Mediated Emotions of Migration: Reclaiming Affect for Agency [1 ed.] 1529218233, 9781529218237

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Sukhmani Khorana

Mediated Emotions of Migration Reclaiming Affect for Agency

G l o b a l m i g r at i o n a n d s o c i a l c h a n g e

Global Migration and Social Change series Series Editor: Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham, UK

The Global Migration and Social Change series showcases original research that looks at the nexus between migration, citizenship and social change.

Forthcoming in the series: Social Networks and Migration Relocations, Relationships and Resources Louise Ryan Migration, Crisis and Temporality at the Zimbabwe–South Africa Border Governing Immobilities Kudakwashe Vanyoro

Out now in the series: The EU Migrant Generation in Asia Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities Helena Hof Migration, Health, and Inequalities Critical Activist Research across Ecuadorean Borders Roberta Villalón Navigating the European Migration Regime Male Migrants, Interrupted Journeys and Precarious Lives Anna Wyss

Find out more at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/global-migration-and-social-change

Global Migration and Social Change series Series Editor: Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham, UK

International advisory board: Leah Bassel, University of Roehampton, UK Avtar Brah, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Sergio Carrera, CEPS, Belgium Elaine Chase, University College London, UK Alessio D’Angelo, Middlesex University, UK Alan Gamlen, Monash University, Australia Andrew Geddes, European University Institute, Italy Roberto G. Gonzales, Harvard University, US Elżbieta Goździak, Georgetown University, US Jonathan Xavier Inda, University of Illinois, US David Ingleby, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Anna Lindley, SOAS University of London, UK Cecilia Menjívar, University of California, US Peter Nyers, McMaster University, Canada Jenny Phillimore, University of Birmingham, UK Ben Rogaly, University of Sussex, UK Paul Spoonley, Massey University, New Zealand Susanne Wessendorf, London School of Economics, UK Amanda Wise, Macquarie University, Australia Elisabetta Zontini, University of Nottingham, UK

Find out more at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/global-migration-and-social-change

MEDIATED EMOTIONS OF MIGRATION Reclaiming Affect for Agency Sukhmani Khorana

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2023 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-5292-1823-7 hardcover ISBN 978-1-5292-1824-4 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-1825-1 ePdf The right of Sukhmani Khorana to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Andrew Corbett Front cover image: Reena Saini Kallat, Woven Chronicle, 2015 Bristol University Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents Acknowledgements Series Preface

vi ix

Introduction: Feelings and Migrants Come and Go, and Some Stay/​Stick 1 PART I 1

2

Empathy Witnessing as an Expression of Critical Empathy: An Examination of Audience Responses to a Refugee-​Themed Documentary Jacinda Ardern and the Politics of Leadership Empathy: Towards Emotional Communities of Transformation

15 19

32

PART II Aspiration 3 Asian Americans and Asian Australians on Screen: Aspiring to Centre the Community Through Comedy 4 Aspiration for Collective Progress: Diversity and Digital Intimacy as Practised by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (US), Sadiq Khan (UK) and Jagmeet Singh (Canada)

45 49

PART III Belonging 5 Refugee Storytellers Claim Belonging: Agency, Community and Change Through the Arts 6 Belonging as Affect: Towards Paradigms for Reciprocal Care in Community-​Based Research

77 81

63

94

Conclusion: Care and Resilience in the Face of Increasing Precarity – COVID-​19 and Beyond

108

References Index

121 141

v

Acknowledgements I began this book at a hopeful time –​a new job, a child on the way, and plenty of expectation about a future in which proliferating migrant stories would be told on their own terms across many mediums. Then COVID struck, marking a shift from hope to existential dread and uncertainty. Hearing stories about refugees on protection visas, temporary migrants and international students in Australia who would not have access to welfare payments like the rest of us, I was reminded of how uncertainty is the dominant emotion for the vast majority of migrants in limbo, with or without COVID. I narrate this not to make those with full citizenship rights in the Global North feel grateful and recognise their privilege. Instead, I want to point out how such lives are never given due consideration until we are in circumstances where we might, momentarily, experience their pining for a better future. For this reason, I am grateful to those who participated in the projects that contributed to amplifying such stories and have made their way into the case studies examined in Chapters 1, 5 and 6. The project on multicultural and Indigenous communities in the Illawarra, conducted with esteemed colleagues Associate Professor Tanja Dreher and Professor Bronwyn Carlson, is one that has inspired my longstanding interest in empathy and spawned many subsequent research activities. I am grateful to both for helping sow the seed for that work. The project about making short films on belonging in Liverpool in South Western Sydney came out of preliminary conversations with CuriousWorks, an inspiring media and arts organisation with a focus on empowering disadvantaged young people. Again, this project has become the bedrock of my interest and investment in Western Sydney, particularly its working-​class migrant and refugee communities. For this, I am grateful to University of Wollongong for providing me with a secondment through a governance role that enabled me to work on the Liverpool campus. The research itself was funded through a competitive Community Engagement Grant Scheme (CEGS) funded by the university, with in-​kind contributions from CuriousWorks and Settlement Services International. Draft material from Chapter 6 was presented at an invited seminar at the University of Sussex in August 2019, at the inaugural symposium of the vi

Acknowledgements

Justice, Arts and Migration Network (JAM) held at the Hong Kong Baptist University in November 2019 and at the seminar series of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) in June 2020. I am grateful to Dr Elaine Swan for the Sussex invitation, to Professor John Erni and Professor Stephanie Donald for starting JAM, and to the ICS Engagement Committee. The feedback from these presentations was invaluable in shaping the chapter and my conceptualisation of belonging. I first became interested in ‘aspiration’ as a complex emotion associated with migrants when it was being weaponised during the 2019 federal election campaign in Australia. Both major parties were referring to their base of ‘working families’ as aspirational. It also emerged that many voters from migrant backgrounds were pivotal in deciding the future of certain seats and were described in the post-​election analysis as embodying aspiration. In order to better understand this demographic, I organised a forum on the Asian Australian vote in July 2019. For this and the work it has inspired, I am grateful to all the participants and to my co-​organiser –​Associate Professor Bhuva Narayan from the University of Technology Sydney –​and sponsor –​the Asian Australian Studies Research Network. The writing of the book was enabled by start-​up funding provided by Western Sydney University after I commenced there as a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in February 2020. I am indebted to Claudia Sirdah who conducted literature reviews for Chapters 2 and 4 and copyedited the book with a great eye for detail and attention to emerging literature on migration. At my home institution, I had incredible moral support from the Director of the Institute for Culture and Society, Professor Heather Horst, and the Co-​ Directors of the Young and Resilient Research Centre, Professor Amanda Third and Associate Professor Philippa Collin. The research support at this institution has been better than I could ever have imagined in a higher education context in Australia, and for that I am grateful to Terry Fairclough, Flora Zhong, Michelle Kelly, Nukte Ogun and Sally Byrnes. The idea of putting empathy, aspiration and belonging in one book may come across as novel, perhaps even eccentric. Courtesy of Associate Professor Lisa Slater (University of Wollongong) and Associate Professor Michael Richardson (University of New South Wales), the ‘Public Feelings’ network came together in 2018 to workshop inter-​disciplinary work that investigated feelings in relation to public, political and systemic issues. I had the privilege to attend many sessions and received feedback from colleagues that has greatly benefited the rationale and writing of this book. At a 2019 workshop organised by the network, I first presented the three emotions outlined in this book as complex and ambivalent emotions of migration that needed to be brought together. Again, the commentary from that presentation was invaluable and helped shape the proposal on which the book is based. vii

Mediated Emotions of Migration

Did I mention the bulk of this book was written during the Delta-​related lockdown in Sydney in 2021? I acknowledge what a difficult time this was for essential workers, migrants, working families among others. I was privileged to be able to work from home, to be able to send my toddler to day care most days of the week and to have the support of my partner when I had to work on the book over the weekend. I am grateful to my dear and talented friend Lathalia Song who is like family and helped us through many life transitions during this time. My generous friend and colleague Nisha Thapliyal was kind enough to read the proposal in its early stages and suggest productive directions. As always, I am indebted to my friend through thick and thin and intellectual comrade Maria Elena Indelicato for reading chapter drafts and offering incisive feedback. Reena Saini Kallat was very kind to let me use an image of her acclaimed work Woven Chronicle as the front cover of this book. There is no better evocation of what this work stands for. Shannon Kneis, the sociology and gender commissioning editor at Bristol University Press, and Anna Richardson, their fantastic editorial assistant, have worked tirelessly to make sure the best version of this manuscript goes out into this world. I am honoured to be working with a publisher that cares about impact beyond the halls of academia. Large excerpts from Chapter 1 were first published in a volume edited by Tanja Dreher and Anshuman Modal titled Ethical Responsiveness and the Politics of Difference (2018, Palgrave Macmillan). They appear in an updated and revised form here. My contextual review of the film Here Out West (seen here in the Conclusion) was first published under a Creative Commons licence by The Conversation on 7 February 2022. Finally, this book is dedicated to my ‘Daddy and Dadima’ (paternal grandparents) who trotted the world in their youth and passed away in 2020, not from COVID but possibly from the isolation it brought forth. I miss your stories!

viii

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Series Preface The centrality of emotions in the politics of immigration is a theme we have returned to a number of times in our series. Our first book, Ala Sirriyeh’s excellent The Politics of Compassion, explored how emotion is central to understanding how and why we have the immigration policies we do. The main concern of Sukhmani Khorana’s Mediated Emotions of Migration, instead, is to explore, through a series of case studies ranging from Jacinda Ardern’s response to the terror attacks on mosques in Christchurch in 2019, to the analysis of the social media persona of US politician Alexandria OcasioCortez, and refugee storytelling and creative agency, the conditions and possibilities for empathy to inform and promote action on migration-related injustice and prejudice. It offers insights into the kind of interventions that have transformative potential and makes suggestions on how to harness it. This book invites us to see the ambivalence of emotions as constructive potential and argues that mediated stories about migrants and migration, even when they have nothing or little to do with reality, impact the affective environment and policy landscape migrants find themselves in as well as the extent to which their own agency is recognised. Three emotions, in particular, are the focus of Khorana’s examination, namely empathy, aspiration and belonging. Central to stories on migration, they are powerful, contested and often appropriated by different actors in the public sphere and used to promote and trigger a range of political and policy responses. Through the lens of emotions Khorana brings different bodies of literature in conversation and uses her case studies to identify connections and insights at the intersection of migration studies, social movement and media studies. Nando Sigona Birmingham 12 September 2022

ix

Introduction: Feelings and Migrants Come and Go, and some Stay/​Stick Despite the emotions that the migration of individuals and collectives (and its associated impact on economies and cultures) evokes in those migrating as well as those whose immediate environments are transformed by migration, this phenomenon is framed differently in research and popular culture. For those who are longer-​term residents of immigrant countries that are seen as being positively or negatively impacted by economic and humanitarian migration, perceptions are couched in the language of ‘public attitudes’ to immigration and/​or multiculturalism. Concurrently, those migrating as part of ‘skilled migration’ programmes are seen as rational actors who do so for better career and/​or lifestyle opportunities for themselves and their offspring. Humanitarian migrants are not cast as rational per se but are nonetheless perceived as making logical choices driven by the war-​torn conditions in their homelands. None of these framings give due consideration to the role of emotions/​affect in decision-​making –​whether it is deciding to move to or in forming an attitude to migration. This is especially surprising given the role of emotions in eliciting nationalist sentiments and contribution to the recent global upsurge in populist nationalism and xenophobia. Examining migration through the lens of emotions and affect is therefore a critical gap to address, which the book attempts to do through three chosen complex emotions. Beginning to address this gap will (1) lend agency to migrants themselves to self-​represent and self-​advocate; and (2) enable the public discourse about migrants and refugees to shift and become more conducive to co-​habiting with them. This introductory chapter explains the book’s use of ‘emotion’, ‘affect’, ‘migration’ and ‘mediation’, unpacks the ‘affective turn’ in migration studies, and provides an overview of the work that has been done so far, particularly in immigrant societies in the Global North. It then uses Sara Ahmed’s conceptualisation of feelings that stick to bodies (2004) to lay out the negative affects that are attributed to migrants, how these shift over time

1

Mediated Emotions of Migration

for different kinds of migrants, and how they are used to sentimentalise public discourse and justify a global rise in xenophobia and populism. At the same time, it argues that the contribution of the chapters of this book is to identify other kinds of feelings about migration, and feelings that centre the experiences of migrants and refugees that still have transformational potential as emotions of social change. I began writing the proposal for this book a month before ‘COVID-​19’ was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The global community was blissfully unaware of its health, economic, ecological and social toll, including its impact on various kinds of migrants and public discourses of migration. While the emotional costs of this as well as the communities of care established by migrants during the pandemic are explored in the concluding chapter, it is worth flagging at the outset of this book that emotions/​affect as an approach to understanding migration have come even more sharply into focus in the wake of COVID-​19. There are numerous examples of how the emotions of migrants and affects circulating in the body politic in relation to migration have been amplified. These include: the fear and anxiety faced by those of ‘East Asian’ appearance who were subjected to increased racism in the wake of the pandemic in countries such as the US and Australia (Hahm et al 2021; Reny and Barreto 2020; Chiang 2020); the precarity and uncertainty faced by international students and temporary migrants (Gomes et al 2021; Morris et al 2021); the impact on young migrants and refugees and the capacities of their carers (Primdahl et al 2021); and the status of transnational family care networks in the wake of border closures (Brandhorst et al 2020), among others. In their article for a themed issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies on race and ethnicity in pandemic times, Elias et al provide a context for the amplification of racism and xenophobia since the start of the pandemic: We contextualize racism under COVID-​19, and argue that an environment of populism, resurgent exclusionary ethno-​nationalism, and retreating internationalism has been a key contributor to the flare-​ up in racism during the COVID-​19 pandemic. (2021, p 784) Although this is not a book about racism per se, it is invested in the affects and emotions inherent in racist expressions, as well as in how these can be countered and transformed by other emotions in the public sphere. The previous quote suggests that the context before COVID-​19 also merits attention because the pandemic mostly compounded many existing affects with regards to migration and prevalent discourses about it in the Global North. Some of the emergent research about COVID-​related sentiments about migration (and in some cases, of migrants themselves) is specific to harms and/​or acts of care circulating in the mediated sphere. Examples 2

Introduction

include Croucher et al’s study of how social media use increases the likelihood of someone developing and expressing anti-​Asian sentiments (2020), Ziems et al’s research on the spread of anti-​Asian hate speech through Twitter (2020), Giacomelli et al’s article on the re-​framing of migration during COVID-​19 in the Italian media (2020), Zhang and Zhao’s research on the value of micro-​influencers in spreading public health messages among particular diaspora communities (2020) and von Ana Makhashvili’s use of the term ‘the affective economy of anxiety’ to describe how the far right is using social media to mobilise in Germany and elsewhere in the wake of the pandemic (2020). This growing body of literature indicates a renewed interest in research on digital media and how it leads to an ‘affective public’ (Papacharissi, 2015), especially with regards to fomenting feelings against migration and migrants. It is also timely to remind ourselves that the Black Lives Matter movement (henceforth, BLM) gathered global momentum during the second wave of the pandemic in 2020, and that both social media and the circulation of affect was central to this phenomenon. In a volume titled More Than Our Pain released in 2021, the editors and contributors have focused their efforts on examining the strategic deployment of affect and emotion in the mobilisation efforts of the BLM network (Hinderliter and Peraza, 2021). According to Chakraborty, African Americans in lockdown were already reeling from the disproportionate health and socio-​economic repercussions of the pandemic, and the homicide of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer added further anger and resentment to the mix (2020). Hughes is of the view that the global nature of the movement became more pronounced during COVID-​induced lockdowns as physical spaces shrunk and digital ones expanded, enabling greater reach (2020). With regards to this development, he is particularly interested in how ‘the use of digital affective spaces can galvanise feeling and connection in disparate, heterogenous global communities’ (Hughes, 2020). This means that COVID has not only brought the importance of an emotions approach to migration more sharply into focus, but that it has also expanded the role of all forms of media, especially the digital, in bringing different aspects of migration-​ related justice issues to light. At the same time, it must be noted that digital divides in many disadvantaged parts of the Global North became more acute during COVID-​related lockdowns, and this affected working class migrants disproportionately. For instance, at the time of writing this chapter, there was a hard lockdown in place in most local government areas in Western Sydney (where the author’s institution is located), which has a higher proportion of migrants and essential workers compared to the rest of the city. This also happens to be the region where there has been a higher rate of provision from the state government, providing laptops and other devices to families so that school students could undertake remote learning (Smith, 2021). 3

Mediated Emotions of Migration

BLM is a timely and appropriate springboard for the affects and emotions under consideration in this book as it is more interested in what emerges in the wake of the anger and resentment, and in the complex affects that have the potential to be mobilised for social change. This does not mean that what is being advocated here is overlooking the overtly negative emotions, like the fear, anxiety and hate associated with migration. Instead, what this book argues for is equal attention to the ones that are more ambivalent in their expression and appropriation in public discourse, and therefore have the potential to transmute into emotions of transformation that centre the agency of migrants themselves.

Emotions, affect and migration studies This book builds on the distinctions as well as overlaps between ‘emotion’ and ‘affect’ as articulated by a number of feminist scholars as part of the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. To elaborate, it draws on Elspeth Probyn’s usage of emotion as referring to ‘cultural and social expression’ and of affect as more ‘biological and physiological in nature’ (2005, p 11). At the same time, it recognises social researchers like Sianne Ngai in Ugly Feelings (2005), Sara Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) and Teresa Brennan in Transmission of Affect (2004) who explore both emotion and affect and their connections. The shared goal is to unpack embodied feelings (affect) and how these feelings are taken up in public discourse (emotion). In line with this, the chapters in this book take these conceptual articulations further by applying them to migration studies and examining the complex affects that have been appropriated as emotions with particular functions in the mediated public sphere but that still have transformative potential. The working definition of ‘migration’ and ‘migrants’ employed here is to use these terms to refer to the phenomenon of international migration, and largely to the issues of first and second-​generation migrants. This includes those who undertake these journeys for economic, lifestyle, educational, professional and humanitarian reasons, and where migration may be temporary or permanent in nature. According to Castree et al (2013), ‘It is estimated that there were 215 million people living outside their country of birth in 2010, around 3 per cent of the world’s population’. However, this relatively ‘low number has disproportionate effects on the places and countries linked by flows, economically, socially, culturally, and –​ increasingly –​politically’ (Castree et al, 2013). It must also be noted that due to current and future global crises such as climate change and civil conflicts, this number is projected to continue to rise. According to Pero and Solomos in their research on migrant politics and mobilisation, the foremost reason why migrants’ agency is overlooked in 4

Introduction

social science research is because of ‘methodological nationalism’ (2010, p 7). This means that national interests are conflated with the purpose of the research, which in turn implies that the question of migrants and politics is interpreted in terms of ‘migrants as objects rather than subjects of politics’ (Pero and Solomos, 2010, p 7). Similarly Lauren Berlant’s work on ‘national sentimentality’ argues that changes in feelings are apprehended as empathetic identification with minority groups that suffer, and hegemonic power relations remain unchanged (2000). Indelicato uses this notion to argue how, in the case of international students in Australia for instance, their racial grief is naturalised by Australian representatives, policymakers and others, and therefore the socio-​political order remains unchanged (2017, p 173). What is of concern here is the interpretations and interpellation of migrants’ feelings for particular national ends. It is the contention of this book that in order for migrants to be considered subjects of politics, and therefore for their agency to be reclaimed in public debate, a broad range of complex affects of migration need to be taken into account over and above the rational factors that motivate mobility. As Pero and Solomos put it later on in their study: migrants, like the rest of the population, may at times mobilize in partial or total disregard of the chances of success and the achievement of concrete goals and material rewards, and be substantially driven by their values, affection, sense of self and of group membership, need to feel well and realize themselves, and so forth, all significant elements that are overlooked in the ‘rational actor’ decision-​making model. (2010, p 10) Similarly, in their overview of the field of emotions and migration, Boccagni and Baldassar note that the process of migration may result in a transformation of the emotional life of migrants, and that an analysis of emotions provides an important corrective of the predominant economic rationalist approaches (2015, p 74). In this vein, the material presented here generates further empirical and in-​depth understanding of the affective facets of migration and how these can be mobilised as transformative emotions in the mediated public sphere. Why is this important? How is considering embodied feelings linked to recognising agency? Mediated Emotions of Migration also considers non-​ migrants’ sentiments about migration because these are key to understanding the socio-​political context in receiving societies, as well as what migrants have to come to terms with. In fact, the book commences with this part (on empathy) as it appears to get the most attention in the media and public discourse of the Global North. These include emphases on the ‘fear’ of difference, ‘resentment’ towards migrants who ‘take over’ jobs and 5

Mediated Emotions of Migration

real estate, as well as varying levels of ‘empathy’, especially towards asylum seekers. In the introduction to her special issue on emotions and human mobility, Svasek similarly considers ‘two major processes, namely the often multiple emotional attachments of migrants to their homelands and new places of residence, and the emotional interactions between migrants and members of local communities’ (2010, p 866). While these two processes appear to be comprehensive, this book argues that it is equally important to consider the discursive constructions of migrants, which may or may not have anything to do with real interactions with them. This is because such mediated stories often inform perception and policy, and thereby impact the affective environment migrants find themselves in as well as the extent to which their own agency is recognised.

