Open the door, put down your suitcase, take off your coat, let the outside world fade away. This is where it begins. A room that you can start to call a home. A room to breathe. Room to Breathe is an immersive exhibition inviting you to discover stories from generations of new arrivals to Britain. Journey …
Tag: identity
List of novels on migration (2020s)
Below is a gathered list of novels from the 2020s that touch upon themes of migration. We Are Not from Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez 2020 Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy 2020 What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad 2021 Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move by Nanjala Nyabola 2021
List of novels on migration (2010s)
Below is a gathered list of novels from the 2010s that touch upon themes of migration. Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda 2010 Girls in Translation by Jean Kwok 2010 The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom 2010 The Free World by David Bezmozgis 2011 Open City by Teju Cole 2011 Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix …
List of novels on migration (2000s)
Below is a gathered list of novels from the 2000s that touch upon themes of migration. The Vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi 2000 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 2002 Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber 2003 Rodzina by Karen Cushman 2003 The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich 2003 The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri 2003 …
List of novels on migration (1990s)
Below is a gathered list of novels from the 1990s that touch upon themes of migration. Ruby by Rosa Guy 1991 The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur 1991 Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia 1992 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler 1993 Reef by Romesh Gunesekera 1995 When Fox is …
A Road to Oxford (2020)
After escaping from Syria in 2018, the English literature teacher Rawan has found his new home in Oxford, UK. In this short movie, he takes us around the city, reflecting on the physical and emotional journey that brought him there. “On my second day in Oxford,” he explains “I took a walk in the city …
Manus (2019)
This very poetic film offers an unedited insight into the hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers captivated offshore by the Australian Federal Government on Manus Island. Thanks to the starkness of its black and white shots, this multi-award-winning documentary focuses very intimately on the people, so that we can hear their stories directly.
The Chinese Exclusion Act – PBS (2018)
Directed by Ric Burns, The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first legislation that prevented an entire ethnic group from migrating to the U.S. Steeplechase’s documentary “The Chinese Exclusion Act” tells the story within the context of 19th century Chinese immigration to America. The film aired on PBS, and the producers explain that the Chinese Exclusion …
Children of Syria (2016)
Some 6.7 million people — more than a quarter of the global refugee population — have fled brutal violence in Syria, the report said. This documentary chronicles the stories of some of the youngest. Filmed over three years, it follows four Syrian children from their struggle to survive the siege of Aleppo by President Bashar …
The Good Postman (2016)
Directed by Tonislav Hristov, this film follows Ivan, the local postman in a quiet Bulgarian community on the Turkish border, as he decides to run for mayor. He then campaigns to bring the aging village to life by welcoming refugees. Some in the community support Ivan, while others resist his campaign. The film highlights the …
Minari (2020)
MINARI by Lee Isaac Chung, USA 2020: A Korean American family moves to an Arkansas farm in search of its own American dream. Amidst the challenges of this new life in the strange and rugged Ozarks, they discover the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home. (Taken from Youtube)
Richard Blanco: How to Love a Country
The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging — personal and communal. The most recent — and very resonant — question he’s asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? Read more…
Immigrant Art: A new perspective on the U.S. melting pot
By Guillermina Zabala Guillermina Zabala is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose art examines the intersection between the individual and their social-political-cultural environment. Her works have been exhibited in museums and art galleries in Los Angeles, New York, Texas, Miami, and San Francisco; and internationally in Germany, Latin America and Spain. She is a second …
Article: Emilie Cheyroux, Immigrant consumption and cultural visibility in documentary films by and about Latinos (2018)
