Upcoming Events
Easter Term 2022
Freedom Street: Seeking Refuge, Fighting for Freedom
Film Screening
24 June 2022 | 11:00-2:00pm BST
Hosted by Cambridge Development Initiative, Cambridge Migration Society, and Oxford Migration Studies Society
Please join the Cambridge Development Initiative in partnering with the Cambridge Migration Society and the Oxford Migration Studies Society to present an exclusive screening of 'Freedom Street,’ a moving documentary that explores the plight of refugees trapped in Indonesia as a consequence of Australia’s border protection policy. The documentary film screening will be followed by a virtual Q&A with filmmaker Alfred Pek and some of the refugees starring in the documentary.
14,000 refugees are trapped in limbo, caught in the crossfire of Australia's border policy and Indonesia's indifference. They have one destination: freedom.
Freedom Street Documentary is an independent documentary by Alfred Pek that explores the harrowing plights of Joniad, Ashfaq and Azizah, three refugees who are affected by the consequences of Australia's policies and who are trapped in Indonesia. This feature-length documentary tells their moving stories whilst deconstructing Australia’s cruel border protection policy in a series of conversations with various experts, illuminating the issue in its entire (dark) historical and contemporary context.
The experts provide insight into Australia’s long history of border control and Australian-Indonesian relations which serve to contextualise the struggle of our three protagonists as they look towards an uncertain future. The documentary highlights the cost of Australia’s undemocratic policies both on the refugees and the Australian taxpayers over the years while urgently sounding the alarm for meaningful and humane solutions to an ever-worsening issue. This film is 110 minutes long.
Past Events
Network Analysis of Determinants of Attitudes towards Immigrants across Regions
30 November 2021 | 12:00-13:00 GMT
Rachael Kei Kawasaki, visiting scholar in the Department of Land Economy
Room S2, Alison Richard building, Sidgwick Site, University of Cambridge
Network of determinants of attitudes towards immigrant in Middle East and Southeast Asia region. Node color represents cluster membership; green edges represent positive correlation, red negative
As migration destinations change and anti-immigrant sentiment becomes more politically salient, how individuals form their attitudes towards immigrants has grown in importance to policymakers and stakeholders around the world. This study aims to understand determinants in a truly global context, including countries that have often been left out of cross-national analysis, using a novel network science approach. Using data from Wave 6 of the World Values Survey, four bipartite networks of countries and determinants of attitudes towards immigrants are constructed and projected into one-mode networks: one of the countries and one of the attitudes, beliefs, and values which influence attitudes, i.e. “features.” Community analysis detects which features are correlated in determining attitudes, allowing for the reduction of hundreds of features to key determinants of attitudes in a region. The study finds that prejudices towards out-groups, especially racial prejudice, are important determinants irrespective of region and can be considered a generalizable determinant of attitudes towards immigrants. Social identity theory and intergroup conflict theory are found to be influential in motivating racial prejudice, though their influence varies by region. Secondly, values are more prominent in networks containing European countries than others. This finding suggests that values-based communications on migration, which are often considered best practice, may not be effective in other regions and highlights the need for greater research into cultural differences in the determinants of attitudes.
Seminar: Linguistic and Musical Heritage of Afrodescendants in South Asia
29 April 2021 | 1pm-2pm (BST)
Speaker: Dr Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya
Moderator: Mariana P. L. Pereira
Co-organised by The Cambridge Migration Society & the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC)
*Image owned by Dr Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya
In the longue durée, voluntary Africans served as sailors, soldiers, missionaries, jurists and traders. Colonial archives and historical sources narrate the military achievements of involuntary Africans. A few enslaved Africans achieved unimaginable heights through the route of elite military slavery. Today, the majority of Afrodescendants fall below the radar and music has been a platform for carving out a new identity within postcoloniality. Cultural memories associated with Sufism are practised by many Afrodescendants in the sub-continent. A Catholic community of Afrodescendants in Sri Lanka offers a rare opportunity to consider memory and heritage within a diasporic framework. The community refer to a moribund “Portuguese” as “our language”, and the lyrics of manjas have enshrined the creolised Portuguese – Sri Lanka Portuguese (historically known as Ceylon Portuguese or Indo-Portuguese of Ceylon), the lingua franca for most of the colonial era (1505-1948). The Afro-Sri Lankan community’s dual heritage in language and music raises significant issues of safeguarding and revitalising.