Mediation and mediated emotions Before considering the explicit mediation of emotions via different platforms, it is important to remember that feelings are communicative acts in themselves (Campbell, 1997). This means that their expression and interpretation in the context of migration is already subject to relational factors such as power. In her recent book on emotions, media and politics, Wahl-​Jorgensen underscores the need to consider the performative, social, collective and potentially political consequences of the mediated construction of emotions (2019). All these aspects are not only vital in the media sites under consideration in the present book but are also urgent due to the highly mediated nature of how migration is represented and perceived. Building on the work of eminent media studies scholar Roger Silverstone, this book considers ‘mediation’ to mean ‘what media do, and to what we do with the media’ (2006). In this sense, it is not merely about the medium or platform of communication but also addresses the creation of symbolic and cultural spaces in which meaning-​making takes place (Silverstone, 2006). Such a working definition of mediation, therefore gives due consideration to the producers of media as well as to audiences, while recognising the conflation of these roles in new media cultures. Through these constructions in public discourse, feelings about migration come about (often without centring migrants themselves) that in turn impact policymaking on these issues. It is for this reason that ‘mediated emotional expression’ is understood here as ‘carefully staged, for a particular purpose, and is a fundamental driver of social and political action’ (Wahl-​Jorgensen, 2019, p 8). At the same time, it is crucial to recognise the geographical and temporal situatedness of all forms of media, and the role it plays in shaping what kinds of language and expression embodied affects take. Wahl-​Jorgensen sees journalism as ‘one of the key vehicles used for both establishing and perpetuating particular emotional regimes’ as it ‘facilitates 6

Introduction

the particular legitimate ways of sharing our feelings’ (2019, pp 9–​10). This book understands media more broadly while acknowledging the particular impact of news media discourses on feelings that legitimately circulate in the public sphere. The chapters in this book traverse a range of mediated sites, while noting that digital media is both more prominent in public discourses of migration, and also not widely studied in relation to the sentiments and agency of migrants themselves. At the same time, digital media here are not confined to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Chapter 4 deals with the popularity of ‘ethnic’ comedians who now ‘broadcast’ to progressive, racialised and aspirational millennials through online streaming platforms such as Netflix. The visual and performative aspects of particular platforms like Instagram are brought to light in Chapter 3, which is concerned with how younger politicians of colour like Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez build ‘digital intimacy’ with their followers through Instagram stories and posts. The final part of the book is focused on participatory forms of media that are generated by migrants, refugees and ex-​refugee themselves, such as short films, spoken word poetry and interactive theatre. At the same time, the book does not eschew the importance of studying more traditional forms of media, such as documentaries and the news. For instance, Chapter 1 emphasises the need to take empathy further when considering audience reactions to films on migration-​themed subjects, thereby reiterating calls for more empirical studies of audiences, whether in a cinema, a domestic living room or in a virtual chat thread. This is vital for understanding how ‘affective publics’ work in different settings, how their feelings emerge, mutate and come to stick, and when and how they mobilise for collective change. Chapter 2 uses iconic news photographs to analyse the politics of leadership empathy evoked by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in the wake of the massacre on Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019. In doing so, the chapters are attendant to the medium as well as the socio-​political context in which the various stages of mediation take place.

Situating the research and the researcher From 2015 to 2018, I was the founding co-​convenor of the Contemporary Emotions Research Network (CERN) at the University of Wollongong. In 2016, the network organised the first international conference on inter-​ disciplinary approaches to emotions research in Sydney with the support of the Australian Sociological Association’s ‘Emotions and Affect’ thematic group and the Australian Research Council-​funded Centre for Excellence in the History of the Emotions. There was unprecedented interest in using emotions for humanities and social sciences research, and the conference led to the edited collection Emotions of Late Modernity, published by Routledge in 7

Mediated Emotions of Migration

2019 (which I co-​edited with the organising team). Since 2018, I have also been an invited member of the ‘Publics Feelings Politics’ Research Network based in Australia that brings together cultural studies and sociology scholars with particular interest in political emotions and their role in facilitating social change. In 2019, I became a founding member of the international ‘Justice, Arts and Migration’ network, which held its first symposium at Hong Kong Baptist University in November 2019. In early 2020, I was appointed as the leader of the Australian node of this network. As such, the impetus for this book comes from my research activities and involvement in highly relevant collaborations and networks over the last five years. The emergence of a range of research entities that are centred on emotions and affect and how they impact public discourse is also testament to the timeliness of this approach, particularly as it pertains to how feelings about migration, and of migrants, circulate and stick. Since 2015, I have been undertaking research and publishing journal articles and book chapters on the politics of empathy, particularly as it pertains to refugee media and advocacy in Australia. Part of this research has been funded by small competitive grants funded by my former employer, the University of Wollongong. At my current institution, I have had seed funding and mentoring available for furthering this research on mediated emotions, particularly the work on aspiration. In 2019, I carried out a community engagement project with industry partners in the diverse Sydney suburb of Liverpool to unpack the sense of belonging (and lack thereof) experienced by young people of migrant and refugee backgrounds. This is the area that led to my interest in, and subsequent research on, belonging as an affect that contributes to active citizenship practices. In addition to research, my teaching of subjects such as ‘Global Media and Culture’, ‘Multicultural Cities’, ‘Digital Dissent’, and ‘Migration and Social Change’ has been pivotal in informing my understanding of the perceptions of migration in settler immigrant nations such as Australia. This includes the feedback obtained from students during weeks where topics like refugee policy and ethnic suburbs were discussed. There was a sense that, despite knowing the factual information or the discursive tools to unpack misinformation, they often required an emotional ‘hook’ to persuade their families and peers. Finally, my personal trajectory as a 1.5 generation migrant and mobile academic who became a first-​time mother in August 2020 has also underpinned the case studies and modes of analysis that have been chosen for this book. As the bulk of it was written in the wake of the COVID-​ 19 pandemic, I have grappled with both feelings of privilege and relative disadvantage in various aspects of my life. This is because as a knowledge worker, I have been able to work from home, and my family has been largely unaffected by the struggles facing many working-​class migrants who are also essential workers and at greater risk of contracting the virus. At the same 8

Introduction

time, having given birth in Australia during the pandemic, I, like many other migrants whose extended families are overseas, have not been able to avail of vital kinship support and care during this delicate time. I recount this tale not to draw attention to my own plight but rather to situate my story and point of view in the very unique context that is Australia and its radically reduced inter-​state and international mobility since March 2020. The book traverses case studies from the Global North as my research on media has previously been located in these regions, but its perspective and approach is inadvertently shaped by being situated in Australia (and unable to move) at this historic moment.

Part/​chapter summaries Why are certain emotions and not others addressed in this book? The ones chosen for in-​depth examination here are seen as being ambivalent rather than entirely positive or negative in the public discourse on migration, and hence hold constructive potential. That is, while scholars have critiqued the limits and ambivalence of concepts like empathy and belonging, it is the contention of this book that they still have meaningful resonance in the way they are discursively employed in the interest of social change. In other words, these emotions are understood here as being embodied feelings in certain kinds of bodies but that get deployed for particular ends in mediated public discourse, with specific consequences for migrant subjects. For instance, European settlers may feel empathy towards refugees and working-​class migrants, but this less-​defined and transient feeling of empathy has also been appropriated by successive national governments as a clearly defined emotion to justify harsh policies such as mandatory detention (Every, 2008). However, using specific and situated case studies, the book argues that these affects also have transformative potential, and they can therefore become emotions that help migrants reclaim their sense of individual and collective agency. Given this, the three parts present mediated and empirical examples to help re-​conceptualise these chosen emotions of migration. The book begins with empathy as it has become one of the most emblematic affects/​emotions of how settlers ought to feel about migration, yet one that is also fraught with often unintended consequences for migrants themselves. These tensions inherent in empathy and its discursive deployment are explored at length in the part introduction, with the first couple of chapters providing detailed case studies. This is followed by a focus on aspiration as a complex affect embodied by somewhat established first-​and second-​generation migrants. Again, aspiration is often associated with economic migration and is either described largely in rational terms (for instance, as a desire for socio-​economic mobility) or has connotations of excess in the public discourse (for example, in reference to migrants who 9

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try ‘too hard’). However, migrants’ desires beyond individual mobility need greater attention, particularly in the era of social media and its mobilising capacities. Empathy and aspiration lay the groundwork for the final part on ‘belonging’, another complex affect/​emotion that is most frequently used in relation to new arrivals. In this case, the aim is to hone in on the feelings on humanitarian migrants and their descendants who deal with particular challenges when attempting to settle in immigrant nations in the Global North. The book’s journey from empathy to aspiration and then belonging symbolises the order of whose voice/​emotion is most dominant in public discourse. This order does not mean any one part is more important that the other. The analytical component in each chapter identifies opportunities for reclaiming the agency of those who are most deprived in the debates about migration.

Part I: Empathy Within feminist, anti-​racist and other social theory, empathy has long been understood as crucial to the attainment of cross-​cultural social justice. However, the evocation of empathy, especially in refugee narratives, is often accompanied by a depoliticisation of systemic issues. This occurs by shifting responsibility onto the feelings of the presumably ethical citizen rather than the imperative of international obligations and/​or the power imbalance in regional geopolitical relationships. Through most conventional transnational television formats such as Go Back to Where You Came From (an Australian documentary series where participants with differing views on asylum seekers are taken on a journey), those viewing are invited to empathise with immigrants, especially those fleeing persecution in war-​torn countries. At the same time, the feelings of empathy are often subject to proving the vulnerability of the immigrant in question so that the viewer can justifiably take action. What gets highlighted here is the non-​immigrant viewer’s own feelings or perception of an issue rather than the emotions and agency of the migrant or refugee subject. Alternative media narratives are now beginning to emerge. These narratives evoke empathy in the audience while also turning European viewers into a sort of witness to the unfolding of racialised refugee and migrant stories. Being a witness entails responding in a way that is dialogic and political, and which leads neither to apathy nor to consumerist sentimentalism. Can ‘empathy’ be turned into such a public sentiment, an embodied affect that extends beyond the mediated moment/​encounter to become a transformative emotion? Are certain world leaders better able to model such witnessing that leads to empathy and responsibility than others? Thin attachment in the era of mediation needs to be turned into thick(er) attachment for more effective politics and long-​term social change. 10

Introduction

In Chapter 1, I take the preoccupation with empathy in Australian documentaries advocating for asylum seekers as a point of departure to look at alternative modes of responding. The focus here is on audience responses to Freedom Stories (Thomas, 2015) which uses the community screening model and puts the spotlight on former refugees who are now Australian citizens. Reactions to the film, recorded through a pilot study at the University of Wollongong, are analysed through the lens of Roger Silverstone’s notion of ‘proper distance’ in an attempt to unpack the difference between spotlighting one’s own feelings (or the conventional use of ‘empathy’ in humanisation discourses) and perceiving the feeling of the other in a way that is likely to lead to taking responsibility and action (what I call here ‘witnessing’). Chapter 2 examines the case study of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in particular her performance of empathy in the aftermath of a white supremacist attack on mosques in Christchurch. The purpose of this detailed discursive study of relevant news coverage and photographs is to illustrate (1) a shift in the Western mediascape whereby political leaders, among others, are scrutinised for not just their private feelings in a public disaster but are also required to perform empathy with those most affected; (2) the emotional communities this leads to, which could be a building block for solidarities with migrants in the future. While the Ardern government has been criticised for its track record on immigration in other policy areas, it is a useful example to understand contemporary public manifestations of empathy in relation to migrants and where it is accompanied by some sense of action and accountability.

Part II: Aspiration Aspiration is most commonly used in relation to the attributes of post-​ 1990s economic migrants from the Global South to the Global North. For instance, preliminary research and media commentary indicate that the defining feature of new migrants who were born in Asia and who became Australian permanent residents or citizens in the past two decades is their material and social aspiration. For instance, writing for the South China Morning Post, Choy notes: Rather than common stereotypes that paint Chinese migrants in one of two extremes –​impoverished hopefuls in the land of plenty or ultra-​r ich property buyers pushing up prices for locals –​the research shows the migrants of today are a product of China’s burgeoning ‘new middle class’. (2018) Similarly, Robertson’s research on young people migrating to Australia from India indicates that cultural imaginaries have been a significant driver since the first decade of the 21st century (2015). Is this notion of aspiration 11

Mediated Emotions of Migration

an embodied feeling or a public one? Also, as ‘aspiration’ is employed by neoliberal politicians in the Global North to mobilise their constituents at large, how is their usage different from the way it is used to understand the economic motivations of young migrants, particularly from Asia? Does it manifest differently among different diasporas? Conventionally, ‘aspiration’ is narrowly defined as material and social aspirations for oneself, one’s kin or immediate group. The chapters in this part are interested in how this complex affect can be expanded to a more wide-r​ anging, all-​encompassing sentiment for social/​political/​environmental justice. Again, linking the subjectivity and social mobility of the self to the other is crucial, and using mediation in the form of digital tools, creative arts and cultural artefacts (like food) strategically to do so works in specific contexts and under particular structural conditions. It might also be useful to understand people’s feelings about the past in order to map what they want for the future. Therefore, a conceptual re-​working of ‘aspiration’ will be seen to produce a public feeling that can be both nostalgic and progressive at the same time. That is, this re-​contextualised nostalgia need not be regressive, and social progression doesn’t have to imply a complete detachment from one’s cultural roots. In Chapter 3, I undertake the work of examining this new kind of aspiration, which has collective transformative potential through a close reading of an Asian American and an Asian Australian media text, and how they have been received by their respective audiences. The texts are Indian American comedian Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act series, which aired on online streaming platform Netflix from 2018 to 2020, and Sri Lankan Australian stand-​up comic Nazeem Hussain’s Legally Brown series, which appeared on Australia’s SBS TV network in 2013–​14. The case study approach used here pays particular attention to episodes about the present and future of one’s own migrant community, such as Minhaj’s on the importance of the Asian American vote in the 2020 presidential election and Hussain’s skits on ‘Uncle Sam’ and ‘Muslim Shore’. Audience data is collected through anonymised samples available on social media platforms, as well as official reviews, and is examined using a thematic discourse analysis. Chapter 4 develops this notion of aspiration through a consideration of how it appears in political culture. It argues that the political party and parliamentary structures in certain immigrant contexts not only enable more ‘ethnics’ to participate but also that this gives voice to their collective aspirations (that is, beyond the first generation’s presumed interest in socio-​economic mobility). Such aspirations are, in turn, reflected in the speeches and social media campaigns of other ‘diverse’ political representatives. This is demonstrated through an analysis of such material obtained from the social media accounts and mainstream media coverage of Jagmeet Singh (Canada), Sadiq Khan (UK), and Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (US). 12

Introduction

Part III: Belonging As deployed in this part, ‘belonging’ departs from the emphasis on ‘identity’ and/​or integration. ‘Identity’ could be construed as individualistic, whereas ‘belonging’ is inherently relational, and therefore it could be an emotion of social change. In the context of migration, belonging is the affective dimension of citizenship and thereby enables participation of migrants in a range of social, economic, cultural and political activities. It is also important to understand where belonging is obstructed and how these obstructions can be overcome. This has particular repercussions for young people in socio-​economically disadvantaged areas. How can this be mobilised from an affective state, measured, generated and re-​generated as a transformative feeling for facilitating refugee and migrant agency and long-​term social change? This part uses empirical grassroots projects and mediated refugee stories to come up with paradigms for reciprocal care and recouping the agency of refugees, ex-​refugees and ways that migrants might represent themselves on their own terms. In Chapter 5, the focus is on shifting the interest in refugee storytelling from the intentions of the non-​refugee interlocutors and the feelings of the audiences to the affective, rational, and relational agency of the refugees themselves. Using refugee and ex-​refugee performance poets as case studies (primary interviews and secondary sources), it asks the question –​with refugee agency front and centre –​what would stories of precarity look like, and how would they help create communities of belonging? Educating non-​refugee audiences is not the primary goal of these stories. Rather, they are more vested in the process of recovering and re-​telling traumatic histories in a way that is beneficial for refugees or ex-​refugees themselves. In addition, it creates platforms of inter-​generational dialogue in refugee families and helps them connect with other disadvantaged communities in their new homes. Chapter 6, the penultimate chapter of this book, reflects on belonging as a ‘feeling of our times’, albeit a political one that attempts to move past a superficial libertarian focus on harmony. Instead, through the case study of a recent migrant community project with a creative outcome based in South West Sydney, I examine what belonging looks and feels like when the focus is on co-​creating cultural safety through approaches that favour reciprocity and creativity. This lens on belonging also reverses the discursive construction of new migrants as those requiring integration initiatives to fit in, or of certain others in need of de-​radicalisation. Instead, it asks –​what will make them feel safe enough to invest in local and national communities? This is not to discount the value of resettlement programs and English-​language classes. Rather, it is about augmenting those with projects that decentre the majority community and make space for cultural belonging to emerge in a reciprocal manner. 13

PART I

Empathy

My interest in empathy began when I first started researching media narratives about refugees and asylum seekers, and occasionally created by them. I conducted research on these narratives in the Australian context due to Australia’s unique and brutal policies of offshore mandatory detention of all boat arrivals –​despite being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention (Laney et al, 2016). I found that in the case of most conservative media outlets in Australia, research had established that there is a tendency to dehumanise refugees. The tactics employed for such dehumanisation include visual framing, not showing individual asylum seekers and associating them with threats to border security rather than a situated humanitarian crisis (Bleiker et al, 2013). In other words, the picture of the refugee invoked by such narratives in the minds of audiences located in the Global North is one of a distant other whose shoes you cannot conceive of walking in as they are either too unfamiliar or simply invisible. I also observed that when it came to the nation’s less ideologically conservative media outlets, editorials and features attempted to humanise refugees in order to evoke some semblance of empathy in the non-​ refugee audience member. ‘Is Australia losing its empathy’ (The Guardian), ‘Australians lack empathy for plight of asylum seekers’ (Judith Ireland for The Sydney Morning Herald), ‘What happened to our compassion, Australia?’ (Mamamia.com), ‘Do we need an empathy revolution’ (TheHoopla.com) and ‘Compassion is the new radicalism’ (Indira Naidoo): these are just some of the headlines and statements that are mediated manifestations of the desired response from settlers who saw themselves as ethical and therefore sympathetic to the asylum seeker issue in Australia. Moreover, feeling empathy or compassion was established in these stories as a morally virtuous response to asylum seeker stories that may take the form of news features or creative storytelling such as film and visual art. This is not to underscore that some of these responses have led to movements within Australia and overseas 15