Abstract: “This article analyzes two short documentaries showed at Cine Las Americas International Film Festival (Austin, Texas) and the way they discuss the symbolic meaning as well as the implications of consumption for U.S. Latinos at the personal, social, cultural, and economic levels. Shopping to Belong (Irene Sosa, 2007) insists on the performance Latinos put on in order to …
Phones are now indispensable for refugees
SOMETIMES Hekmatullah, a 32-year-old Afghan, has to choose between food and connectivity. “I need to stay in touch with my wife back home,” he says, sitting in a grubby tent in the Oinofyta migrant camp, near Athens. Because Wi-Fi rarely works there, he has to buy mobile-phone credit. And that means he and his fellow …
The refugee crisis captured in haunting detail using infrared cameras
The Irish artist spent two years capturing the journeys of migrants into Europe using the camera, which can detect a human body from 30km and identify an individual from 6.3km. As the equipment is subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, Mosse hired lawyers to obtain an export document for each trip. “The camera was designed …
List of academic conferences on migration (2016-2017)
2016–17 “MIGRATION AND COMMUNICATION FLOWS: RETHINKING BORDERS, CONFLICT AND IDENTITY THROUGH THE DIGITAL” November 2-3 2017 – Bilbao, Spain “We are faced with a crisis of humanity, and the only exit from this crisis is to recognize our growing interdependence as a species and to find new ways to live together in solidarity and cooperation, …
List of academic conferences on migration (2013-2015)
2015 “MIGRATION, MEDIA AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE,” 25-26 NOVEMBER 2015, UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY, BARCELONA “TRANSIENT MIGRATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC: IDENTITIES, SOCIAL NETWORKS AND MEDIA,” 12 NOVEMBER 2015, RMIT UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE “MANAGING BORDERS,” 3-4 APRIL 2015, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK “GENDER, CULTURE & MIGRATION,” 6-7 MARCH 2015, UNIVERSITY OF GDANSK, POLAND 2014 “DETERMINANTS OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION,” 23–25 …
List of academic articles on migration (1981 to 2016)
2011-2016 Scott Blinder and William L. Allen. “Constructing Immigrants: Portrayals of Migrant Groups in British National Newspapers, 2010–2012.” International Migration Review. Spring 2016. Shepard, Mark. “Minor Urbanism: Everyday Entanglements of Technology and Urban Life”Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 2013 (v 27, no. 4), 483 – 494 BECK, Ulrich AND DANIEL LEVY, “COSMOPOLITANIZED NATIONS: RE-IMAGINING COLLECTIVITY IN WORLD RISK …
List of academic books on migration (1890s to 2012)
2011-12 CELIK, IPEK A. IN PERMANENT CRISIS: ETHNICITY IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN MEDIA AND CINEMA. ANN ARBOR: UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS, 2015. MARTIN, Susan. A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012. MOORE, KERRY, BERNHARD GROSS AND TERRY THREADGOLD. EDS. MIGRATIONS AND THE MEDIA. NY: PETER LANG, 2012. JONES, Amelia. SEEING DIFFERENTLY: A HISTORY AND THEORY OF IDENTIFICATION AND THE VISUAL …
Article: George Lipsitz, The Meaning of Memory (1986)
American Studies scholar George Lipsitz’s article The Meaning of Memory: Family, Class, and Ethnicity in Early Network Television Programs (1986) examines how the “historical specificity of early network television programs led their creators into dangerous ideological terrain”. “The presence of this subgenre of ethnic, working-class situation comedies on television network schedules seems to run contrary …
Article: Edward Said, Between Worlds (1998)
Edward Said makes sense of his life. “The day in early September 1951 when my mother and father deposited me at the gates of that school and then immediately left for the Middle East was probably the most miserable of my life.” https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n09/edward-said/between-worlds
Jesse Chun’s ‘On Paper’
On Paper: Visual Artist Jesse Chun explores visual rhetoric involved in identity and mobility through an appropriation and transformation of the familiar marks contained in immigration documents. On Paper was shown from July until October 2016 at the Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York City. Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Jesse Chun explores interdependencies between aspects of identity, …
Comic: Myanmar’s Rohingya Refugees
Author/illustrator Erik Thurman is an award-nominated creator who specializes in long-form comics journalism and nonfiction comics about current events. On August 1st, 2016, the political comics/cartoons website The Nib published his comic on the Myanmar Rohingya refugee crisis, which can be read in full here.