Here are some reading suggestions (available at the University of Cambridge Library):
-
African Identity in Asia (Markus Wiener, New Jersey)
-
African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories (Edwin Mellen Press)
-
The Portuguese in the East: A Cultural History of a Maritime Trading Empire. I B Tauris /Bloomsbury Publishers
-
The African diaspora in the Indian Ocean (with Professor Richard Pankhurst, OBE)
Roundtable: Intersections and Contradictions of Activism/Advocacy and Academia
23 February 2021
Invited speakers: Steven Martin, Lou Elena Bouey, Erika Teichert, and Diego Azurdia
Forum Coordinator: Beja Protner
Speakers shared experiences of inhabiting the spheres of engagement, academia and migration-related activism/advocacy. In which ways it is possible to navigate these worlds, which often seem detached from each other? The roundtable tackled the challenges and limitations involved in combining them, and the ways these insights of the one fruitfully feed into the other.
Co-sponsored by The Cambridge Migration Society & the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement
Seminar: Action-Reaction to Rohingya Migration from Rakhine State to Bangladesh - An Analysis on Ethical Responsibilities of Civil-Military, and Religious Groups to Migrated Rohingya during Migration and beyond
3 February 2021
Speaker: Md. Abusalah Sakender
Discussion on the ethical role of civil-military camps including NGOs and religious groups during Rohingya migration and post-migration periods. Questions addressed include: what was the reaction of Bangladeshi people during Rohingya migration from Rakhine State to Bangladesh?
Teach-Out: Researching Institutional Complicity on the Violent Technology of Border Regimes and the University's Ties
25 Feb 2019
Representatives from Mijente's #NoTechForICE campaign, Privacy International and Undoing Borders looked at the experiences of No Tech activists in the U.S. and of UK activists fighting institutional complicity with border regimes.
Tracing the Space of the Refugee Crisis
12 Feb 2019
Showcasing of 'Trace' by Director Raluca Bejan, an independent documentary project filmed in 2017. Trace figuratively marks the absence of the refugee crisis by symbolically creating a visual topography of the refugee crisis, seen through the space containing the crisis and juxtaposed to narrative accounts of people involved in the crisis. Co-organized with the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement
Migration Writing Group
22 Oct 2018
Migration Writing Group, engage with unpublished work by members of the writing group, created by Dr. Lorena Gazzotti, Dr. Georgia Cole and Jessica Fernández de Lara Harada. It ran three discussion groups during Michaelmas Term 2019 (Newnham College).
What the War Did To Our Memories: displacement, hope, and humanity in the Syrian war
19 Jun 2019
For the first time, Syrian artist and refugee Diala Brisly brought together pieces from across her collections over the past seven years -- since the start of the Syrian war. This exhibition of her paintings covered themes of resilience, childhood, and feminism in the context of the Syrian conflict.
Building Radical Spaces of Resilience: The Sanctuary Movement in the US
04 Feb 2019
Leading community organizers from New York Rev Juan Carlos Ruiz (Good Shepherd Lutheran Church) and Matt Bloch (Center for Sanctuary Studies) and Aura Hernandez (in sanctuary) discussed the current state of the movement, its history, its political implications beyond issues of migration, and the profound critical potentialities against the nation-state paradigms under neoliberal regimes.
Race, Labour, Freedom: A Conversation with Aboubakar Soumahoro
20 Nov 2018
In his talk, Aboubakar Soumahoro, an Italian-Ivorian activist, trade unionist and sociologist, spoke about current anti-immigration politics in Europe and in Italy, the economic, social, and human abuse of migrants in Southern Italy, the fight for workers’ rights and against discrimination, and future perspectives on immigration.