Mediated Emotions of Migration

that have created material differences in the lives of some asylum seekers. Examples include Kurdish writer and journalist Behrouz Boochani, who has been able to find a safe haven in New Zealand; and the #HometoBilo organisers who have been successful in their efforts to mobilise the broader Australian community in favour of the resettlement of a Tamil family of four in the rural town of Biloela. At the same time, in the context of the deployment of empathy more broadly in the Global North, I have been increasingly exposed to critiques that question its efficacy, transience and focus on the feelings of the individual over mobilisation for systemic change. The sharpest and most persuasive of these analyses has come from British cultural studies and media scholar Carolyn Pedwell who has used former US President Barack Obama’s speeches (among other contemporary cultural artefacts) to characterise empathy as stopping rather than furthering conversations about social transformation. In her book Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy, she writes: Empathy, it would seem, has become a Euro-​American political obsession … with the contemporary ‘western’ socio-​political sphere, empathy is framed as ‘solution’ to a very wide range of social ills and as a central component of building cross-​cultural and transnational social justice. As such, empathy can, like happiness (Ahmed, 2010), become a kind of end-​point. Precisely because it is so widely and unquestioningly viewed as ‘good’, its naming can represent a conceptual stoppage in conversation or analysis. (Pedwell, 2014, pp ix–​x) I subsequently noticed that other scholars across disciplines have questioned empathy in relation to its obfuscation or reinforcement of existing power relations. According to Neumann, compassion either glosses over or reinforces already existing inequalities. He adds, ‘By neither questioning inequality nor exposing its root causes, compassion enshrines this inequality. And often compassion’s main benefit is to make the compassionate person feel good about being able to indulge in seemingly unselfish sentiments’ (Neumann, 2012). Along similar lines, Jones cites contexts involving both white and minoritised women where any meaningful discussion of racial identity can be prevented if the former group’s empathetic anti-​ racist identity is seen as under attack (Jones, 2014, p 75). In other words, empathy can centre the emotions of those that already have more power and thereby further marginalise the voices and emotions of those who are seldom heard, such as racialised migrants and refugees. How then, can it still perform the work of ethical allyship and be transformative in terms of the discourses and perceptions of migration? As I outline in the rest of this part introduction and the two chapters to follow, certain conditions enable the

16

Empathy

embodiment and enaction of empathy that is critical, reflexive and translates into meaningful action. The role of empathetic media, as seen in the case of the liberal media examples in the Australian context, has also been critiqued due to: (1) the imagery that is deployed; and (2) the evocation of feelings of empathy that are based on a type of politics of rescue rather than on fellow feeling. For instance, Skrbis and Woodward point out that ‘mother and child’ images are portrayed in the media, charity advertisements and humanitarian campaigns on a regular basis to connote need (2013, p 75). They add they these images are ‘regularly deployed for ideological purposes and held up as figures in need of rescue by Western viewers, shifting the focus from the structural and political conditions that placed their lives in danger and at risk in the first place’ (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013, pp 81–​2). This framing implies that those perceived as different may be objectified –​even when the intention is to be of help. Jean Kelly Butler observes that over the past two decades, bearing witness ‘to the other, a frequently nonwhite other, has come to form the basis for the performance of “good” Australian citizenship’ (2013, p 171). While these discourses of empathy and related forms of witnessing have given a high degree of visibility to asylum seeker issues in public culture, they have not necessarily resulted in dialogic relationships. In other words, asylum seekers and others continue to be ‘objects’ rather than subjects of feeling –​objects in a discourse on good citizenship, rather than good citizens (Butler, 2013, p 172). Therefore, mediated stories and the very systems that produce them must be interrogated to better understand how different, more inclusive narratives can be conceptualised about migrants and refugees who are othered or objectified by media discourses. Finally, regardless of the extent of good intentions, empathy can fail. This is because vast amounts of cognitive information and affective storytelling about people and circumstances that are very different from one’s own context and social location may not help with understanding them. According to Pedwell, a genuine attempt at empathy requires ‘attempting to see from someone else’s perspective, or indeed realising that you can’t, and being affectively unsettled by that “failure” of empathy, by empathy’s failure to live up to its own promise’ (2014, p 65). It is at the point of this slight but significant departure from the mainstream deployment of empathy that the chapters in this part are situated. What the articulation of critical empathy through witnessing during the public screening of an Australian refugee-​themed film (Chapter 1), and the way in which collective empathy is visually evoked by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern without giving in to pity and cultural appropriation (Chapter 2) suggest is a version of empathy could be transformative of migrant-​non-​migrant relations. The iteration of empathy described in this part introduction takes into account that one may not understand everything about ‘the other’, and is 17

Mediated Emotions of Migration

hence generative of a productive discomfort that centres the feelings and perspectives of the migrant or refugee over one’s own. Pedwell uses the work of feminist Iris Marion Young to theorise this transformative empathy as the kind that is based on social connection rather than neoliberal logics of individual self-​regulation or imperialistic discourses of American exceptionalism (2014, p 62). Lobb refers to this as a kind of ‘critical empathy’ that is distinguished from ‘doxic empathy’ (2017). According to her, doxic empathy is ‘ideologically distorted’ in some way. It is maladaptive and somewhat unproductive and can be ‘performed vertically (for example, privileged –​underprivileged to uplift privileged individuals’ epistemic authority), or horizontally (for instance, between two victims, with a nihilistic ending and/​or interpretation)’ (Lobb, 2017, p 603). In contrast critical empathy is considered to be more reflective and collective. In other words, critical empathy attempts to put empathy to work in a manner that respects the autonomy of the sufferer and/​or may lead to the realisation of political solidarity. The chapters in this part build on the work on Pedwell and Lobb to situate critical empathy in particular contexts and mediated narratives and/​or places where these narratives are received.

18

1

Witnessing as an Expression of Critical Empathy: An Examination of Audience Responses to a Refugee-Themed Documentary

Introduction: asylum seekers in Australia and mediated empathy Similar to the reception given to asylum seekers in most of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development) nations, the public debate on the issue in Australia remains vexed and polarising. However, what distinguishes Australian policy is that despite being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, ‘it is the only country where there is mandatory immigration detention for all unlawful non-​ citizens’ (Brown, 2013). Additionally, according to the Refugee Council of Australia, mandatory detention is used as more than just a risk-​management tool as until recently, ‘asylum seekers arriving without authorisation were detained for the entire time it took to determine whether or not they were refugees –​regardless of whether they posed any health or security risks to the community’ (Refugee Council of Australia, 2014). In terms of the political and public response, sociologist Klaus Neumann (2012) writes that there has been consensus on both sides of politics that ‘asylum seekers pose a threat to the integrity of Australia’s borders or to its social fabric, that fear of asylum seekers is legitimate, and that a policy of deterrence is an appropriate response’. In other words, there is stalemate in Australia on this issue in a political sense, and this is inextricably linked with the way stories of asylum seekers have been discursively represented. 19

Mediated Emotions of Migration

The socio-​political context of bipartisan support for mandatory detention forms the basis of resistance in many media texts that address the asylum seeker issue in Australia. Neumann adds that this policy of deterrence is occasionally questioned when the courts insist that it must not violate Australian law and when the public sporadically shows compassion for individual asylum seekers, especially children (2012). Given the absence of any political will to change policy, narratives across platforms that attempt to evoke an empathetic response in sections of the non-​refugee Australian audience merit particular attention. This is not just because we need to aim for more accurate representations of asylum seekers to render them ‘human’ and relatable in the minds of ordinary Australians. As Szoreyni explains with regards to photographs of refugee children, it would be more ethical to move away from discourses of ‘humanisation’ in discussions of representation and towards alternative methods of reading images (2018). She proposes ‘apprehending’ as a more tentative sensory experience and one that can take us beyond the normativity inherent in recognition. The present chapter follows a similar call to responding to mediated material about migration, albeit in this case recent refugee-​themed documentaries in Australia that explicitly set out to advocate for better treatment of asylum seekers. The focus is not on the representation of refugee subjects per se but rather on what constitutes an affective encounter with these mediated stories that would articulate critical empathy through a mode I refer to here as ‘witnessing’. From a small sample of audience responses obtained in a pilot study screening of the Australian documentary Freedom Stories, I will attempt to arrive at a manner of witnessing that constitutes an intervention in refugee advocacy and its relation to the embodiment and expression of empathy. Examining viewers’ engagement with these films is important because in the absence of wider community interactions with recent refugee arrivals, public opinion on refugee-​related issues is largely reliant on impressions gleaned from the media (Wright, 2008, p 99). There has been considerable discussion in the public domain about strategies of dehumanising refugees and limiting journalists’ attempts to individualise them as a means of managing public perception. According to a speech delivered by Paul Power, CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia in 2010, challenging negative media coverage of refugees and acknowledging positive representations are both keys to building accountability and community engagement (2010). On this issue, there is an assumption that links media representation with public perception, and this link has become part of the politics of the way it is playing out both in Australia and internationally. Therefore, there is a genuine point to examining precisely how media narratives, especially in a cross-​platform environment, impact public attitudes to refugees. While it is not possible, or even constructive, to establish a causal relationship, a study 20

Witnessing as an Expression of Critical Empathy

of citizen/​audience responses can indicate the kinds of engagement that are likely to stir critical empathy manifested through witnessing. As noted in the introduction to the first part of this book on empathy, the mainstream news media narratives that aim to effect social change often stop short at conflating humanisation with the invoking of empathy. I will now unpack how this kind of individually mobilised, transient and selective empathy is problematic. This will be followed by the case study of a small-​ scale project that emphasises ‘witnessing’ as an expression of critical empathy in the responses to the screening of a refugee-​themed documentary.

Problems with humanisation discourses Within feminist, anti-​racist and other social theory, the feeling and articulation of empathy has been established as crucial to the attainment of cross-​cultural and transnational social justice. According to Pedwell, following philosopher Martha Nussbaum, empathy is understood as opening the self to the other in a transnational context (2014, p 46). For instance, in African American literature, ‘the suggestion is that, while “we” might theorise social inequalities and commit ourselves to political responsibilities and obligations in the abstract, a transformation at the affective level is required to make “us” actually feel, realize and act on them’ (Pedwell, 2014, p 47). Pedwell further notes that within some feminist and anti-​racist literatures, the larger affective journey moves ‘the privileged subject from empathy, to self-​transformation, to recognition of responsibility or obligation, to action with the potential to contribute to wider social change’ (2014, p 105). The understanding of empathy suggested here is dynamic, processual and avoids binaries. However, the evocation of empathy in refugee-​themed narratives is often accompanied by a depoliticisation of any attendant systemic issues. This occurs by shifting responsibility onto the feelings of the self-​identified ethical citizen (usually a privileged non-​migrant subject) rather than the imperative of international obligations. Moreover, particular figures such as children may be more likely to inspire an empathetic response. This was noted in the case of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body was washed up on a Turkish beach and triggered a worldwide surge in public compassion for refugees (as seen in the popularity of the hashtag #CouldBeMyChild on social media). However, El-​Enany observes that images of the bodies of Black African men who had died trying to cross the Mediterranean did not garner a positive response from Europe and instead invoked fear (2016). In a similar vein, Kirkwood conducted a discourse analysis of UK parliamentary debates on the European refugee crisis and found that while refugees were presented as being within ‘our’ moral community, ‘some forms of “humanization” appear to reinforce paternalistic relations between those who need and those who provide asylum’ (2017, p 122). In other words, empathy in humanisation 21

Mediated Emotions of Migration

discourses is often deployed to either attempt to whole-​heartedly identify with the other and remove any distance, or to reproduce the distance to such an extent that the relationship reinforces a politics of pity. With reference to Australia, Khoo notes that cinematic Asian Australian ‘boat stories’ are in fact marked by the absence of boats (2014, p 606). She argues that by decentralising the boat narrative, a more ethical process is established, and this contains ‘the possibility for empathy by speaking to a wider (national) audience’ (Khoo, 2014, p 607). In addition to the arthouse films mentioned by Khoo that feature refugees as protagonists and screen at film festivals and/​ or boutique cinemas, the figure of the refugee literally leaped onto Australian primetime viewing through the documentary series Go Back to Where You Came From (Cordell Jigsaw Productions), which first aired on public broadcaster Special Broadcasting Services (SBS) in 2011. Each instalment featured a mixed group of six well-​known and ordinary Australians who have a range of polarised views on asylum seekers. They are then taken on a journey that simulates what refugees in camps and leaky boats go through, thereby making a very literal attempt at ‘walking in the same shoes’ (Cover, 2013). However, the privileged viewer of the SBS series who may not have any direct experience of migration is simultaneously told that the refugee other is unlikely to be wearing shoes of any kind. The response then is to donate their shoes so they can feel better about themselves, rather than focusing on the feelings of the person under duress. Empathy, in this case, is ultimately self-​oriented rather than open to the possibility of partial comprehension or even opacity. In addition, such narratives, and what are established as ‘humanised’ responses to them, fail to take into account that it may be impossible to have the same experience as someone else, however effective the simulation may be. In addition, as Nikunen puts it in her study of this series, which has now become an international format, such humanitarian television has the potential to forge new solidarities and moralities, but its marketisation poses critical challenges (2016). Moreover, she observes, it is the emotions of the Western participants (and audiences) that are at the centre of the experiment, while the lives of asylum seekers ‘operate as a stage on which these emotions are played out’ (Nikunen, 2016, p 273). Given the premise of the SBS series is to evoke empathy and challenge entrenched attitudes, this has also become the pre-​occupation of several subsequent Australian documentaries on the subject, such as in the case study of Freedom Stories discussed here.

Audience empathy and the ‘community screening’ model When I first watched the documentary Mary Meets Mohammad, I became interested in writer–​director Heather Kirkpatrick’s account of its screenings 22

Witnessing as an Expression of Critical Empathy

(Kirkpatrick cited in Blakkarly, 2014). As someone who was located outside of the film festival circuit in Australia, and primarily keen to make and screen the film as a contribution to public debate on the issue of asylum seekers, Kirkpatrick circumvented the conventional viewing venues for documentaries of this kind. Rather, through the film’s website and all of its screenings in spaces such as university film clubs, advocacy groups like Red Cross and Amnesty, and even detention centres, the notion of ‘community screenings’ through a small fee and hosting pack was encouraged. This kind of model is in line with the global trend of ‘hybrid distribution’, which enables producers to be in greater control of their final product, and in closer contact with audiences (see Einspruch, 2017). In the wake of this, there has been a spate of refugee-​themed documentaries produced and released in Australia. These include –​Freedom Stories (Steve Thomas, 2015), Chasing Asylum (Eva Orner, 2016), Constance on the Edge (Belinda Mason, 2016) and Cast from the Storm (David Mason, 2016). All of the these films are classified as documentaries and have links to ‘community screenings’ (in varied forms) on their official websites. For instance, in the case of Chasing Asylum, there is a tab on the homepage called ‘Take Action’, and this takes visitors to yet another page with options such as ‘Host a Screening’, ‘Sign a Petition’, ‘Sign the Pledge’, ‘Write to your MP’, ‘Volunteer’ and ‘Donate’. In other words, the emphasis is explicitly on asylum seeker advocacy and political actions related to the same. Similar to this, the website of Constance on the Edge has a navigation bar with links to sections like ‘Act Now’ and ‘Screenings’. While the former leads to information on the film’s ‘impact strategy’, it also has tabs for hosting a screening and donating to the campaign (via the Documentary Australia Foundation website). The latter tab lists both past and upcoming screenings throughout the country and contains details on how to obtain a screening licence (with cinema and community options included). Finally, the homepage of Cast from the Storm also has links for ‘Screenings’ and ‘Host a Screening’. Moreover, the latter page has an embedded video which appears to be an edited version of a range of audience reactions to screenings of the film. It is not clear from the video or the information accompanying it whether this was recorded at one screening or a number of them. However, what stands out is both the audience responses themselves and the production team’s interest in documenting and (re)presenting them. While most respondents mention the word ‘moving’ in relation to the film, they also note that what made it so was the featuring of refugee children and their stories. Only one respondent featured in the video explicitly said that the film made her want to do something, presumably about the refugee situation in Australia. Yet another interviewee reported being so moved that she wanted to cry and added that she couldn’t imagine what the kids featured in the film had gone through. 23

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These types of responses are typical of most screenings of social justice-​ oriented films, including those based on the lives of current and former refugees. This leads to the question of why the community screening of the latter has become such a focal point of interest for filmmakers and audiences alike. Also, relatedly, does the evocation of emotional responses, particularly empathy, necessarily lead to politicised actions that are likely to help address the problems at a macro level? Elsewhere, I have written about how the distribution model first adopted by Mary Meets Mohammad has a greater potential to facilitate ‘ethical witnessing’ (Khorana, 2015). That it has been followed by a swathe of similar-​themed documentaries is testament to its success. In order to better understand this model and the nature of responses generated, I conducted a small-​scale research project with the aim of gathering data from an audience immediately after a screening of one such film.

Case study: screening of Freedom Stories in the Illawarra The refugee-​themed documentary Freedom Stories was screened at the University of Wollongong as part of a faculty-​funded pilot study (with team members Associate Professor Tanja Dreher and Professor Bronwyn Carlson) on 10 June 2016. The overall project, centred on community and alternative media in the Illawarra region of the state of New South Wales utilised ‘participatory action research’, a methodology that actively builds community capacities and empowerment by bringing together academic and community knowledge (Cheezum et al, 2013). In the preceding scoping study, strong interest was evidenced by participation in a networking gathering that included representatives from local community-​based media and organisations such as Woolyungah Indigenous Centre, Affinity, SOS Black Illawarra, Wollongong City Council, Illawarra Multicultural Services, Multicultural Communities Council of the Illawarra, Lifeline South Coast and others. All of these organisations were invited to the screening of Freedom Stories, with further interest from the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) and the Illawarra Greens. In keeping with the principles of ‘action research’, this event was designed in order to ensure maximum benefit to the communities involved, by way of skills development and capacity building, and the opportunity for experienced media advocacy practitioners to reflect on their work. The film itself documents the experiences of former ‘boat people’ who arrived in Australia in 2001 and at that stage had already screened at several cinemas and community spaces around Australia. At the Illawarra-​based public event, we used a couple of methods to collect data on inter-​group understandings of refugee issues. We observed the conversations people were having about the film via a relevant Twitter hashtag, and also audio-​recorded the post-​screening Q&A with director Steve Thomas and ex-​refugee 24

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participant Amir Javan. In addition, a qualitative questionnaire consisting of eight questions, largely centred on responses to the film, use of media for refugee advocacy and avenues for changing attitudes was distributed among viewers at the beginning of the screening. This turned out to be the most successful method in terms of generating data as 50 of the 70 questionnaires were filled out and returned. While it may appear that the audience was likely already sympathetic to changing many of Australia’s asylum seeker policies, the responses revealed that the film contained new information and experiences even for this group. Their responses to each question are summarised and thematically analysed in the subsequent sections with a view to gauging what kind of empathy is being articulated and in what instances it is demonstrative of witnessing.

Responses beyond humanisation: towards critical empathy Questions about responses to film, what was moving and why Most responses to this first set of questions in the questionnaire used emotive language to describe their viewing experiences, particularly in reference to particular scenes or ex-​refugee testimonies. Examples include calling the film as a whole ‘emotional and amazing’, ‘powerful’, ‘moving’, ‘inspirational’, ‘heart-​warming’ and ‘horrifying’. In terms of the stories featured in the documentary, those highlighting women and children in distress (albeit still hopeful and surviving) seemed to have struck a chord with most viewers. This is particularly true of the segment starring Sheri, an Iranian woman who escaped with her three young sons, one of whom suffers from cerebral palsy. In response to her account, one viewer wrote that what they had the strongest reaction to was: ‘The striking contrast between Muhammad and Hamad (Sheri’s two sons), and the lingering effects on two young men trying to make their way in life.’ Similarly, there was a notable response to tales of self-​harm and children in detention, with one audience member writing, ‘To hear the stories about being locked in detention and seeing an [identity] card of a child –​with a number and the word “detainee” –​no child should be there.’ These responses suggest that the audience’s emotions were especially evoked when the lives of young adults and children were shown as being impacted by policy. In reply to the query about which story was most moving and why, many cited Sheri again, with one respondent remarking that she has ‘resilience we can all learn from, everyday Aussies need to hear this’. Another viewer also commented on being moved by the depression and anger still affecting Sheri’s sons. One of the respondents was affected by the account of the young Afghani mechanic Mustafa, who was looking after his brother, and 25

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noted that ‘white Australians liked him’. However, some responses also commented on the politics and policy aspects of the issue, and not just the emotive dimensions of the testimonies. For instance, in addition to saying that the stories were inspiring and assisted with healing, one viewer said, ‘Shame on our government and also ALP [Australian Labor Party]’. Another viewer remarked that the message of the film needed to be shared to start conversations on the issue. This second set of responses to the same questions indicate a willingness to identify the government-​level decisions and structural issues that have led to the problems at hand.