Emigration Museum in Gdynia, Poland
“The history of departures from the Polish lands is hundreds of years old. People traveled to different parts of the world for sustenance, in search of freedom, or for a different life. After Poland regained its independence, this situation remained unchanged. The journey was tackled on foot, by rail, aboard ships or – later – …
The Value of Knitting for an Afghan Refugee
The short documentary Stitches is the story of a man who finds peace in knitting —after establishing a life in exile as an Afghan refugee during the Soviet–Afghan War. The subject is the filmmaker Abdullah Abo Jassin’s uncle, who writes, “His story connects in a way with all what my family has been through over …
Syrian Refugees Recreate Destroyed Monuments to Always Remember Their Culturally Rich Architecture
“From a vantage point here in Za’atari, a group of Syrian artists have taken it upon themselves to recreate miniature models of the monuments that have been ruined. In efforts to combat the feelings of outrage and helplessness, these painstaking recreations serve as an act of defiance. The original sites may be have been destroyed, …
Architecture and Migration: Mosques in Germany
The earliest mosque-style building in Germany is the “Red Mosque” at Schwetzingen, built in 1779-1791 by a French architct for the Prince Elector of the Palatinate as part of a palace complex. Built at a time when the “Turkish” style was fashionable in Germany, it was never intended for prayer but later served religious purposes …
Songs of the Syrian Refugees
“With his brow furrowed in concentration, Abu Abdullah rhythmically strums his oud, exploring the core of a melancholic melody. Mohamad Isa Almaziodi’s robust and melismatic voice soars above, full of emotional ornamentation – sighing and repeating, rising and falling – until he runs out of breath and the phrase is forced to finish. In his …
Marvel Comics’ secret weapon is a woman named Sana Amanat
On the last day of New York Comic Con, Sana Amanat begins the annual Women of Marvel panel with what is now a yearly tradition. “How many of you want to make comics? Women, men, everybody — stand up right now,” she says. Young girls dressed as superheroes — there’s Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, Thor, and …
Greece’s Cemetery for Unknown Migrant Dead
From Reuters: “The marble plaques in this makeshift cemetery on the Greek island of Lesbos mark the graves of unknown refugees and migrants. Many of the those buried here were from the Middle East — all of them drowned in the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe’s shores. Their headstones bear no names … mute …
America and Australia Rooms
America and Australia Rooms Institute of Migration, Finland Permanent Collection “America Room: What made people to move across the Atlantic Ocean? What was it like to travel a hundred years ago? What was life like in the new home country? What is Finnish American identity today? Completely renewed exhibition about Finns in America shows off the …
A Migrant’s Tale
From the artist’s website: “In 2008 I was carrying out fieldwork among a group of Egyptian immigrants in Milano, Italy, as part of my MA dissertation. There was a strong visual component to this research, and I took many photographs that I kept showing to my subjects and friends. With one of them, Osama el-Sayed, I …
Shelbyville Multimedia: New Neighbors Give Thanks
“Shelbyville Multimedia introduces you to the cast of Welcome to Shelbyville, a handful of straight-talking people in rural Tennessee who are taking immigration into their own hands – by welcoming newcomers. Developed by Active Voice, Shelbyville Multimedia is a platform to promote community-building and harmony between native-born Americans, immigrants and refugees nationwide. Many of its …
Stories from a Vanished Homeland
Interactive learning resource: Language of Belonging (2010)
Language of Belonging is a multi-platform education resource based on the ground breaking Indigenous animation Wadu Matyidi. Designed specifically for Primary-aged students, this diverse learning program explores Adnyamathanha language, culture, stories and traditions, encouraging students to develop their own portfolio and cultural understanding. This is an interactive game, based on the Wadu Matyidi animation, exploring the language and …
Pidgin, patois, slang, dialect, creole — English has more forms than you might expect
There are probably as many terms for different kinds of English vernacular as there are vernaculars themselves: pidgin, patois, slang, creole dialect and so on. [From Public Radio International] CLICK HERE to listen.