Teach Out! The Securization of Migration
05 Mar 2018
CMS cohosted a strike teach-out with Cambridge UCU. Les Levidow (Open University), Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley (Lecturer, Dept of Sociology), and Maria Chiara Vinciguerra (PhD candidate, Dept of Politics and International Studies) addressed security concerns influencing the regulation of social life in contemporary Europe, focusing on state-supported interventions tacking extremism and unwanted migration flows and highlighting the consequences of securitarian policies.
Migration Governance Series III: Architecture & Displacement
26 Jan 2018
Grainne Hassett (architect, lecturer, School of Architecture, University of Limerick, visiting professor, University of Sheffield School of Architecture), Irit Katz (architect, lecturer, Department of Architecture, Cambridge), and Toby Parsloe (PhD student, Department of Architecture, Cambridge) analysed the role of the architect in the humanitarian management of spaces of displacement and the crafting of urban and camp dwellers’ futures.
Humanitarianism at Sea: the politics of search and rescue in the central Mediterranean
13 Nov 2017
This seminar shed light on the ways that humanitarian non-state actors have responded to a perceived migration crisis in a context of repressive control of irregular migration flows. This seminar was part of the series on Humanitarianism and Development in the Governance of Migration "Crises".
On Humanitarian Speak & Its Four Great Horses
15 Oct 2017
Professor Apthorpe, an anthropologist with decades of experience as a humanitarian in the field, discussed the ways in which different conceptions of development and humanitarian intervention inform, overlap, and contradict with each other. This seminar was part of the series on Humanitarianism and Development in the Governance of Migration "Crises".
British Migration History: Reconstructing the Curriculum
23 May 2017
We joined CRASSH in co-hosting this event for the Decolonising the Curriculum in Theory and Practice Research Group Seminar Series. This session explored the importance of teaching a diverse and inclusive history curriculum in British schools and universities.
What's Next for Syria?
10 Mar 2017
Ibrahim Hamidi, Dr Ziad Majed, and Leila Alodaat joined us for a high-level panel session to discuss how the peaceful uprisings in 2011 have developed into a full-fledged civil, regional, and global war and the prospects of peace in Syria, the possible scenarios, and the regional and world powers involved in it. This event was part of our Syria Series: Reflecting on Six Years of Conflict.
'Wallah Je Te Jure' Filmscreening + Q&A with Director and Producer
09 Mar 2017
A film screening of a documentary following the journeys of men and women travelling along West African migration routes to Italy. This was followed by a discussion with Directory Marcelo Merletto and Producer and journalist Giacomo Zandonini. In collaboration with the Centre for Governance and Human Rights.
Syria: Doctors Within, Without, and Beyond Borders
02 Mar 2017
Sophie Roborgh (POLIS) presented her post-doctoral research on the interaction among Syrian doctors within Syria, on its borders, and in the diaspora. This event was part of our Syria Series: Reflecting on Six Years of Conflict.
'On the Bride's Side': A Film Screening and Skype Discussion with Director Gabriele del Grande
09 Nov 2016
We were joined by Director del Grande after a screening of his film, which documents the journey of five Palestinians and Syrians trying to reach Sweden disguised as a fake wedding party. This event was supported by the Department of Italian.
Screening of 'Everyday Borders'
21 Jan 2016
The documentary film examines the impact of the 2014 Immigration Act on British society. The screening was followed by a panel discussion with Director Orson Nava, Dr Georgie Wemyss (University of East London), and Meena Patel (Southall Black Sisters). The panel was chaired by Sundeep Lidher (CAMMIGRES Forum Organising Group). Watch the film here.
Drowning Humanity?: A Discussion on the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis
25 Jun 2015
This discussion featured five experts from various institutions dealing with the Mediterranean refugee crisis. To learn more, see event pictures and listen to the radio interview with Mr. Federico Soda (IOM) and Ms. Kalliopi Stefanaki (UNHCR) by BBC Cambridgeshire