Questions about information on the asylum seeker issue, and the role of the media On the subject of whether questionnaire participants were previously aware of the conditions faced by asylum seekers and whether media had helped with the understanding, there was a range of similar responses. Given the self-​selecting nature of the group, most reported being cognisant of the Australian government’s treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat, but a few mentioned that the visuals of detention centres presented in the documentary was new information for them. In terms of media sources, some attributed their knowledge to the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (or the ABC, which is the national broadcaster) and others to The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Facebook and online campaigns of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (such as #refugeeswelcome). While there was an overwhelming consensus that social media could be used to educate and effect change, at least two respondents warned of the dangers of ‘clicktivism’ or being a passive activist online. From these responses, it is evident that no right-​leaning media sources were cited as avenues for obtaining balanced coverage of refugees and asylum seekers in the Australian context.

Questions about likely post-​screening activities Question 5 of the questionnaire gave participants four options when responding to what they are likely to do about the issue after the screening. These were: (1) spread the word; (2) join a refugee advocacy group; (3) volunteer to help refugees; or (4) other (please specify). Many ticked all of the first three choices, thereby indicating at least a strong immediate impact of the documentary. One viewer indicated that they were already working on a project to ‘engage local churches to welcome arriving refugees’, while another wrote that they work with refugees in their professional life and ‘have recently begun to learn more from them and about them’. 26

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On the related matter of how the viewers would go about discussing the issue with friends and family, responses varied a great deal in that some preferred highlighting the personal stories of asylum seekers, while others stated a desire for embracing the political dimensions of the issue. Still others appeared to want to do both, as one respondent wrote that they would emphasise ‘stories of people and their experiences, rather than refugees as numbers’. Responses focusing on the humanisation of the issue, while apparently disavowing the politics, made statements such as ‘retelling the stories of the beautiful resilient people in the film’ and ‘trying to defuse the politics of the situation to focus on the human aspect’. For those who did lean towards expressing critical empathy, the methods of advocacy included ways to ‘create conversations to help challenge myths; tell them my story as a former refugee from El Salvador civil war’; and ‘suggest that they learn more facts and not be ill-​informed by demonising refugees and asylum seekers’. These responses suggest that many audience members were already actively involved in refugee advocacy in their professional life or through volunteering, while others were willing to try initiating conversations in their peer groups to challenge the power of mediated stories in the mainstream.

Question about the role of the post-​screening Q&A with the filmmaker On the final question about what the audience gained from filmmaker Steve Thomas’ post-​screening question and answer session, most were in fact gratified by the presence of one of the participants in the film, Amir Javaan. Amir is a former refugee who now works as a real estate agent in the northern suburbs of Sydney. His participation in the post-​screening event was a last-​minute decision and not advertised in any of the marketing material related to the screening. One respondent noted that, ‘it was absolutely wonderful having Amir and hearing from him; to let these individuals own their stories is imperative’, while another wrote that it was ‘delightful and uplifting to feel Amir’s joy and positivity, and Steve’s laconic but intense passion’. It is noteworthy here that Amir’s agency over his own life story is seen as vital in the mediation of it produced by Thomas. Amir’s account of running into former Prime Minister John Howard (under whose government the offshore detention of asylum seekers arriving by boat was first introduced) at a North Sydney meeting particularly resonated with the audience. In other words, his resilience was a likely source of  hope for the viewers who clearly self-​identified as advocates. Their privileging of Amir’s presence over that of the filmmaker or themselves indicated consciousness of the need to decentre themselves for advocacy work. As Dreher puts it in her work on the politics of listening and what might constitute ethical listening, ‘listening across difference need not aim at understanding or knowledge of “others”, but might instead gravitate towards understanding 27

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networks of privilege and power and one’s own location within them’ (2009, p 451). While the testimonies presented in the film and the questionnaire itself called upon the audience to reflect on their own opinions and feelings regarding the issue, and how these came to be formed, this centring of their affective state went through a transformation as Amir took centre stage for the Q&A. It is only then that the spatial and experiential dynamic of the ex-​refugee-​advocate relationship moved beyond emphasising the empathy felt by the latter to the past and current conditions of the former, hence exhibiting attributes of ‘critical empathy’.

Critical empathy as witnessing: an intervention of ‘proper distance’ As explored at the beginning of this chapter, there is now growing emphasis on ethical media representation of refugee subjects so that the audience can empathise and consider taking action. In terms of the contemporary global media landscape, Roger Silverstone articulates this as an ‘ethics of care’ that is predicated on a particular politics of representation that he refers to as ‘proper distance’ (2007). This proper distance is defined as ‘the importance of understanding the more or less degree of proximity required in our mediated inter-​relationships if we are to create and sustain a sense of the other sufficient not just for reciprocity but for a duty of care, obligation and responsibility, as well as understanding’ (Silverstone, 2007, p 47). Silverstone adds that in promoting such understanding and responsibility, proper distance preserves the other through ‘difference as well as through shared identity’ (2007, p 47). In other words, the other is not so close that they are subsumed into the self, and nor is the mediated distance so great that it is impossible to imagine any common attributes. Silverstone further explains this representational distance as being both close and far, and mentions that it ‘requires imagination, both from those who construct the narratives and images of the media, and those, the audiences and readers, who, more dependently, construct their own images and narratives based upon them’ (2007, p 48). Elsewhere in his work, he identifies the importance of bearing responsibility as a media consumer as mediation is broader than the production of stories: the work of mediation … does not stop with the appearance of the world on the screen. It crucially and definitively depends on the work of the participant: minimally perhaps in the consistencies and inconsistencies of programme choice; and maximally in the capacity directly to produce media content in one form or another, as well as in the social and political responses to what has been seen or heard –​ that is through participant talk and action which engages directly 28

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not merely with the mediated images but with the world that those mediated images have sought to represent. (Silverstone, 2007, p 108) Despite this acknowledgement that audience participation in the offline realm is an essential component of socio-​political responsibility, there is scant detail on what this might look like, or how it may also align with the notion of ‘proper distance’. It is my contention that from the sample of viewer responses obtained in the audience research project outlined in this chapter, we can begin to gauge the parameters for the kind of witnessing that is an intervention in articulating critical empathy towards refugees. This kind of witnessing ‘works’ because it is neither too distant nor too close. The responses that pick up on the representation of refugees in detention centres as mere numbers, for instance, are exemplary of what a witnessing approach manifesting proper distance and expressing critical empathy might look like. In her work on ‘ethnocinema’, Anne Harris argues that it is a ‘pedagogy of intervention’ (2011, p 734) aimed at transforming pedagogies, particularly in intercultural contexts and with refugee communities. Such cinema is seen as providing a ‘productive intercultural disruption’ (2011, p 736) that challenges a deficit model of assistance to former refugees in schools. In this sense, Harris extends the medium beyond providing alternative representations to conceptualise it as a transformative process for critical consciousness. Drawing on the emancipatory pedagogy of Paulo Friere, Harris suggests the process of consciousness-​raising she highlights is transformative because it is liberating for both learners and teachers. While the article does not specifically discuss witnessing, it does foreground some of the critical frameworks that inform responsiveness among viewers and the potential for ‘mutual liberation’ (2011, p 738). This is not dissimilar to Silverstone’s call for action from the producers of media, as well as from its viewer–​participants. Such a critically engaged yet empathetic intervention is at the heart of community-​based and collaborative media practices aimed at social change, rather than comfortable notions of empathy or diverse representation. While a detailed analysis of the film screened as part of the project is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is noteworthy that most respondents reported feeling moved by particular stories. At the same time, they drew on different discourses to understand and describe their affective reactions. Those using their shared identity only to respond with empathy deployed a humanisation discourse that I have explained in earlier sections as selective, transient and mostly premised on personal feelings rather than systemic change. At the same time, those who acknowledged that these stories evoke compassion, and simultaneously call for a shift in mainstream media and political narratives, are suggestive of alternative responses that might be more conducive to ‘witnessing’ as well as a more sustainable duty of care 29

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and feelings of responsibility. This is because their participation is a knowing one and interested in holding media representations to account. According to Silverstone, as viewers our trust in the media must be conditional and critical, thereby leading to proper distance that is informed by proper scepticism (2007, p 127). This scepticism is demonstrated in the responses that acknowledge their reliance on independent media sources, including social media, yet are cognisant of the limitations of only acting in the online realm. In their analysis of social media responses to the photo of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi, for instance, Mortensen and Trenz note that there are frequent transitions from ‘affect’ to ‘critical reflection’ and ‘a capacity for social media publics to forward collective interpretations about the issues at stake and translate them into claims for political agency’ (2016, p 346). In other words, audiences and particular media can be harnessed for a shift from affect to responsibility, but this is more likely to happen with a public that reflects on the ‘distance’ inherent in each medium as well as their own positionality. In addition to feeling both empathy and scepticism, the ‘proper distance’ approach for turning empathy into witnessing needs to embrace the discomfort that comes with a decentring of the Western viewer self. This could be a consequence of acquiring new knowledge about the other, or it could come about because the other has been represented in a manner that one is not accustomed to (that is, as both close and far at once). Most contemporary mainstream media, in its distancing discourse, does not often ‘invite us to engage with the other, nor to accept the challenge of the other in sustainable ways’ (Silverstone, 2007, p 133). In doing so, we are delivered a form and a narrative that ‘provides a sanctuary for everyday life’ (Silverstone, 2007, p 133), rather than an opportunity to take stock and consider social and political action. What is required in its place is for viewers to hold media producers to account by demanding ‘a modicum of discomfort, a willingness to be troubled and an expectation that the media might help us in those expectations’ (Silverstone, 2007, p 135). This is similar to Ristovska’s work on acts of witnessing in settler colonial contexts, which she argues ‘challenge listeners to reconsider what they have listened to, read, viewed and learned in their lives that they must now recognise as colonial accounts’ (2016, p 322). In other words, this kind of witnessing requires ‘unlearning colonialism’ through a process of building a new relationship with the past. However, while offering these transformative and critical possibilities, the article stops short of specifying what this might entail in practice. This is where ‘proper distance’ can begin to address the gap in terms of understanding the need for audience discomfort and how it can transmute embodied affect into witnessing. Ristovska’s work on video activism does specify that it requires listeners to ‘take responsibility for the new knowledge they have acquired’ (2016, p 30

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322), which redistributes the burden of decolonisation from the colonised to those who benefit from the privileges of settler colonialism. In order to encapsulate this shift, she uses the term ‘strategic witnessing’, which makes a similar claim on those who view or bear witness to the testimony of others. Finally, the article explicates a decolonising and intercultural framework and its relevance to an Australian context in terms of migration and multiculturalism as explored through media practices. This framework is likely to be of value for the filmmakers of the refugee-​themed films cited at the start of this chapter who are particularly vested in ‘community screenings’ as opposed to traditional cinema releases and/​or film festival viewings. In paying attention to the video activism of a non-​governmental organisation called WITNESS, Ristovska notes that there has been a shift in focus in terms of their target audience, which is described as the ‘smart narrowcasting’ strategy (2016, p 11). The central questions addressed by this approach include: ‘who constitutes the audience?’ and ‘how to move them to action’ when thinking about maximising the impact of the organisation’s videos. Not only does this speak to ‘the practice of bearing witness as contingent upon audience involvement’ (Ristovska, 2016, p 13), but it also ‘situates the role of audiences as the foundation for these new witnessing modes’ (Ristovska, 2016, p 8) and is central to media witnessing which holds the potential for action and social change. In light of this, a consideration of their target audience and an articulation of possible avenues for this audience to make change could be more useful for the producers of refugee-​centred documentaries conducting community screenings. This is because providing toolkits to the audience could help bridge the gap between merely documenting human rights abuses and injustice to calls to action which implicate us (the audience) in a moral responsibility for that change. In other words, as Ristovska argues, what is needed is a shift from ‘witnessing of ’ to ‘witnessing for’, a turn to witnessing as a ‘socially embedded mechanism for change’ (2016, p 8). I argue that such a witnessing would appropriately channel the critical, situated empathy generated in the audiences of the films. ‘Witnessing for’, in turn, could benefit from Silverstone’s ‘proper distance’ approach being deployed to respond to the refugee-​themed documentaries that are being examined in this chapter. This is because of the community screening model adopted by their production teams, thereby indicating that inspiring agency in a community of advocates and would-​be advocates for the asylum seeker issue is of critical importance. ‘Proper distance’, as I have laid out here, makes an empathetic response more critical, and more likely to transmute into action as it moves beyond humanisation discourses to embrace discomfort, shows willingness to decentre the feelings of the self, and takes a sceptical distance from mainstream media representations.

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2

Jacinda Ardern and the Politics of Leadership Empathy: Towards Emotional Communities of Transformation

Introduction At the height of the COVID-​1 9 pandemic in March 2020, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was making headlines for her style of communication. While she had previously been established as an ‘empathetic’ leader in her response to the Christchurch massacre in 2019, this time it was her casual but clear use of social media that was drawing global attention. After the announcement of the first lockdown in her nation, Ardern went on to Facebook Live to ‘check in with everyone’ (Khalil, 2020). Her casual attire after putting her toddler to bed and her ease of communication captured global attention when in fact she had been using Facebook on a regular basis prior to this event to communicate with her citizenry. During these appearances, she was ‘always smiling and sharing slivers of her personal life, but never underplaying the seriousness of the situation while answering people’s questions’ (Khalil, 2020). On a broader scale, politicians have been using social media for over a decade and this has changed how they engage with their followers and constituents (McGuire et al, 2020). What this also enables is ‘a more conversational, dialogic approach which allows leaders to present a human face to the crisis and engender personal relationships with followers’ (McGuire et al, 2020, p 364). At stake here is not just broader engagement using social media during a crisis but the specific approaches for doing so in relation to issues of migration that are critical and likely to produce emotive responses for migrant and non-​migrant subjects alike. 32

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This chapter examines the case study of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in particular her performance of empathy in the aftermath of a white supremacist attack on mosques in Christchurch. The purpose of this detailed discursive study of relevant news coverage and photographs is to illustrate: (1) a shift in the Western mediascape whereby political leaders, among others, are scrutinised not just for their private feelings in a public disaster but are also required to perform empathy alongside those most affected; (2) the emotional communities this leads to, which could be a building ground for solidarities with migrant communities in the future. While what is presented here is certainly not a perfect example of a leader as the Ardern government has been criticised for its record on slashing immigration, it is a useful one to understand contemporary public manifestations of empathy. This is particularly the case where empathy is accompanied by some sense of action and accountability and is therefore critical in nature. For establishing the context for the case study, I will provide an overview of the existing scholarship on the politics of empathy, how this is mediated in the contemporary era, political leaders’ deployment and performance of such empathy (and its intersection with gender roles), and what all this means for the discursive construction of migration and migrants in the national public sphere. In doing so, the chapter will pay close attention to what is noteworthy about Jacinda Ardern’s particular performance of empathy and its mediation across the world through the generation of emotional communities. These communities are vital for preventing empathy from becoming too focused on the individual and instead endow it with the potential to be collectively shared, thereby leading to transformation in national discourses about migration and the ‘other’.

An emotional public sphere The public sharing of emotions is seen as a guarantor of authenticity for political figures, and this in turn makes them trustworthy. However, this popular perception of authenticity depends on the politician revealing the self through self-​disclosure (Wahl-​Jorgensen, 2019, p 68). In the case of Ardern, it is not so much that she is perceived as authentic for disclosing some details about her personal life. Rather, it is because her embodied affect as seen in her posture and facial expression, and her emotional articulation of it as observed in her words is understood as ‘true to the essence’ of an event like the Christchurch attacks. It is also broadly perceived as ‘deeply felt’ (Wahl-​Jorgensen, 2019, p 69). While such public sharing of seemingly private feelings might make politicians appear ordinary and relatable, the effectiveness of an approach of this kind also lies in the very nature of our contemporary mediated lives. These lives have shifted to naturalising more 33

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emotive, personalised, and narrativised dimensions in political news and related realms. In the case of political leaders’ engagements with the general public using various forms of media, it is also important to highlight that the prerogative to both display personal emotion and visibly express empathy, especially in the face of a crisis, is a relatively new phenomenon. Williamson refers to this as a historical shift to an ‘emotional public sphere’ and adds that this is marked by the communication of empathy becoming more verbally and visually pronounced over time (2019). Also, this emphasis on emotions in public is consistent with political figures inhabiting a public sphere that is more psychologically minded and pays greater attention to their emotional selves (Williamson, 2019). Intrinsic to the shift to such a public sphere is an increase in the mediatisation of all aspects of everyday life and formal politics in particular. The mediatisation of politics is defined here as ‘the interdependent relation between political and media institutions’, which leads to more emphasis on the performative dimensions of political messages (Williamson, 2019, p 259). To elucidate the beginning of this in the 1970s, Williamson cites the example of Australian prime ministers’ interaction with the media during disasters such as bushfires. She explains that despite ‘differences between individual prime ministers arising from political exigencies or other contextual factors, prime ministers now present themselves to the public, via the media, as leaders who are physically and emotionally engaged with Australians when disaster strikes by visiting stricken communities and displaying compassion’ (Williamson, 2019, p 250). In addition, what distinguishes national leaders like prime ministers from other local politicians in terms of a disaster response is that they are seen as being best placed to express empathetic solidarity towards all the citizens of the nation-​state. This feature is noteworthy in light of the case study under consideration in this chapter because as a national leader, Ardern’s performance of mediated empathy towards Muslim migrants lay the groundwork for how the rest of the nation saw them and how they envisaged a New Zealand citizen at such a time. In this emotional public sphere that is increasingly mediated, it is also vital that the expression of any emotion is perceived as real and authentic even as it is performed in a public setting. Therefore, a politician’s expression of grief at a time of national disaster, for instance, needs to be palpable rather than merely expressed privately. This expectation of public expression can present a challenge in terms of media reporting as the presence or absence of ‘real emotion’ can become ‘a crude measure by which journalists evaluate the performative success of political leaders’ responses to disaster’ (Williamson, 2018, p 1525). Despite this note of caution regarding the authenticity of an emotional response, the analysis presented in this chapter is based on the premise that there are tensions inherent in the feeling and expression 34

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of empathy in public discourse, but that it still has affective potential to be critical and therefore transformative in certain conditions.

The role of gender in empathetic political leadership While an analysis of gender in relation to the generation of empathy is not a central concern of this part, it is a factor worth noting in the discussion of political leadership and normative expectations of female leaders. Besides Ardern, other political leaders in the Global North (both male and female) have been associated with both performing empathy and trying to evoke it in their nation’s citizens. Prominent among them are former US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel whose discursive deployment of empathy is vital for understanding the context in which Ardern’s empathy was perceived as remarkable and enabling of feelings of community. In the case of Obama, his invoking of empathy made headlines in his first presidential term during the consideration of Sonia Sotomayor as a new Supreme Court Justice. At that time, he stated that embodying empathy would play ‘a decisive role in the selection process [of a new appointee]’ (cited in Shogan, 2009, p 859). In a more general sense, Obama saw empathy as a way to achieve national unity during his presidency (Shogan, 2009). This take on empathy as potentially unifying a diverse public was evident even before Obama became president. When he first stepped onto the national stage in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention, he greeted the audience with these words: ‘It’s that fundamental belief –​I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper –​that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family’ (Obama cited in Shogan, 2009, p 872). What is significant about Obama’s discursive use of empathy here is that it is explicitly grounded in conventional family values and is seen as naturally expanding from the members of the family to the citizens of the nation. Obama’s particular deployment of empathy throughout his presidency has also been characterised as ‘neoliberal’ by Pedwell in her work looking closely at his speeches (2014). She argues that such neoliberal empathy is distinct from a conservative approach to empathy that is based on charity. This is because Obama’s take on empathy is transnational and premised on mutuality, but his administration’s record does not match this rhetoric (Pedwell, 2014, p 52). What is missing, especially when compared with the case study of Ardern explicated later in this chapter, is ‘critical empathy’ that is embodied in the actions of the leader and manifested in the policies of their government. Moreover, by imploring American citizens to cultivate empathy as an obligation to better oneself (over and above its capacity to help others), Obama is seen as buying into a neoliberal agenda that is 35

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invested in an economically competitive nation over a socially caring one (Pedwell, 2014, p 54). In the context of the argument in this chapter, such a take on empathy is too individualised to have the affective potential to be transformative for a community. In addition, it is distanced from the modelling of care that is essential during crises. This means that calls for empathy such as Obama’s are more likely to remain in the cognitive realm rather than translating into an embodied affect that inspires solidarities across communities that are separated along the lines of class, race and migration status. Despite the limitations of neoliberal empathy, it is worth noting that Obama’s ambivalent call for empathy went out into a public that nonetheless formed functional communities by interpreting empathy in their own way to imagine a hopeful future. According to Pedwell, what she refers to as ‘Obama-​mania’ ended up generating a transnational community that was an affective intersection of empathy, hope and imagination, and also made space to be critical of his administration (2014, p 68). This generation of a global community leads her to conclude that Obama’s popularity and invocation of empathy indicate that empathy’s connotations go beyond that of being an affective skill or capacity. Rather, it becomes a ‘political space of mediation’ in the sense that it makes space for the examination and negotiation of the sometimes-​exclusionary aspects of empathy (Pedwell, 2014, p 68). Such an approach to empathy is vital for an understanding of the emotional communities brought about by Ardern’s use and embodiment of mediated empathy. The gendered dimensions of the empathy evoked by political leaders is also of significance. In the case of female politicians like Merkel and Ardern, their empathy is still seen as emerging from the family unit, but they are framed as the carer, nurse or healer rather than the ‘keeper’ of the family. Additionally, there is greater engagement with the global other at one’s borders as well as the migrant other within the body politic in the case of both female national leaders. For instance, Chaudhary writes that former IMF chief Christine Lagarde has described Merkel’s approach as being marked by ‘more cooperation and less confrontation’, particularly when dealing with international crises (2021). In the same article, Merkel is compared with Ardern and both are seen as examples of ‘empathetic and effective leaders’ (Chaudhary, 2021), with the additional caveat that women leaders potentially perform better in times of crises than their male counterparts. Despite the reinforcement of female political leaders during recent crises, it is important to emphasise that there is a longer history of their public displays of emotion being unfavourably represented in the media. Additionally, they experience overall greater scrutiny of their personal lives and appearance when they hold office. Wright and Holland refer to this as the ‘gender double bind’ facing female politicians: 36

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Qualities frequently associated with women and femininity, such as communality, compassion and empathy, are not associated with leadership and do not imbue the individual with agency. … Women leaders must, therefore, seek to find an acceptable balance between masculine and feminine traits; of both ambition and more caring qualities in order to perform their role ‘acceptably’. (2014, p 457) They also highlight the role of the media in making this balancing act more onerous. This is because in addition to shaping perceptions of politics, the media ‘plays a crucial role in mediating gender norms and reinforcing the double bind’ (Wright and Holland 2014, p 458). In these representations, the men are usually cast as normative political leaders while female politicians are framed as exceptions and have different standards imposed on them. Even with the momentary praise accorded to female leaders and their display of empathy during the COVID-​19 pandemic and other crises, empathy on its own is not seen as adequate for forging antiracist and feminist solidarities. According to Caygill and Sundar, empathy invites the one with power and privilege to equate two vastly different situations, and in this process the experiences and feelings of the ‘other’ are once again diminished or erased (2004). To overcome this shortcoming, Andrea Lobb distinguishes ‘critical empathy’ from ‘doxic empathy’ where the former is less ‘ideologically distorted’ and more rooted in an awareness of the power relations at play, and of political realities (2017). According to another school of thought, political leaders’ espousal of certain causes should not be reliant on personal experience and that structural differences should outrage everyone (Caygill and Sundar, 2004). This point is again salient in the case of Ardern, as will be explored later in the chapter as she has tended to stand behind campaigns that are not about her subjectivity. In this sense, she may be closer to critical empathy than many of her political contemporaries regardless of their gender.

Case study: Jacinda Ardern, the Christchurch massacre and performing empathy The local and global emotional communities that emerged in the wake of the killing of 51 Muslims gathered at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019 by an Australian-​born gunman (hereafter referred to as the ‘Christchurch massacre’) are deeply intertwined with the mediated empathy performed and embodied by Prime Minister Ardern. This case study will employ relevant media coverage of the event and secondary literature to unpack why this particular mediation of empathy was successful in radiating to the national community; how the idea of an exceptional leader was turned on its head through Ardern’s performative empathy; and the 37

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emergence of a critical empathy in the naming of racism and Islamophobia in the response to the event. In global media coverage of the Christchurch massacre, the images that have become iconic are that of Ardern adorned in a gold-​rimmed black headscarf with a sombre facial expression and framed by flowers reflected on a window, as well as a second one of her in the same attire and embracing a female survivor of the attack. The first was taken accidentally by a Christchurch City Council photographer, Kirk Hargreaves, who described it as a picture containing religious symbolism (McConnell, 2019). This is likely what has contributed to its universal appeal as it was shared widely in local, national and global news media, and even briefly projected onto a building in the United Arab Emirates. According to Mazer, what emanated from both these images and Ardern’s address on the day was a performance that was counter-​performative: ‘this is not us,’ ‘they are us.’ With her repeated refusal to speak the gunman’s name, to countenance his image or to engage with his manifesto and film, she did her best to manoeuvre the spotlight away from the horror show and onto her representation of an idealized, inclusive New Zealand. (Mazer, 2020, p 7) In other words, Ardern intuitively embodied an empathetic leader and projected this onto what she claimed was an inclusive nation. The projection may have worked in creating an emotional national community that felt united and in mourning at least immediately after the attack. While New Zealand is not insulated from the spike in Islamophobia and racism that has gripped the Global North since 9/​11, ‘only a slim few reacted to the events of 15 March with racist, dangerous rhetoric; overwhelmingly New Zealanders had followed Ardern’s lead and wholeheartedly embraced the Muslim community’ (Chapman, 2020, p 115). In her biography of the leader, Chapman further adds that in embracing this stigmatised and marginalised group, Ardern showed ‘how a small act of compassion from a leader can affect a community’ (2020, p 115). This visual and verbal embrace therefore set in motion a ripple effect that generated mediated affects across the globe and had a tangible impact on how Muslims and other racialised immigrants were treated just after the Christchurch massacre. Writing for Slate magazine, Li sees Ardern’s response as testament to the importance of the mediation of public emotion to promote a flourishing political and social life (2019). He adds that this needs to occur in addition to legislative solutions as it addresses the ‘hearts of the nation’ (Li, 2019). That Ardern has been more successful at this than many of her predecessors and global counterparts merits some investigation into her formative years and leadership style. 38

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What distinguishes Ardern’s brand of empathy, particularly as a political leader, is that through her upbringing and early years in politics, she has stood for communities and causes that have nothing to do with her own subjectivity. Although she grew up in a Mormon household and didn’t want to wear shorts at school, she campaigned for her schoolmates to be able to do so when she was a student representative (Chapman, 2020, p 134). Similarly, she later resolutely fought for LGBTQIA+​New Zealanders to have equal rights (Chapman, 2020, p 134). In this way, Ardern’s empathy is akin to that of an ethical ally and this may also be the reason she was able to invoke the same affect in others like her who are not racialised immigrants. This is increasingly difficult in a world where understanding and representing the experience of ‘others’ is a complex terrain due to substantial histories of cultural appropriation, colonialism, patriarchy and homophobia. However, what Ardern accomplished was an empathetic approach that did not attempt to subsume difference. Instead, she respected it by listening to the impacted communities rather than speaking on behalf of them. Malik notes that although she was initially sceptical of Ardern wearing a hijab as it can presume that such a symbol is the sole definer of Muslim identity, she changed her mind as the Prime Minister made a compelling case for it in an interview. She argues that the headscarf was meant to show solidarity with those most visible and hence most vulnerable to attack (Malik, 2019). In other words, Ardern’s discursive deployment of empathy as an ally who happened to be the national leader was more about standing with, rather than speaking for those most impacted. This aspect of her deployment of empathy was also noted in global mainstream media as Rizvi favourably compared Ardern to Australian politicians and commented, ‘Ardern comforts not by instruction but by making space for the thoughts and feelings of others’ (2019). Due to her focus on listening over instructing, Ardern’s leadership style was widely reported as being ‘exceptional’. It must also be noted that this sense of being an exception was not viewed as an aberration from the male leadership norm in a negative sense. In their book on the 2017 New Zealand general election, Curtin and Greaves write that Ardern’s response to the 2019 Christchurch massacre was described as ‘unfamiliar and rare’ because most governments in comparable contexts in the Global North are either Islamophobic and xenophobic, or entirely silent on matters to do with migration and Islam (2020, p 179). In a similar vein and writing for the BBC, Nagesh commented that although Ardern was compared to young, ambitious, and relatively progressive world leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron when she first got elected, she has performed better than them in a moment of national crisis. This is because she has literally and figuratively embraced bodies that are usually othered over avoiding such migration-​related issues to prevent a potential domestic political backlash (2019). This leadership style has also 39

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been referred to as a kind of ‘inclusive populism’ (Curtin and Greaves, 2020, p 181) even as Ardern has called herself a ‘pragmatic idealist’ on several occasions (Mapp, 2017). While her government’s record on immigration and its coalition with the New Zealand First party has been criticised in several outlets (McDonald, 2020), there is no doubt that in response to the Christchurch attacks, Ardern did mediate and perform empathy effectively and exceptionally in comparison to other world leaders. A longer-​term positive association has also emerged from the images, social media engagement and speeches that Ardern was involved in during the response to the attacks. This is indicated by the fact that when she spoke at the Islamic Women’s Council conference in August 2019, she was greeted like a member of the family by the audience (Chapman, 2020, p 138). What is also worth noting in the local Muslim community’s embrace of her is that she did not shy away from naming racism and Islamophobia as the root causes of the attack (Lester, 2019). Thereby, she was able to draw on a form of empathy that was situated and critical and not just superficial. According to Malik, Ardern comprehensively addressed a whole suite of issues that impact Muslims living in OECD countries like New Zealand, and this is what won her the acceptance and trust of the community: And at the same time as she disowned the suspected attacker, she also attempted to reverse the narrative that it was immigrants, or outsiders, who agitate white natives into restiveness. She seemed to cover all the issues that many Muslims privately and publicly cautioned against, the complacency about hate speech online, the lassitude when it came to confronting Islamophobia head on, and the marriage between Muslim-​ bashing, racism and anti-​immigration. (2019) Similarly, in their empirical research on the representation of Muslim minorities by politicians, Daghigh and Rahim found that the predicational strategies used by Ardern appear to portray this group in a positive light. To be specific, these representational categories include ‘Muslims as victims’, ‘Muslims as part of New Zealand’, and ‘Muslims as being of good faith’ (Daghigh and Rahim, 2020, p 184). They add that this can also be read as actively opposing the orientalist discourse that is dominant in the West, and which tends to stereotype Muslims. Instead, she transmitted the possibility of coexistence on the basis of shared values, and thereby attempted to ‘change the global legitimacy given to the imagined boundary between non-​Muslims and Muslims’ (Daghigh and Rahim, 2020, p 192). Malik surmises that what has emerged from the Christchurch massacre is not just Ardern’s successful handing of the crisis, but also her consistent work to ‘combat racism and Islamophobia, in all its complicated slippery ways, from the trenches of social media to the corridors of the White House’ (2019). Both the consistency of 40

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this work and its complex nature across media and political platforms point to the critical nature of the empathy embodied and displayed by Ardern. This is because, on the one hand, critical empathy pays greater attention to the non-​verbal embodiment of empathy for social suffering (Lobb, 2017), and this is visible across Ardern’s photographs in the wake of the massacre –​ particularly her attire, posture and expression. Second, critical empathy is associated with a moral imperative, thereby distinguishing it from the feelings one might have for the victims of a natural disaster, for instance (Lobb, 2017). In this sense again, Ardern’s words and embodied affects speak to how the attack in Christchurch was entirely preventable and uncalled for, who bears responsibility and how solidarity could be expressed by the entire nation.

Discussion: emotional communities and empathy While empathy is often understood in popular discourse as something that arises in the face of witnessing another’s distress, the disciplines of moral psychology and philosophy add another dimension that is crucial for understanding how an ‘emotional community’ may be formed. For instance, in Moral Sentimentalism, Slote argues that on the one hand, parents use moral principles to ‘induct’ empathetic concern for others into the young child (2010, p 20). At the same time, the child can also learn empathy when it is demonstrated by the parent, thereby showing that moral attitudes can spread by contagion (Slote, 2010, p 20). The latter aspect of acquired empathy is vital for unpacking both why it is ‘performed’ by political leaders and also how it may lead to a sort of empathic osmosis, especially on issues and discourses of migration. Moreover, the existence of social media, as well as 24/​7 news media as described earlier, amplifies the potential of the affect and its repeated performance could lead to further reproduction of affect by contagion. As explicated earlier, the contemporary expectation of emotional display by political figures, and the media’s interest in facilitating the performance of affect is central to understanding the role that both can play in turning the affective potential of empathy into a productive emotion. Duffy and Yell surmise that, ‘Public emotional display –​ and the act of bearing witness to this –​is becoming the new form of emotional regulation’ (2014, p 113). In effect, these shifts towards more expression mark a change in the very ‘emotional rules’ that historians of emotions have been observing as multivalent in any given historical epoch. In her well-​known article on ‘worrying about emotions in history’, Rosenwein notes that emotional rules tend to be a combination of individual and cultural attributes, and hence we need to consider the approaches of both cognitivists and social constructionists (2002, p 837). She adds that this combination points towards a history of the emotions that ‘does not postulate “restraint” as its one variable 41

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but rather looks at two complementary issues: what people consider (both consciously and unconsciously) conducive to their weal or woe and what possibilities cultures provide for the expression and representation of their feelings’ (Rosenwein 2002, p 837). Such an understanding of a history of the emotions and their expression underpins my analysis here of the emotional communities that were formed in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, particularly in response to Ardern’s iconic photographs. If emotional regulation is now being replaced with public display, especially in the presence of traditional and social media, we then have to consider what kind of publics or communities it is interpellating and sometimes even helping to form. In her work on the history of emotions, Rosenwein has defined ‘emotional communities’ in the following terms: People lived –​ and live –​ in what I propose to call ‘emotional communities’. These are precisely the same as social communities –​ families, neighborhoods, parliaments, guilds, monasteries, parish church memberships –​but the researcher looking at them seeks above all to uncover systems of feeling: what these communities (and the individuals within them) define and assess as valuable or harmful to them; the evaluations that they make about others’ emotions; the nature of the affective bonds between people that they recognise; and the modes of emotional expression that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore. (2002, p 842) What does this say about the emotional communities that a nation’s leader helps form, especially on polarising issues such as migration? What role do various forms of media play in facilitating or debilitating the formation of transformative emotional communities as opposed to those that amplify fear and anxiety in relation to migrants and migration issues? Another lens on contemporary political communities views them as affectively fluid and as ‘formed and (re)formed in potentially transformative ways through empathy and hope’ (Pedwell, 2014, p 62). This dynamic facet of emotional communities is also of consequence for the case study in this chapter as it offers potential to those individuals who would not ordinarily be politicised to nonetheless be part of these communities during moments of political crises such as the Christchurch massacre. In terms of the role of the media and the processes of mediation in facilitating emotional communities and not just displaying individual emotions, Papacharissi is of the view that there is a definitional function at play. Using politicised Twitter hashtags such as #ThisIsACoup as examples, she explains that they are open to definition, redefinition and re-​appropriation. Therefore, the hashtags serve as ‘framing devices that allow crowds to be rendered into publics –​networked publics that want to 42

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tell their story collaboratively and on their own terms’ (Papacharissi, 2016, p 308). This means that social media endows agency to audiences that allows them to participate in the process of storytelling. Papacharissi adds that the implications of such a framing role are that the media may not make or break revolutions, yet they lend a distinct ‘mediality’ to emerging publics, and the resulting affect keeps them going (Papacharissi, 2016, p 308). What is produced thereby is not a well-​defined community, but rather ‘feelings of community’ that may persist long after the initial events that called them into being have passed (Papacharissi, 2016, p 310). The traces of affect produced by movements on social media are not identical to the feelings generated by the photographs of a political leader wearing a headscarf and embracing a Muslim community member. Nonetheless, both produce feelings of community that reverberate in other occurrences around the event or in future crises, thereby offering global leaders templates to mould communities that don’t demonise migrants when it is most tempting to do so. Given the discussion of emotional rules and emotional communities in the light of the case study in this chapter, it is my contention here that those supporting migrants increasingly need to display their empathy and related emotions to mobilise apathetic individuals, and sometimes even institutions. This is especially the case for political leaders who need to perform empathy so that it can, in turn, create a ripple effect in the polity.

Conclusion: COVID-​19, the future of leadership empathy and the ‘other’ In this chapter, I began by outlining the parameters of how empathy is conceptualised by male and female-​identifying global political leaders, and how these differences are manifested in their leadership style as well as policies. Further, this is linked to the notion of ‘emotional communities’ that are invoked by such leaders, especially as the emotional rules around the expression of emotion in the mediated public sphere have shifted from restraint to an expectation of display. These ideas of mediated and gendered embodiment of empathy, and the fluid emotional communities they bring into focus during crises such as the Christchurch massacre, lay the foundation for a close analysis of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s ‘performance’. What the analysis reveals is a leader who did not have a perfect record on immigration but who nonetheless succeeded in winning the trust of both the Muslim communities in her nation (and globally) and in convincing non-​Muslims that ‘they are us’. In other words, Ardern was able to successfully embody and perform empathy in a manner that aided the formation of emotional communities, however fleeting, in the wake of a crucial political event that could have been potentially far worse for New Zealand’s Muslim residents. 43

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The chapter also used Ardern’s expressions of empathy and use of social media during COVID-​19 at the outset as a springboards for a broader discussion of emotions and political leadership. The pandemic bears mentioning again in the concluding comments as it has somewhat altered dominant perceptions of desirable traits in political leaders, and this is consequential for how issues of migration (and related perceptions of migrants) will be handled. This means that the empathy embodied and performed by the likes of Ardern and Merkel on occasions to do with dealing with migration issues may not merely become more acceptable, but even more desirable than the relative apathy of male leaders. In their work on gender and political leadership during COVID, Johnson and Williams argue that the pandemic has ‘provided unusual opportunities for women leaders to display forms of protective femininity’ (2020, p 945). They add that this is because, traditionally, it is mothers who are charged with caring for sick members of the family, maintaining household hygiene and being empathetic in traumatic times. By virtue of this association of care work with women, the pandemic has undermined the divide between the private and public spheres and allowed female leaders to ‘leverage women’s role in the home to their advantage in the political sphere’ (Johnson and Williams, 2020, p 943). It is also worth noting that Ardern was explicitly (though metaphorically) portrayed as the maternal protector of New Zealand during the COVID-​related lockdown in New Zealand (Johnson and Williams, 2020). In addition to this demonstration of feminine care, she was also involved in consistent and clear ‘crisis’ communications, which led to perceptions of her being strong and effective in the ways male leaders are conventionally seen to be (McGuire et al, 2020). This shift in the perception of a female political leader raises questions about whether such a valuing of empathetic display in national leaders, which in turn has the potential to affectively evoke emotional communities in their constituents will outlast the pandemic. Further, what also remains to be seen is if such empathetic communication will not just be ‘exceptional’ in relation to crises to do with migration, but if it can also come to be seen as a standard expectation from political leaders.