A Sri Lankan Girl Living in Lebanon Isn’t Really a Citizen of Either Country
Rainey is 13, her hair is tied back in a long ponytail. One of her favorite foods is tabbouleh, served on top of rice. She was born in Lebanon and she has grown up here, which explains her love of tabbouleh, a Lebanese salad made with parsley and bulgur wheat. But the Lebanese would never eat …
On Migration, Identity, and Borders
Gerald Machona is a Zimbabwean born visual artist, whose work engages with issues of migration, deeply investigating the social terrains where identity, space, social hierarchies and memory are constantly being re-constructed and negotiated. Ndiri Barman. “In my work, I have appropriated this masquerade performance strategies, one of which is masking, to negotiate my personal experience …
The Oakland Museum of California’s Who is Oakland? Exhibit
“Oakland is a city in flux. As people from San Francisco and elsewhere migrate to Oakland in hordes, the physical and social architecture seems to be reconfiguring in real time. Amid such a transformation, divisive questions of ownership, authenticity, and belonging are at the fore of community conversation.” “Artist Favianna Rodriguez, who is known for …
Platanos Y Collard Greens
Written by David Lamb, directed by Summer Hill Seven and currently staged by Doni Comas, Platanos Y Collard Greens debuted to sold-out audiences on June 27th, 2003 at a small theater on Manhattan’s west side. That fall Platanos also began its collegiate tour, opening October 8th 2003 to a standing room only crowd at the …
Hagia Sophia: Political and Religious Symbolism in Stones and Spolia
There has not been “an incident in Byzantine history with which the church of St. Sophia is not associated.”[1] Hagia Sophia represents the very essence of the history of Turkey and the continuous transformation it has undergone throughout the ages and even today.[2] Turkey, and especially Istanbul, the former Constantinople, is a country of great …
Swiss Ban Building of Minarets on Mosques
In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country’s reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government. The referendum, which passed …
The State of Arizona (2014)
Through powerful footage and intimate access, THE STATE OF ARIZONA focuses on the controversial “papers please” law, SB1070. The feature-length, verité documentary interweaves the volatile themes of immigration and race portrayed through a mosaic of characters and their responses to the law. The film’s three-act structure is built around the turbulent arc of the law, …
Death by Hanging (1968)
A clinically presented series of stark white, unembellished placards illustrates the sobering statistical data for the overwhelming public sentiment against the abolition of the death penalty as an off-screen narrator (Nagisa Oshima) provides a snide, but impassioned rebuttal to popular opinion by presenting a objective documentary of the austere and impersonal milieu associated with the …
Reminiscences of a journey to Lithuania (1972)
Reminiscences of a journey to Lithuania (1972) After a twenty-seven year absence, Adolfas and his brother Jonas returned to their birthplace in Lithuania. They had left Lithuania as young men, destined for a German labor camp. Now they came home for a visit, Adolfas with his wife, the singer Pola Chapelle. “The film consists of …
La promesse (1996)
La promesse is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually …
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984) Rootless Hungarian immigrant Willie (John Lurie), his pal Eddie (Richard Edson), and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb. With its delicate humor and dramatic …
My American Dream, How Democracy Works Now (2010)
How Democracy Works Now: Twelve Stories (2010) The documentary contains multiple, in-depth portraits that are weaved together to illustrate the full-blown social movement. It offers a window into the process of social change in a democracy, into the roots of immigration’s place in our culture and national identity and into the ability of the machinery …
The House of Sand and Fog (2003)
The House of Sand and Fog (2003) Academy Award winners Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) and Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) deliver stunning performances as two strangers whose conflicting pursuits of the American Dream lead to a fight for their hopes at any cost. What begins as a struggle over a rundown bungalow spirals into a clash …
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Godfather Part II (1974) Francis Ford Coppola took some of the deep background from the life of Mafia chief Vito Corleone–the patriarch of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel The Godfather–and built around it a stunning sequel to his Oscar-winning, 1972 hit film. Robert De Niro plays Vito as a young Sicilian immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York …
Fast Food Nation (2006)
Fast Food Nation (2006) Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear)-a marketing executive at Mickey’s Fast Food Restaurant chain, home of “The Big One”-has a problem. Contaminated meat is getting into the frozen patties of the company’s best-selling burger. To find out why, he’ll have to take a journey to the dark side of the All-American meal. Leaving …
Man Push Cart (2005)
Man Push Cart (2005) Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former rock star in his native Pakistan, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken …