiry have become as much objects of research and experimentation as have modes of dissemination. Statistical methods press against one edge of the qualitative human sciences; graphic, information, and experience design press up against another. Laboratories arise with a team-based ethos, embracing a triangulation of arts practice, critique, and outreach, merging research, pedagogy, publication, creative and curatorial practice. The once firm boundary line between libraries, museums, archives, galleries, and the classroom grows porous as scholarship, no longer bound to its traditional print-based home, moves back and forth between library stacks, public-facing spaces, and the streets. My talk will provide an overall exploration of this situation and single out some domains of experimentation: data portraiture, the re-mediation of print, participatory pedagogies, bridges across the analog/digital divide, and the redesign of learning spaces from classrooms to libraries to museums.

PANEL 3: THE POLITICS OF BORDERS AND HOSPITALITY

Dangerous Journeys: Harm and the Vulnerability of Migrants and Refugees in International Society Dr Jamal Barnes, Edith Cowan University

The world is currently facing its worst refugee humanitarian crisis since World War II. As people flee violence and harm, they are also becoming victim to further exploitation, violence and torture. This can include refugees being kidnapped and beaten by non-state actors, kept in cruel and inhumane detention facilities, or extradited back to their home countries where they can become further victim to torture or even death. The aim of this presentation is to show that the vulnerability to harm that refugees and migrants face in their journeys is not inevitable, but rather a product of how international norms, laws and state policies have been constructed. Drawing upon contemporary examples of migration and refugee crises, I argue that focusing on how vulnerability is constructed and distributed can shed important light on how state policies and international frameworks are complicit in harm to migrants and refugees and the moral responsibilities that come with this distribution of vulnerability.


Politics and Punishment: The Impacts of ‘Stop the Boats’ on People Seeking Asylum in Australia Dr Lisa Hartley, Curtin University

Across Europe, anti-immigration political leaders have been turning to Australia for inspiration on how to curtail the movement of people seeking asylum in their countries. Among political elite responses to Europe’s challenges in early 2015 was a call from the former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott for European leaders to adopt an ‘Australian-style’ approach to the issue, which includes turning back asylum seeker boats on route to Australia. While European leaders have not fully embraced Abbott’s rhetoric, the response to the movement of people has been marked by a continued emphasis on tough border security and the language of ‘saving lives’. In this presentation, I will critically analyse the language of ‘saving lives’ by ‘stopping the boats’ through the lens of the lived experience: I will seek to examine what Australia’s border-protection policies mean for people trying to seek protection in Australia. I will then make a few reflections on how the issue of asylum seekers arriving by boat has been framed by Australian Governments and suggest ways of moving past this by focusing on agency and the lived experience.

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ABSTRACTS


The Edith Cowan Centre for Global Issues (C-Global) focuses on the delivery of high-impact research to solve world challenges in partnership with international organisations and researchers. C-Global organises and sponsors

workshops, conferences and exchanges, hosts visitors and profiles ECU research in international forums.

C-GlobalEdith Cowan Centre

for Global Issues

HUMAN JOURNEYS IN THE GLOBAL ERA · Dangerous Journeys: Harm and the Vulnerability of Migrants and...

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