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PART II

Aspiration

The re-​conceptualisation of ‘aspiration’ in this part occurs at the crucial moment when the individual aspirations of migrant youth are not realised due to systemic barriers, and when they interact with digital media texts circulating in mediated, globally accessible youth cultures. This engagement is followed by the generation of modes of civic mobility such as self-​ representation in the media, formal politics and other realms with high visibility and influence. Civic mobility here is understood as young people’s political sensibilities and commitment that translate into civic action in the public sphere, which in turn is impacted by context alongside categories of age, ethnicity, class and gender among others (Gordon, 2008). While the part on empathy was focused on the feelings and sense of responsibility for making change of non-​migrants, the present part moves to centre migrants and their agency. It constitutes the heart of the book as it signals a shift from talking about and responding to migrants to granting them the main platform for voicing their emotions and experiences regarding migration. What this part facilitates is an expanded understanding of the notion of aspiration as it is currently used in migration studies. In effect, it builds a framework that theorises aspiration as a mode of claiming space for the self (and related communities of ethnic origin and practice) in civic society such that it becomes a manifestation of ‘collective aspiration’. This kind of aspiration for the community as a whole, particularly for diverse representation across a range of key realms, is also distinct from the previous migrant generation’s relationship to the host society and merits closer attention. Specifically, the chapters in this part aim to advance the notion of ‘aspiration’ as it is currently used to understand migrant motivations. In doing so, they take Appadurai’s seminal work on aspiration as a strong feature of cultural capacity that enables human beings to engage their own futures (beyond individual choices) as a point of departure (2004). He sees 45

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this manifested as actions and performances that have local cultural force (Appadurai, 2004). In a similar vein, following Bourdieu, Stahl et al describe aspirations as ‘(re)produced through the interaction of habitus, a matrix of dispositions that shape how the individual operates in the social world; capital, which is economic, cultural, social and symbolic; and field, that is, social contexts’ (2018, p 6). Building on such a conceptualisation of aspiration as defined by the socio-​economic factors and contexts that determine the future orientations of the individual, the chapters in this part build on extant literature that connects the aspirations of second-​generation migrants to the context that is the discourses and representations of cultural diversity in globally accessible digital media. While this is arguably a heterogenous group with a range of career aspirations, research indicates that they are facing the racial equivalent of a ‘glass ceiling’ (Hines, 2019). Despite high levels of education and income, they are largely unseen, or represented through racial stereotypes in the nation’s dominant media industries. When speaking of the diverse community’s aspirations for socio-​economic mobility, research tends to focus on education and/​or income levels rather than their visibility in decision-​making or influential roles in civic society. Traditionally, aspiration functioned as a useful concept to view materialist consumption practices, but I contend that it can also be deployed to understand migrant agency and how a different, more genuinely inclusive future can be imagined. As Robertson et al put it in their work on youth mobilities in the Asia-​Pacific, ‘aspirations do not only pertain to abstract futures –​rather, aspirations actively influence present actions and realities and are constituted through particular spaces’ (2018, p 617). Such an understanding is now vital for policymakers and cultural institutions in immigrant nations as it helps plan for a demographic with particular goals and needs and able to mobilise as a collective to attain them. In the Australian context where I am located, aspiration also emerged as a significant buzzword during the 2019 federal election to describe the contemporary electorate’s state of mind. For instance, writing for The Australian after Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s win, Overington remarked that conservatives were not selfish as they cared deeply for their families, and this implied such aspirations –​of wanting a better life for themselves –​drove this country and other Western democracies (2019). Other characterisations of this interpretation of aspiration are more critical and note ‘the prevalence of the aspiration narrative has coincided with government suppression of socioeconomic mobility’ (Clark, 2018). Clark adds that former Australian Prime Minister John Howard referred to the aspirational class in Australia as ‘social climbers’, and this has stuck in the social imaginary. In a similar vein, Triffitt is of the view that certain political results demonstrate that ‘market-​ led “aspiration” continues to trump government-​sponsored “fairness” in the minds of middle Australia’ (2019). At the same time, other cultural 46

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commentators have been keen to frame aspiration in a more collective light to pave a new path for middle class Australians. Writing for The Guardian in the wake of the 2019 federal election, Martin pointed out that people wanted a better life for both their neighbourhood and the nation (2019). Further, Falzon looked at a number of grass-​roots social movements and concluded that they are a vehicle for realising collective aspirations such as better pay and conditions (2019). Another shared meaning of aspiration, especially as it pertains to migrants in multicultural societies (many of whom are already middle class when they migrate), is socio-​economic mobility acquired through cultural capital. This cultural capital can be embodied or institutional. While education is seen as a means of gaining the latter, the former is more elusive for the first generation of migrants. For the second and further generations, embodied cultural capital makes aspiration an affective matter, and one that is at once about individual and collective goals. This part attempts to pin down the embodied forms of aspiration by examining these affective, collective aspirations, often shaped by and articulated through the media and the mediated public sphere of formal politics. Such a re-​framing of aspiration in migration studies is also essential to move beyond the literature on aspiration that views migrant motivations to move, or practices in the new home, as purely rational and/​or driven by economic mobility. According to Scheibelhofer, ‘much current research interprets aspirations for the family’s economic well-​being as key, serving as the guiding motive in the lives of many first-​generation migrants’ (2018, p 1005). Likewise, Naidoo’s research with high school students from migrant backgrounds in the Western Sydney suburb of Blacktown concludes that the aspiration to ‘do well educationally and pursue high career options is co-​constituted by the high school students and their parents’ (Naidoo, 2015, p 110). Schools constitute a significant site for migrant aspiration research for other scholars who have looked into Asian Australian education patterns in particular. Watkins et al also note that in market-​driven educational environments, ‘Asian migrants often respond by deploying highly strategic approaches to school (and residential) choice, and strategic use of private tutoring and other training, particularly in preparation for selective school admission tests and standardised examinations’ (2017, p 2289). This body of recent research shows that migrant aspiration continues to focus on acquiring social, economic and cultural capital through education. However, what is not clear is how the cultural capital thus acquired, especially by the children of immigrants, helps shape their own aspirations, both in terms of their individual career choices and more broadly with regards to the inclusion of their communities. Despite the largely economic and rational take on aspiration, it is important to look at what is taking place in other realms of everyday life, particularly for the children of migrants for whom securing financial security may be 47

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part of broader systemic concerns. As such, the first chapter in this part deals with how second-​generation Asian Americans and Asian Australians deploy their cultural capital in the format of online/​televised comedy, and in turn use it to channel the aspirations of their racialised communities. This case study is followed by a close examination of another high-​profile group of second-​generation migrants in the subsequent c­ hapter –​this time selected politicians hailing from ethnic backgrounds in Canada, the US and the UK who employ social media to build a following and manifest a particular kind of ‘digital intimacy’. This digital intimacy is in turn used to convey the aspirations of their youthful, second and further-​generation migrant constituents. In moving from online comedy to digital practices of engagement used by second-​generation immigrant politicians, this part builds from covert to overt forms of political expression. In both cases, migrant agency is foregrounded and used strategically to manifest the collective aspirations of those who may identify with them.

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3

Asian Americans and Asian Australians on Screen: Aspiring to Centre the Community Through Comedy

Introduction According to Pew Research Centre’s 2012 report on Asian Americans, they are the highest-​income, best-​educated and fastest-​g rowing racial group in the United States. At the same time, they are largely unseen or represented through racial stereotypes in the nation’s dominant screen industries. When speaking of the diverse community’s aspirations for socio-​ economic mobility, research tends to focus on education and/​or income levels. Similarly, according to the 2016 census, Australians claiming Asian ancestries constitute about 13% of the population and continue to grow every year. Chinese and Indian Australians (among others) also tend to be highly educated, and working in white-​collar jobs, but are under or mis-​ represented in the media. As indicated in the part introduction, there is research emerging on how Asian aspirations for better education for their children are leading to particular patterns in Australian public schools (Ho, 2020). This chapter argues for a broader understanding of migrant aspiration that transcends a rational understanding of upward mobility and includes how leading second-​generation migrant media practitioners reflect the affective, everyday lives and aspirations of their communities on screen. Such mediated stories tend to be in a range of genres, such as stand-​up comedy, drama, or reality television. What is vital for our understanding of their aspirations is unpacking how these mediated stories combine affect with critique that could lead to broader social change on issues of migration and perceptions of migrants. 49

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The mediation outlined in this chapter is, then, a manifestation of their aspirations, albeit not primarily of a material nature. The mobility they seek is not merely to do with climbing the next rung of the socio-​economic ladder but more importantly to display confidence in their ethnic identity and demand inclusion in the white-​dominated spaces of their countries at the same time (in place of stereotypes of being submissive, or waiting to be chosen). In the case of the two mediated texts explored in this chapter, this kind of aspiration even moves beyond demanding inclusion in the white mainstream or challenging dominant stereotypes of one’s community. It does so by de-​centring whiteness and seeking to re-​define an (invisibly) white national identity and culture. How is this kind of aspiration affective? I argue that this is the case because it channels the anger of particularly younger, second-​generation migrants into creative and cultural endeavours with potentially vast audiences. Not only is the representation of the self and one’s community a source of validation for these migrants as individuals, but its national and/​or global popularity also authenticates their collective identities. This collective sigh of relief, as it were, is what the case studies in this chapter will unpack as constituting the other end of the affective dimension of their aspiration, which began with the creative articulation from the migrant practitioner’s end. What such a transformation of affect achieves is not just a mutation from anger to relief. As will be demonstrated through the examples of two migrant stand-​up comedians and their audience reception, the affective aspiration of this group also carves out a space for the collective transformation of their communities by couching critique (of the self and the other) in an entertainment format and by providing them with well-​recognised role models outside of traditional professions. In this chapter, I undertake the work of examining this new kind of aspiration, which has collective transformative potential, through a close reading of two key Asian American and Asian Australian media texts, and how they have been received by their respective audiences. The texts are Indian American comedian Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act series, which aired on Netflix from 2018 to 2020, and Sri Lankan Australian stand-​up comic Nazeem Hussain’s Legally Brown series, which appeared on Australia’s ‘multicultural broadcaster’, SBS, in 2013–​14. The case study approach employed here pays particular attention to episodes about the status and future of one’s own migrant community, such as Minhaj’s on the importance of the Asian American vote in the 2020 Presidential election and Hussain’s skits on ‘Uncle Sam’ and ‘Muslim Shore’. Audience data was collected through anonymised samples available on Facebook, Twitter and other online discussion forums, as well as official reviews, and then examined using a thematic discourse analysis. An overview of the literature on the use of comedy in social justice and a genealogy of how ‘ethnic comedy’ in 50

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immigrant nations has shifted to become more overtly political will provide a foundational context for the cast studies.

On comedy and social justice At face value, comedy is not an obvious choice when considering social justice work, such as raising awareness about the issues that confront racialised communities. However, as Chattoo and Feldman argue in their recent book, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice, comedy is in a golden era of experimentation and influence, both within the US and around the world (2020, p 5). This is especially the case in the age of ‘infotainment’, or the merger of entertainment and news formats alongside a decline of trust in government and traditional media institutions. Thus, comedy provides a unique channel for change in ‘pressing social justice challenges, such as global poverty, immigrant rights, gender equality, and climate change, to name only a few’ (Chattoo and Feldman, 2020, p 5). Moreover, the contemporary digital media landscape is giving rise to new forms of comedy as well as providing platforms for new voices and cultural identities. This makes it a highly appropriate form to investigate screen representations of Asian Americans and Asian Australians, and how they are affectively received in these communities that have traditionally been associated with their socio-​economic or educational aspirations alone. Amanda Lotz (2014) coined the term ‘phenomenal television’ to refer to a particular category of programming that retains the importance once attributed to television’s earlier operation as a cultural forum despite the changes of the post-​network era. According to Chattoo and Feldman, the ‘new watercooler-​moment entertainment’ is characterised by its ability to ‘cut through media clutter and reach incongruous, or unexpected, audiences due to its resonance with particular themes and discourses circulating in the culture and its attention to issues of social importance’ (Chattoo and Feldman, 2020, p 6). The comedy series explored in this chapter are embedded in this context of a seemingly post-​network era where audiences are deeply fragmented, but wherein ‘watercooler moments’ occur nonetheless in the case of certain kinds of multi-​platform texts that speak across distinct viewership cohorts.

‘Ethnic comedy’ in migrant settler nations: a story of change Comedy is also an appropriate genre to examine within phenomenal television as it embodies many of the socio-​political changes of the post-​network media landscape. This is especially the case in immigrant settler nations like the US and Australia where ethnic minorities are increasingly demanding a fair stake in their representation, both on the screen and behind it. In the case 51

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of the US, 9/​11 has also been a watershed moment in bringing about a rise in Muslim or ‘ethnic comedy’. According to Bilci, this kind of comedy has become ‘a series of inversions played out against a background of Islamophobia’ (2010, p 196). However, some of this comedy is characterised as re-​affirming the common humanity of both white and Muslim Americans rather than channelling migrants’ anger or performing critique (Bilci, 2010, p 196). In her overview of British migrant comedy, Ilott attributes such placation to an earlier generation of comedians who expressed a desire for a ‘happily multicultural society facilitated through an ostensibly inclusive form of comedy’ (2015, p 169). However, later forms of comedy, especially in film, focus on the fears exacerbated by the media that impact particular migrant groups (Ilott, 2015, p 169). While dealing with difficult subject matter, the strategy of the comedic writing in the latter context is to position laughter as an alternative to a sense of threat and to critique dominant society in the process. Another defining characteristic of the newer generation of comics in migrant nations is that they are explicitly challenging the canon in their medium of choice and usually have access to multiple forms of cultural capital to do so. Nazeem Hussain, whose work is explored later in this chapter, articulated this change to a journalist as a decentring of the white norm on Australian screens: ‘We’re used to middle aged white dudes doing comedy on TV, so to see that space occupied by a different group of people shows the changing face of Australia. People are interested in a different type of comedian and tastes are broadening’ (cited in Cronin, 2018). At the same time, it must be noted that most of the comedians doing the challenging are in the somewhat privileged position of being the children of immigrants, and that they claim knowledge of both the ‘ethnic’ and mainstream spheres. This is also reflected in Ballantyne and Podkalicka’s work with second-​generation migrant Australians who were studying media and communication at university. They found that, partly due to coming of age in the era of digital international communication, this generation has a distinctive relationship to the national imaginary (Ballantyne and Podkalicka, 2020). What motivated many of them to embark on careers in the media was to address the lack of content that reflected ‘their local, place-​based lifestyles and the intergenerational dynamics of migrated families that is the fabric of their lives’ (Ballantyne and Podkalicka, 2020). Therefore, it is crucial to consider the context and cultural capital of these new migrant creators in order to understand the affect that they are channelling and generating within their audiences.

Case study 1: Patriot Act –​introduction and overview of affective reviews Making its debut on the international online streaming platform Netflix in late 2018, Patriot Act is the brain child of two second-​generation South 52

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Asian Americans –​Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam. The team behind this political satire cum talk show also made all of the episodes, exclusives and deep cuts available on its YouTube channel. Minhaj is known for a previous stand-​up comedy special on Netflix titled Homecoming King, his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show, as well as being the featured speaker at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2017. Similar to other American comedians of Asian ancestry such as Aziz Ansari, Hari Kondabolu and Ali Wong, he explores issues of identity and migration in his comedy. However, having the platform afforded by a whole series with six seasons and 40 episodes enabled Minhaj to delve deeper into a wide range of socio-​political issues that are of concern to millennials across the globe or ones that they may need to be further educated on. These include episodes on the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, the role of Amazon, content moderation and free speech on social media platforms, and the rise of music streaming. What is of interest in this chapter is his chosen mode of address to the children of immigrants in nearly all of the material, and the episodes that focus on Asian American and South Asian American issues in particular. In terms of Minhaj’s career trajectory, he established an early connection with migrants (and especially their children) through his sketches and references to his own family in Homecoming King. According to reviewer Anum Ahmed writing for the popular blog Muslim Girl, ‘From the story of how his parents met, to growing up post-​9/​11, to his senior prom, Hasan’s personal anecdotes validated experiences shared by other Muslim Americans and immigrant minorities’ (2019). In other words, Minhaj was not only articulating but also embodying the affective experiences of many racialised immigrants and their offspring. The reviewer goes so far as to suggest that he is the ‘rapper who made it’ (Anum Ahmed, 2019). This is a reference to the socio-​economic aspirations of migrant parents in particular and how they encourage their children to pursue careers with more economic certainty. By referring to Minhaj as a rapper and the ‘kid from the block’ who made it, the reviewer is implying that he has been both defiant of traditional expectations yet also a role model in becoming successful in his chosen non-​conventional career path. In this way, the comedian embodies the affective registers of anger and oppression to begin with, and this transmutes into the affect of aspiration when he is well received across both ethnic and ‘mainstream’ communities. The notion of being a potential role model for young people in racialised migrant communities is vital to Minhaj’s story as it sets into motion a cycle that ensures there is a pool of talent from these groups that is encouraged to interact with/​in the mainstream public sphere. Since his college days when Minhaj first performed stand-​up, he was driven by the fact that he could not see himself represented (cited in Rao, 2018). It is possibly for this reason that he does not shy away from cultural and linguistic references 53

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that Anglo or European viewers may not understand, thereby decentring them. According to reviewer Kozak, Patriot Act’s appeal to migrant viewers such as himself ranges from the sly to the evident: this includes the logo of the show itself, which is a satirical take on a draconian US law that has had the effect of demonising Islam, and his use of explicitly Indian names in comedic skits (2019). Goldstein comments on the show being ‘unapologetically Indian’ as ‘there’s no other political show where the host’s favorite running joke are act-​outs of Desi uncles and aunties. And there’s definitely no other show where those same elders warn the host not to cover Indian politics because some will think he’s a Pakistani spy’ (Goldstein, 2019). This simultaneous ownership of one’s culture of origin and critique of institutionalised racism represents the sort of assertive and unique cultural capital that leads to mainstream success in a crowded comedy market, and which also enabled him to begin to question prejudice among his own community members. What is unique about Minhaj’s cultural capital is his particular combination of generational and cultural perspectives, and the infotainment and cross-​ platform format of his show. This means that he uses his knowledge of different demographics to transform the pain of his migration story into a cultural product that is cool and cleverly packaged. This packaging is essential for his aspirational brand among young immigrants, which combines an already middle-​class mobility with cultural cache before helping them to put the spotlight on their own blind spots. In a review for Vulture magazine, Goldstein comments that Minhaj’s point of view is both passionate and particular (2019). It is shaped not only by his ethnicity and religion as he is Indian American and Muslim, but also by his youth, thus helping Patriot Act stand out among the plethora of post-​2016 satires (Goldstein, 2019). Fellow Indian American and pop culture writer Krishnamurthy describes his appeal to youth and the format of the show as vital to Minhaj’s success: The best way to put it is he had this millennial sensibility where he was smart and he could talk about politics and climate and college debt but do it in a way that was palatable and appreciated and approachable by young people. (Cited in Fadel, 2020) What is distinctive about being a creative millennial in post-​2016 America is also that, similar to the generation of Muslim comedians in the wake of 9/​11, the Trump presidency brought about its own affects in the creative class (and among racialised Americans, especially Muslims). Again, Minhaj distinguished himself in this crop as his voice was considered ‘whip-​smart and charismatic’ (Nadeem, 2019), and he was able to use a platform that enabled connection with audiences from across the world. In this way, he tapped into the collective disappointment experienced by many of his generation and 54

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ethno-​religious community in the wake of the election of Donald Trump as US president in late 2016 and turned it into a transformative moment. It is now clear that Minhaj unapologetically addresses Indian American, Asian American and Muslim communities in the vast majority of his episodes. According to Rao, this has a ripple effect on his appeal in these communities as those who turn up for the studio audience on any given Wednesday are ‘hijabs and dark hair’ (2018). The reason this is worth mentioning is because, to the writer, such a sight ‘felt momentous at a taping of a current-​events show in America’ (Rao, 2018). Here, the decentring of the white audience as the norm for a stand-​up comedy or current-​affairs talk show is literally felt as a revolutionary shift for the observer. At the same time, what also makes this appeal noteworthy is that Minhaj and his team don’t shy away from asking these communities to introspect about their own reinforcement of positive stereotypes such as the model minority myth and their prejudices towards other ethnic groups when convenient to do so. While these will be discussed at length in the subsequent part, suffice it to say here that this strategy itself is viewed positively among the migrant writers and reviewers commenting on the series. For instance, referring to the inaugural episode on the Harvard affirmative action battle that directly addressed Asian Americans, Sundaresan notes that Minhaj began with a celebratory pitch that they had made it [by being on Netflix] but later added his father undermined his accomplishment by indicating that this meant he could ‘finally save up for grad school’ (2020). Here, he literally brings these viewers with him on a journey where the high of ‘making it’ is followed by a lull in the form of an off-​handed critique of both millennial self-​involvement and the traditional career aspirations of migrant parents. In a 2020 special that took place at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, he even took it upon himself to call out anti-​Blackness in South Asian communities in the US. According to Dutta writing for The Washington Post, this self-​deprecatory yet unapologetic address was a welcome relief for viewers such as herself: And as an Indian, I found it meaningful to see Minhaj throw in cultural references with no explanation, speak directly to the Asian American community about Black Lives Matter and refuse to mispronounce his name. … It didn’t sensationalize Indian culture or simplify the truth for convenience –​it was honest about the problems in our community, but didn’t use our culture as a punchline. (2020) Others saw the series as flawed, but still significant as the South Asian diaspora has ‘historically suppressed such discourse’ (Sundaresan, 2020). While tackling topics that ‘South Asian families don’t tend to discuss, including themes like anti-​Blackness, voting, the value of college, and mental health’, the show was able to generate an inter-​generational and affective viewing 55

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experience in these communities (Sundaresan, 2020). In this way it became ‘phenomenal television’ despite not airing on a traditional TV network and revolutionary by virtue of the feelings it funnelled, embodied and attempted to creatively transform.

Patriot Act: Asian American episodes reviewed by the Twitterati In this section, I will build on the affective tenor of the reviews discussed in the prior section by exploring, in particular, the Twitter commentary on Patriot Act’s Asian American-​themed episodes. It is also worth noting here that the vast majority of these comments come from the community to which these episodes are directly addressed but also include members of racialised minorities in other Anglophone countries where the series is also popular. The objective of looking closely at and undertaking a thematic analysis of the Twitter conversations is that there is a greater volume of interactions between audience members here than on the show’s Facebook page or YouTube channel. The affective register of these interactions as well as the very status of Twitter as an ‘aspirational’ social media platform (in so far as it is where those with mobility and cultural capital congregate –​see Lampinen, 2020) makes these appropriate for further discussion. One of the most talked-​about episodes of the series was the sixth one in Season 2 titled, ‘Indian Elections’. While not ostensibly about the Asian American community, it was arguably perceived as controversial in his own family and circle of friends. In fact, Minhaj commenced the episode with desi uncles and aunties warning him about the repercussions of discussing the Indian elections. This reflects not just his willingness to critique his community’s –​and particularly the first generation’s –​lack of dissent but also his recognition that political issues in the homeland remain pertinent to many members of the diaspora. In the Twitter commentary, there is a wide range of reactions to this ‘controversial’ move, with some suggesting that Minhaj would now struggle to get a visa to travel to India or that his perspective is ‘too biased’ against Hindus and Modi. Many of the comments literally manifest an affective sigh of relief that he had the courage to tackle such a topic, with one viewer writing, ‘So glad you are still assiduously ignoring the advice to restrict yourself to talking about cricket.:-​)’. Yet another discursive theme is that he is potentially playing down the religious and ideological differences in the community by portraying ‘Hindu Nazis as lovable and misguided uncles’. These responses indicate that there is no dearth of a range of affects –​from relief and joy to anger –​at Minhaj’s attempt to unpack the 2019 Indian elections. What makes this attempt stand out is that it resonates most with those viewers who also want to challenge their fellow Indian migrants’ reticence to bring up politics. In this sense, Minhaj is 56

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able to affectively scratch the surface of their aspirations that extend beyond socio-​economic success. Another episode of significance is the fifth one in Season 5 titled, ‘Don’t Ignore the Asian Vote in 2020’. On Twitter, the introduction to the episode addresses the Asian American community directly by suggesting that although this demographic has grown large enough to swing elections, it is still one of ‘the least politically active groups in the country’. This is in contrast to the episode title, which seems to address mainstream white politicians who may not have paid much attention to this community as a voting bloc with critical mass thus far. Within the episode itself, he addresses both issues. He commences with a discussion on how the critical mass of Asian American voters has grown markedly in certain electorates, how low the Asian American turn-​out has been historically, and then turns to vox-​pop style interviews with members of the community who point out that politicians hardly ever speak to them or seek to represent their concerns. What gets the most Twitter traction, however, is his interviews with Asian American presidential candidate Andrew Yang and senator for the diverse seat of New Jersey, Cory Booker, who is of African American descent. Critiques include viewers commenting that Senator Kamala Harris (now vice-​president) was a glaring omission from the episode even though she is a high-​profile Asian American politician, that Minhaj was too harsh on Yang who was shown to be reinforcing stereotypes of Asians as a model minority and his choice of Booker who isn’t even from the community. Others seemed noticeably angry that Minhaj cast Asians as wanting to bring the rest of their families to the US even though the waiting times for permanency for those on employment visas is a more pressing issue. These affective discourses, much like the less-​than-​perfect material in this episode highlight the underlying complexity of representing racialised minorities when there is significant representational baggage with regards to positive and negative stereotypes. At the same time, representation itself, whether attempted by someone from the same community or an outsider who is consultative, is seen as a step forward. This is collective aspiration in action, especially in the realm of formal politics. Later in the same episode, Minhaj even attempts to get into the audience at Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Houston to meet then-​ President Trump in 2019 (widely known as the ‘Howdy Modi’ event) but is refused entry (PTI, 2019). One of the noteworthy Twitter exchanges on this episode is between two members of the Indian American community, A and B from hereon. A declares, ‘Hasan has become the face of Indian Americans here in the US’ and wishes he would become president in the future. B disagrees and says it won’t work as Minhaj is ‘too outspoken’, adding that he could not even get into the event in Houston. A emphasises that ‘creating some kind of ruckus’ is essential to get into the limelight, and 57

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then points to President Trump as an example. What stands out here is not that the users discuss or condone the substance of Minhaj’s political views but rather that they fixate on the markers of embodiment and performance. While he is seen as (positively) embodying the Indian American experience and success story by A, B perceives this as an excess that has barred him from a vital diplomatic event between the heads of state of India and the US. In other words, some members of the diaspora potentially see too much affect in his satirical political critiques, and this reticence to ‘talk politics’ is ironically alluded to at the outset of the Indian election episode discussed earlier. How, then, can the community’s perception of aspiration be transformed from keeping mum on politics in public settings to centring collective stories and issues in the mainstream public sphere? While this may be a work-​in-​progress for Minhaj and his creative team in the US, it is also being tackled head-​on by ‘ethnic’ comedians in comparable immigrant contexts such as Australia.

Case study 2: Legally Brown –​introduction and overview of media and scholarly commentary Legally Brown is a ten-​part Australian comedy series that aired on public broadcasting platform SBS from September 2013 to October 2014. It was hosted by Nazeem Hussain, a second-​generation Australian Muslim of Sri Lankan descent who presented his satirical take on being Muslim in contemporary Australia. The format itself consisted of stand-​up in front of a live studio audience as well as pre-​recorded comedy sketches and hidden camera stunts. ‘Uncle Sam’, ‘Muslim Shore’ and ‘Flip World’ were some of his recurring skits. Hussain himself was an established stand-​up comic before co-​writing this series. He previously starred in Salam Café, also on SBS and with fellow Muslim Australian Aamer Rahman, who was one half of the comedy duo in Fear of a Brown Planet. According to Luckhurst and Rae, Hussain’s take on comedy is to see it as an evolutionary defence mechanism (2016). This view is noteworthy as most audiences perceive political satire as disarming. At the same time, Hussain is suggesting that those producing comedy, particularly if they hail from a minoritised background, almost see it as a weapon or tool that both guards them from the prejudices of the majority, and in the process also helps them facilitate more positive affects in this audience. It is not clear whether he also sees his comedy as targeting racialised audiences themselves. Despite the conception of the affects that comedy generates in its non-​ white creator and presumably white audience, what is of interest in this chapter is what it does for other people of colour, whether those on the production team, audience or official reviewers. Beginning with Hussain himself, his comedy career is ‘embedded in his work as an anti-​racism activist and asylum seeker supporter and shaped by his second-​generation migrant 58

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experiences, law studies, community youth work, and early mentorship by American Muslim comic trio Allah Made Me Funny’ (Luckhurst and Rae, 2016). This means that similar to Minhaj in the US context, Hussain is in possession of the cultural capital of both mainstream and ethnic cultures, and thereby has the aspirational edge to combine these in a creative way. Another second-​generation migrant Australian, Alice Ansara, was part of the Legally Brown skit ‘Flip World’, and she recounts a process of transformation of affect when she read the script for the first time: ‘I remember receiving the script for the sketch about the “Flip World Movie Casting” and nearly crying with happiness’, says actress Alice Ansara via email. ‘It articulated so well the issues that I’ve been pissing and moaning about for so long: the lack of diversity in casting, tokenism, etc. And Nazeem had simply made it into a hilarious comedy moment. I realised I should stop moaning and groaning about things and just make comedy from them. Comedy is so much better than complaining’. (Cited in Moran, 2014) In this case, even before the script was turned into a show, it had the impact on the othered actor of channelling her anger against an industry that is steeped in white-​centred practices, identifying herself in the material presented, and then resolving to ‘not whinge’ but to be creative through the genre of comedy. Ansara’s sigh of relief is literally her first step on the bandwagon of collective aspiration for her and others of her ilk. The next step includes a willingness to critique one’s own community, and Hussain gives his migrant audience plenty of opportunity to experience the initial discomfort of doing so through his comedic sketches. According to Tan reviewing the show for The Guardian, ‘Hussain has heard “awful” comments about Aboriginal people from his community, mainly from his parent’s generation’ and reasons that ‘some recent immigrants –​even those who cop racism themselves –​often buy into the country’s prevailing racist narrative’ (2016). He adds that this is often done to ‘sort of prove to their white colleagues and neighbours that they’re as Australian, if not more Australian’ (Tan, 2016). What Hussain is doing in this commentary is not merely condemning members of migrant communities who internalise racism but also indirectly rebuking the host culture for its foundational racism in the colonising of Indigenous peoples. This nuanced remark does not let either side off the hook and can generate affective discomfort in both migrant and non-​migrant viewers with the potential of transforming it into an aspiration for collective change. The references to subtle or sideways critique of dominant racist narratives in Hussain’s stand-​up and sketches in Legally Brown implies that he deploys storytelling slightly differently from Minhaj to generate affect. Morsi sees 59

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the non-​confrontational aspects of Hussain’s performance in Salam Café in particular as the manifestation of a ‘moderate Muslim’ attempting to appease the white gaze (2017, p 54). While this is not the dominant view in the reviews and research literature about Legally Brown, it must be noted that this show was on a public broadcaster in Australia, and hence it is safe to assume that Hussain’s aim was to interpellate both white and non-​white migrant audiences (as opposed to Minhaj who could just address a global audience of millennials, and particularly young migrants in Anglophone countries). It is for this reason that in her review of Hussain’s show, Northover describes his comedy as bold yet delivered in a subtle package: Much of our political-​based comedy can feel a touch undergraduate, but Hussain’s approach to race, politics, and Western understanding –​ or misunderstanding –​of Islam feels fresher and a lot bolder than, say, the comedy stylings of The Chaser. … The hidden-​camera pranks recall the work of British comic Dom Joly’s anarchic Trigger Happy TV, with serious social issues subtly addressed, rather than hammered loudly home. (2013) Similarly, writing for The Queensland Times, Cronin notes that political messages in Hussain’s comedy are incidental rather than central. She adds this is an effective technique for generating the desired affect as in the absence of the comedic beginning, audiences can get turned off (Cronin, 2018). In terms of its address to Muslim Australian audiences in a post 9/​ 11 political context, Legally Brown functioned similarly to comparable comedic series in the US. However, Pym suggests that Hussain’s writing took it beyond the challenging or overturning of negative stereotypes of these communities (Pym, 2019, p 284). She adds that this is achieved by challenging the very ‘national narratives which position whiteness as implicit to Australian identity’ (Pym, 2019, p 284). While Hussain uses his ‘insider’ knowledge to invoke stereotypes of ‘old, conservative, patriarchal figures, such as Uncle Sam’, and also frequently references family expectations within South Asian and Muslim communities, these are caricatures that speak directly to the community and therefore assume that it is not just the normative white viewer who is watching. His invocation of the community stereotypes endeavours to expose how they are articulated in mainstream discourses to reproduce white managerialism (Pym, 2019, p 290). In this way, the centrality of whiteness and white affect momentarily disappears from the Australian television screen. Pym sees this as a refusal of the text to recuperate ‘good feeling’ through a story of liberal multiculturalism (2019, p 286). Elsewhere, I have argued that in the case of a screen industry that promotes a market-​oriented version of multiculturalism, the notion of 60

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‘aspirational multiculturalism’ could be a potential salve (Khorana, 2020a). Such an aspirationalism is invested in what Australian screen content in a multicultural era ought to represent by moving beyond a simple ‘reflection of the population’, albeit based on the current realities and without glossing over differences and discrimination. Finally, what makes Hussain stand out in the Australian mediascape, and join the likes of Minhaj in his embodiment of a different mode of migrant aspiration, is his staking a claim as an Australian. In his review of the show for The Age, fellow Muslim Australian and high-​profile media presenter Waleed Aly commented that Legally Brown works because ‘the Australian cultural majority is so unused to hearing minorities speak with such assertiveness’ (2013). As a colleague of Hussain’s on Salam Café, Aly became accustomed to how ‘we had no right, as Muslims, to be critical of some aspect of Australia’ (Aly, 2013). Luckhurst and Rae observe Hussain, among others such as Aamer Rahman, Muhamed Elleissi and Khaled Khalafalla, as typifying a newer, more assertive form of second-​generation immigrant stand-​up who identify as Muslim (whether religious or not), as brown and as Australian (2016). This positioning is both more self-​assured and more nuanced than the previous generation of ‘ethnic comedians’ in Australia. Writing on Rahman and Hussain’s work in Fear of a Brown Planet, Busbridge argues that they mount their criticisms of mainstream Australia ‘in order to assert themselves as equal partners in the national project’ (2017, p 129). Not only do they deconstruct certain dominant versions of Australianness, but they also embody and perform new ones, therefore emphasising the right of Muslims as a political and cultural constituency to ‘shape multi-​cultural politics in Australia’ (Busbridge, 2017, p 131). It is in this embodiment that they generate the most radical affect of all, that of inspiring their non-​white Australian audiences to aspire to see themselves as fully Australian.

Conclusion: ethnic comedians claiming space, channelling affect In recounting the audience and reviewer reception of an Asian American and an Asian Australian comedic shows, this chapter has used a different genre of mediated stories to the ones explored thus far to understand transformative affect. The content and discursive reception of these creative representations of their communities’ lived experiences reveals (1) a new kind of comedy created by the children of immigrants due to their particular combination of millennial and cultural capital; and (2) the sort of collective aspiration for laying claim to the nation that transcends the aspirations for socio-​economic mobility traditionally associated with the first generation of immigrants. While there have been critiques of some aspects of these productions and it is important to be cautious rather than uncritically celebratory of screen 61

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media that disrupts monocultural norms in comedy, it is nonetheless vital to examine these closely for not just what they are showing. In other words, the comedians’ personas, career trajectories and framing choices within episodes are transmuting the anger of young racialised communities into other kinds of aspirations. Whether intended or not, this will help bring about more and better mediated stories of under-​represented, stereotyped and racialised communities in the Global North.

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Aspiration for Collective Progress: Diversity and Digital Intimacy as Practised by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (US), Sadiq Khan (UK) and Jagmeet Singh (Canada) When newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revealed his cabinet in 2015, it was lauded globally for both its gender parity and ethnic diversity. Trudeau later declared that it was important to have a ministry that ‘looked like Canada’. This led commentators in other settler colonial and immigrant nations, especially in the Global North, to ponder why such parity in terms of political representation has not been possible in their own domestic political spheres thus far. This chapter discussed three case studies that will aim to demonstrate that the political party and parliamentary structures in certain settler immigrant contexts not only enable more ‘ethnics’ to participate but also that this gives voice to the collective aspirations of their communities. As seen in the previous chapter on ethnic comedians, these aspirations go beyond the first generation’s presumed emphasis on job and financial security. Such aspirations are also reflected in the speeches and social media campaigns of culturally diverse political representatives (Khorana, 2022). In this instance, I will undertake a thematic analysis of such material obtained from the social media accounts and mainstream media coverage of Jagmeet Singh (Canada), Sadiq Khan (UK) and Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (US). These politicians have been chosen as they carefully build a distinct identity (akin to a brand) and a following through social media platforms that set them up as not only culturally diverse but also more relatable than mainstream political representatives. Their practices of ‘digital intimacy’ constitute a kind of populism for diverse, usually young, political leaders that facilitates the channelling of collective aspirations for their followers and constituents.

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While there may be diverse parliamentarians in the Global North who do not subscribe to progressive views and policy platforms, they are not included in the scope of this chapter. This is because the specific interest here lies in aspiration as a complex affect associated with economic migrants and how it can be mobilised for wider public good in political discourses centred on collective identity.

Introduction: types of ‘diversity’ in representation and what matters In contemporary discourses about diversity in the realms of ‘representation’ in liberal democracies, such as formal politics and mainstream media, diverse representation is commonly understood as reflecting the ethnic mix of the population (Khorana, 2020a). However, representation in politics in particular has four distinct dimensions as identified by political theorist Hanna Pitkin: formalistic, descriptive, substantive and symbolic (cited in Bird, 2015, p 250). Descriptive representation can be summarised as ‘counting coloured heads’ in parliament as a measure of representation, while substantive representation looks at ethnic minority politicians’ actual output and impact upon political realities as a measure of their representation (Fieldhouse and Sobolewska, 2013). This part is largely concerned with the relationship between the descriptive and the substantive dimensions as this issue has been of primary interest in the scholarship. Also, an examination of this relationship will help understand why the descriptive dimension is seen as synonymous with the representation of cultural diversity by its contemporary advocates. It will help us establish why ethnic minority contexts are affectively associated with collective community aspiration and how this causes them to intrinsically assume responsibility to represent community concerns in formal politics. Bird builds on the four dimensions of representation through a case study based in the Greater Toronto area to argue that the relationship among these dimensions varies depending on the context. She adds that in the Canadian instance, the focus has been on descriptive representation in various legislative bodies, and research so far has not suggested any close links between descriptive and substantial representation (2015, p 251). This means that there is no obvious link between more culturally diverse political representatives and better outcomes for diverse citizens. At the same time, her focus groups’ discussions with culturally diverse constituents in particular ridings in Toronto revealed that while they cared less about how their elected members contributed in the legislative arena, these representatives’ quality of communication and contact with the community was of greater consequence (Bird, 2015, p 258). It is for this reason that this chapter focuses on the mediated communications of the chosen political representatives, 64

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especially as seen in their official social media accounts and mainstream press coverage. While this kind of communication may seem unrelated to substantial representation, there is a case to be made that more and effective mediated communication by these representatives inspires others in their communities and thereby has a long-​term positive impact on the resolution of the particular issues facing ethnic minorities. According to research conducted by Sobolewska et al in the UK comparing white and ethnic minority candidates in culturally diverse seats, the latter had a shared experience of racial discrimination and prejudice with their constituents, whereas for the former it was merely an ideological point of view (2018, p 1256). This leads them to suggest ‘that ethnicity trumps all the other influences for ethnic minority candidates and supports the existence of a direct link between descriptive and substantive representation for candidates of all parties, and especially those with ethnic minority voters’ (Sobolewska et al, 2018, p 1256). In other words, their findings point towards the desirability of descriptive representation and support the normative arguments in favour of it. In addition to the shared experience that might make ethnic minority candidates better suited to represent their diverse constituents, there are other factors that make this kind of representation worth studying through an affective lens. For instance, Bird found that her culturally diverse discussants in the Canadian context were not predisposed to vote for a candidate just because they shared the same ethnic background, but they were more likely to notice such a candidate and listen to what he or she had to say (2015, p 262). She adds that these results are comparable with research in the US context that demonstrates that ‘minority candidates have a positive impact on levels of political trust and political efficacy among those of the same racial background’ (Bird, 2015, p 262). In a similar vein, Sobolewska et al argue that by virtue of shared experiences, minority candidates ‘feel a responsibility to represent minority voters, although this is moderated by political party’ (Sobolewska et al, 2018, p 1238). It must also be mentioned that structural conditions like legislative mechanisms and party nomination and preselection systems in each nation under consideration have an impact on the ability of ethnic minorities to attain descriptive representation. These merit consideration to fully understand the contexts in which the chosen leaders have emerged, and whose mediated politics and aspirations they in turn help shape.

Context of ‘diverse’ representation in Canada, the UK and the US In all three nations under consideration in this chapter, advocates for greater cultural diversity in politics make a case for diversity on the grounds that the 65

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rise in descriptive representation is not in keeping with the real-​time changes in the demographic. For instance, in the case of the UK, a report by Uberoi and Lees explains, ‘if the ethnic make-​up of the House of Commons reflected that of the UK population, there would be about 93 members from ethnic minority backgrounds’ whereas there were only 65 by 2019 (2020, p 3). In the early years of the 21st century, this was a more significant problem in Canada as visible minorities were underrepresented compared to migrant-​ settlers of European descent (Siemiatycki and Saloojee, 2002). However, the representation of South Asian minorities increased substantially at the provincial and federal levels in Canadian politics after 2010. South Asian Canadians are believed to be more successful in securing representation due to ‘geographic clustering, dense and overlapping networks of religious, social and business memberships, and strong elder-​centric culture’ (Bird, 2005, p 83). It could also be argued that they have prior knowledge of how democracies work from their countries of origin alongside strong English language skills and a degree of economic security (Bird, 2005, p 83). Most of these factors can be seen at work in the example of Jagmeet Singh whose social and cultural capital enabled his rise to power, as will be explored in the subsequent case study. Black explains that the recent changes in descriptive representation in the Canadian context could have been due to ‘heightened inter-​party competition to win over minority votes’, and this could be held partly responsible for the rise in culturally diverse candidates from 2011 to 2015 (2020, p 18). He adds that prior issues with descriptive representation were not owing to the reluctance of Canadian voters themselves as they tend not to discriminate against visible minority candidates. In other words, Black attributes greater importance to how many culturally diverse representatives get elected to party structures and fluctuating election campaign factors (2020, p 19). For instance, he notes that there are differences between the major parties in Canada as the Liberal Party nominated more visible minority candidates in competitive districts and also recruited them frequently in more attractive constituencies (Black, 2020, p 22). In the case of the UK, Sobolewska similarly observes that ‘the increase in minority representation in 2010 would not have happened without targeted efforts by the main political parties’ (2013, p 629). To account for these factors, Bird leans on the conceptual framework of ‘political opportunity structures’, which is broadly defined by three main conditions/​factors in a country: (1) its citizenship regime; (2) its institutional features; and (3) the specific interest constellations of ethnic groups. In other words, these are the conditions by which one can assess whether ethnic minorities will be successful in securing representation (Bird, 2005). In addition to the structural factors I have described thus far, the varying social and economic capital and geographic spread of culturally diverse 66

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communities helps explain why some garner more political representation and participation than others. For example, the greater success of those of Jamaican origin in Toronto is ascribed to their longer presence, fluency in English and institutional base whereas the geographic spread of Filipinos in Vancouver is blamed for their lack of political representation (Black, 2009, p 89). Another US-​based study found a significant difference in the reception of Asian candidates as compared to Black and Latino candidates. According to Visalvanich, Asian American candidates were found to be ‘favoured by whites in the vote when compared with white candidates with the same biography in an election with minimal political cues and where both candidates are portrayed as politically neutral’ (2017, p 69). It must be noted that these findings were obtained before the rise in anti-​Asian racism and related attacks after the onset of the COVID-​19 pandemic, particularly in OECD nations with significant Asian migration. Despite small rises in descriptive representation, and differences between political parties and minority groups notwithstanding, representatives from these communities still face significant hurdles. In the UK context, these are systemic in nature and exist despite the government’s attempts to improve inclusion (Fieldhouse and Sobolewska, 2013). Stegmaier et al note that during the 2010 election, British Asian and Minority Ethnic (henceforth, BAME) candidates standing for parliament paid a ‘racial cost’ in terms of votes lost due to their race/​ethnicity (2013). Their study also found that ‘the constituency incumbent party gains votes when facing a BAME challenger’ (Stegmaier et al, 2013, p 283). This means that while the presence of BAME candidates doesn’t necessarily imply an imminent loss, the ‘racial cost’ means that BAME candidates –​if they do win –​are not likely to win ‘by a landslide’ even where it might otherwise be expected (Stegmaier et al, 2013). This research suggests that perception issues do exists in non-​migrant voters, and more could be done by parties so that culturally diverse candidate are seen as embodying leadership potential. Other personal and professional hurdles for culturally diverse candidates include significantly more labour to juggle identities and deal with online attacks. Culturally diverse candidates who are politically successful are only able to do so because they ‘walk a tight line between their national and ethnic identities’ (Fieldhouse and Sobolewska, 2013, p 243) or embody what is seen as ‘acceptable difference’ (Durose et al, 2013). In other words, while they are representing their community descriptively and at least attempting to represent it substantially, such politicians still need to cater to the mainstream cultures of their political party and its broad base of voters, which is presumably non-​migrant. In addition, a study looked into more than 3 million tweets sent to British members of parliament from the beginning of 2017 to March 2018 and flagged obscenities, aggression and rude language. The findings show that culturally diverse MPs received 67

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15 per cent more abuse than their white counterparts (Ghosh and Payne, 2018). This finding leads the authors to conclude that, ‘the fact that non-​ white politicians receive significantly more abuse than white ones clearly shows a racist undercurrent in political life on Twitter’ (Ghosh and Payne, 2018). While this research didn’t account for the additional emotional costs of tackling this online abuse, that must also be factored in as a hurdle for potential candidates. Despite the many and substantial hurdles for candidates, descriptive representation still matters to culturally diverse voters. This is evidenced by research emerging from the US and the UK. In the former context, among cultural minorities the race of the representative impacted recall (ability and desire to remember the candidate’s name), contact (the frequency with which the minority contacts the representative), and approval (level of satisfaction and positive outlook towards the government) (Banducci et al, 2004). Broockman’s study of Black legislators found that they were far more likely to continue responding to requests from out-​of-​district Black individuals than were their non-​Black peers, thereby demonstrating they are significantly more intrinsically motivated to advance their community’s interests (2013). Similarly, in the UK setting, Saalfeld and Bischof found that BAME MPs were more likely to ask questions about the rights of ethnic minorities as well as broader immigration issues (2013). This suggests, at least superficially, that descriptive representation can lead to substantive representation and therefore matters for culturally diverse communities who are racialised or otherwise disadvantaged in their adopted homes.

Case study 1: Jagmeet Singh (Canada) In this first case study I look closely at mediated communication by and pertaining to Jagmeet Singh, the first visible minority leader of a major political party in Canada (in this case, the New Democratic Party, or NDP). Born in 1979 to first-​generation Indian Sikh migrants, Singh trained and worked as a lawyer before entering formal politics. As discussed earlier with regards to the Canadian political context, Singh qualifies as a ‘skilled migrant’ who traverses both the ethnic as well as mainstream milieus well enough to be considered appealing in both. In addition, as will become clear in this part, he is also seen as desirable by younger urban voters and his overall presentation, social media persona and coverage in the media leverage this appeal. In effect, he uses both his own social media accounts and mainstream media strategically to attract and retain aspirational migrants, younger voters allied with progressive politics and those that fall in both camps and have hitherto felt unrepresented in the Canadian political sphere. 68

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According to Ballingall writing for The Star, Singh’s victory as NDP leader was broadly seen as ‘inspiring’ for people of colour who feel left out or disadvantaged (2017). In his interview for this media story, Singh sees his leadership as indebted to those individuals who have broken barriers before him, such as Rosemary Brown, the first Black woman elected to a provincial legislature in Canada (cited in Ballingall, 2017). In this way, he portrays himself as building on the legacy of trailblazers and continuing to channel the aspirations of culturally diverse communities. In another piece for Now Toronto, Nguyen herself casts Singh as a saviour for others like her who are millennial, racialised, and children of immigrants (2019). She adds that given this mix of identities, it’s difficult to believe in your own self-​worth when you are not represented in the nation’s politics. However, Singh’s win is described by her as being both a release and a moment of hope for a better future: Some may think I was being naive, but I was there when Singh’s name was called in the ballroom at the Westin Harbour Castle. I cried almost immediately. My heart swelled with a joy that reverberated through my body. Something historic happened and it was entirely because people who felt like me dared to dream bigger than ever before. (Nguyen, 2019) In this way, Singh epitomises the aspirations of what might be seen as a ‘niche’ demographic but is potentially large as it encompasses all the visible minority communities in Canada. According to Landau, this targeting of young people and racialised Canadians in his leadership campaign was tactical as it meant expanding his party’s existing base (2018). Moreover, millennials and racialised Canadians constitute two of the fastest-​growing voting groups in Canada and also happen to be the most impacted by economic inequalities and racial discrimination (Landau, 2018). The young voters, regardless of their ethnic background, are aspirational in a socio-​economic sense as they are deprived of the opportunity to be normatively middle class. Singh’s glossy lifestyle may seem at odds with the ground realities of these groups, but here again this representation is viewed as aspirational rather than a marker of vanity. Despite his appeal with youth, some media coverage in Canada has characterised Singh as vague on policy positions and ‘too chill’ (Smith, 2020). Writing for Maclean’s magazine, Smith notes that Singh’s staff would like him to get fired up as this is what will serve in ‘the push and pull of Parliament’ and not the hopeful attitude he had on the campaign trail (2020). In a similar vein, Landau observed that during his first five months as NDP leader, Singh relied on ‘populist platitudes’ to appeal to his target demographics rather than digging into the details of particular issues (2018). At the same time, he sees 69

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this populism as more desirable for the future of the party and for it to stand a chance against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Landau, 2018). Also writing for Maclean’s, Proudfoot mentions that in the first leaders’ debate of the federal election campaign in 2019, Singh’s political performance improved markedly when he was angry. He adds that these moments harnessed his frustration at ‘things he perceived as unjust, rigged or just plain ridiculous’ (Proudfoot, 2019). These observations of Singh’s affective performances in various parts of his job demonstrate that he is expected to switch between optimism and anger depending on the context. Despite the expectation to get ‘fired up’, it is also clear that as a racialised male, he is more likely to be rewarded when he responds contrary to stereotypes. For instance, in a viral online video of one of his meet and greet sessions, he remained calm in the face of a white woman shouting Islamophobic insults at him. In addition, Singh chose not to correct the woman about being a Sikh rather than a Muslim as he wanted to act ‘in solidarity against Islamophobia’ (Bhandar, 2017). This reaction was lauded locally and globally and further enshrined his reputation has a politician who is likeable, principled and has a particular brand on social media. Singh’s overall social media strategy for his own communication with his followers and constituents emphasises spectacle as well as creativity. While his Instagram activity includes documentation of constituent meetings and/​ or community events that you would expect of a party leader, it also features unconventional shots of him ‘staring broodily into the middle distance in Cuba or Madagascar, dressed in slouchy leather jackets or Miami Vice whites’ (Landau, 2018). By virtue of this interest in fashion and lifestyle, Singh was featured in GQ magazine and BuzzFeed dubbed him ‘the most stylish politician in Canada by like a million kilometres’ (Landau, 2018). This foregrounding of style and spectacle goes hand in hand with his creative and expansive use of his social media accounts that had generated 148,000 followers on Instagram and 125,000 on Twitter by 2018. His social media feeds are described as ‘a masterfully calibrated cocktail of fun and fashion, intermixed with political messages about carbon reductions and pay equity’ (Landau, 2018). During the COVID-​related lockdowns in 2020, Singh also became known for his TikTok videos and memes, including one that features him and his wife in a clever switch and ends with a message advocating staying at home (Belmonte, 2020). It is worth noting that he shows his long uncut hair in the above video as well as in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube clip in which he shows audiences how he ties his turban every morning. In other words, despite what might be seen as assimilatory practices in terms of his style, he also makes a point to display his pride in his heritage from time to time. In this way, Singh uses his social media persona and overall interaction with the mainstream media to astutely convey an aspirational brand that is 70

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nonetheless grounded in his migrant roots and that is more ‘chill’ than angry. These affective performances help build his target audience of millennials as well as racialised communities while being careful not to alienate the broader base of his party.

Case study 2: Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (US) Similar to Jagmeet Singh, Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (henceforth, AOC) is a child of Puerto Rican immigrants to the US, although she is working class with middle class aspirations. Born in 1989, she is younger than Singh and has generated worldwide interest for her social media engagement as much as the progressive policies that she has championed (such as the Green New Deal). In a feature story for The New Yorker magazine, Remnick describes her childhood at length and mentions that her parents decided to move the family from Parkchester to Yorktown Heights to enable their daughter to ‘get a leg up’ in her education (2018). Despite being an anomaly in her high school due to her ethnicity and class, AOC was also aspirational and became a determined student. In her appeal to her constituents in New York’s 14th Congressional district (half of whom are of Hispanic and Latino heritage and many of whom are working class), she frequently draws on her own biography. Also akin to Singh in Canada, AOC uses her social media accounts strategically and creatively to build a persona that is at once engaging, personalised and professional. In a profile piece for The National Interest, Bucchino writes that she has a massive social media presence with over 12.6 million Twitter followers, and has ‘developed a unique intimacy with voters, using Instagram Live to cover questions ranging from the January 6 attack on the Capitol to her cooking black-​bean soup’ (2021). In AOC’s case, this particular usage of social media is less to do with presenting an aspirational lifestyle and more about taking control of her own narrative as she is a member of a major party (the Democrats) and does not want to be seen as representing the establishment. According to Relman writing for Insider, this is especially important for AOC as she ‘credits social media with powering her rise’ as it allowed her to ‘bypass a media largely uninterested in her race and communicate directly with voters’ (2019). It is for this reason that her persona on social media is perceived as ‘authentic’. In other words, rather than appearing formal or stiff, she is seen as a ‘normal person’ who talks politics at the same time as making an Instant Pot mac and cheese (Relman, 2019). This also means that her followers obtain an inside view of politics and feel like they are in direct communication with a representative who writes their own tweets. AOC’s seemingly authentic persona on social media has led to comparisons with former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt who had a reputation for 71

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being personable, particularly during his fireside chats. Referring to AOC’s use of social media as a ‘modern fireside chat’, Cheung notes that both are notable for their conversational feel, simple language and informal quality (2019, p 25). Similar to Roosevelt, this register has helped humanise AOC and her experience as a present-​day politician in the US. Moreover, ‘both on the campaign trail and now in her day-​to-​day life in Congress, she has used her fluency in social media to make politics accessible to the average citizen’ (Cheung, 2019, p 25). This is largely possible because she presents herself as a relatable figure who holds the same values as her followers and constituents. Cheung goes on to describe this kind of online engagement as the politics of ‘digital intimacy’ and comments that AOC has mastered it by allowing viewers to ‘participate in her political daily life, sharing the triumphs and downfalls she faces along the way’ (Cheung, 2019, p 26). Such a focus on being authentic, personable and relatable may not sound in line with aspiration, but in fact it is these attributes that enable ‘ordinary people’ to imagine themselves in the shoes of someone who is simultaneously like them and famous. This means that a second-​generation migrant and working-​class candidate like AOC also has to embody humility before they can showcase and discuss the glamorous and technical aspects of their public lives. Other kinds of affective states that are noted in the case of AOC include being angry or spirited. This is also similar to Singh in some respects as she is ‘passionate’ about particular social issues, but it is noteworthy that her critiques of the political establishment and conservative attitudes are stronger, both emotively and in terms of content. Relman observes that AOC regularly calls out her online critics for being ‘sexist, racist, and ageist’ and turns attacks on her clothes, childhood home and high school photos into Twitter memes (2019). Similarly, in an article for The Conversation, Nash suggests that while she ‘may not be a vampire slayer or have an army or a quiver of arrows’, AOC is nonetheless ‘as fierce a fighter inspiring young Americans to seek change as any cultural superhero’ (2019). It is in this very embodiment of ordinary-​yet-​superhero like attributes that AOC most potently signifies the transformative and collective potential of aspiration for her target demographic. In a profile story for Time magazine, Alter quotes Democratic sources who have informed her that while AOC has a ‘dynamic rock star’ reputation in the media, she is otherwise friendly and respectful and ‘quiet as a mouse’ in caucus meetings (2019). These remarks could be read as undermining her success within the party establishment, but they also show that her social media persona is a mediated construction and not a comprehensive reflection of all aspects of her life. This means that AOC does foreground certain pronounced affects such as anger, humility and outspokenness in her online engagement for greater appeal. 72

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Case study 3: Sadiq Khan (the UK) In the case of Pakistani British Sadiq Khan, he was elected as the first Muslim mayor of London in 2016 and was re-​elected in 2021. Khan was born to working class immigrant parents in 1970 and grew up in a council flat in London. His use of social media to influence his followers is not as pronounced as in the case of Singh and AOC, possibly because he is older. Nonetheless, this chapter includes a brief analysis of his manifestation of mediated aspiration for two reasons: (1) he has openly sparred with his party on the definition of ‘aspiration’; (2) his particular combination of identities can be seen as epitomising ‘urban aspiration’, especially in the case of second-​generation migrants. During his first election campaign for the role of mayor in 2016, Khan penned an essay for Huffington Post that responded to allegations that he was misconstruing the Labour Party’s understanding of aspiration. In this piece, much like the case studies examined earlier in this chapter, Khan references his own biography to argue that he embodies what it means to be aspirational and therefore knows it innately: My whole life story, as you rightly refer to through your piece, is underpinned by aspiration –​that of my parents, and my own. … Tackling inequality is precisely what aspiration is all about. It’s helping people and communities break out of the cycle of deprivation and poverty. It’s giving them the routes to a higher standard of living. It’s about rewarding hard work and risk taking. If more people are in work, earning wages and living in housing that doesn’t need subsidising by the state, then society as a whole benefits. (2016) Not only does Khan manifest the sort of aspiration he is speaking of, but he also refers to its collective dimensions, especially when it comes to tackling economic inequality in his city. It is partly for this reason that Leftly identifies Khan’s ability to inspire British Muslims to take a different path of aspiration that more closely resembles mainstream success (2016). He cites Khan himself who says that he is a Londoner, British, of Islamic faith, Asian origin and Pakistani heritage, which means that someone like him occupying the position of mayor is the best antidote to the hatred spewed by those who condemn either the Muslim or the Western way of life. Therefore, he is seen as displaying the kind of aspiration that can engage ‘disaffected youths who yearn for meaning, and sometimes find it in extremism’ (Leftly, 2016). While this aspiration looks like it is mostly couched in capitalist terms, it does manifest a collective dimension that is vested in the economic welfare of a range of migrant and working class communities. It is also noteworthy that, like Singh and AOC, Khan has greater appeal in urban areas and among younger and more ethnically diverse voters (AAP, 73

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2021). In recent years he has been successful in London despite his party’s electoral failures at the national level. During his first campaign, the local media saw him as the candidate most intimately connected with London and therefore as the most appropriate mayor for it (Suleyman, 2016). While he may not have the digital savvy of Singh and AOC, he does exhibit a kind of place-​based, urban aspiration that transcends his race and generation and is therefore akin to the other candidates’ digital intimacy in political terms. As Suleyman puts it, Khan is able to speak to Londoners about ‘shared memories of Peckham barber-​ shops, and Turkish snooker-​halls, of a kind of London patois that moves cross-​racially and between generations’ (2016). This affinity with London also means that he symbolises its diversity as well as its aspirations, and is effective in affectively conveying this to those who have elected him.

Conclusion: using digital intimacy for aspirational representation The case studies of younger, culturally diverse politicians in immigrant countries in the Global North using digital media to build a following is not solely due to their minoritised status. For instance, noting the fusing of politics and spectacle via popular media by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Landau notes: In an era when the prime minister is photo-​bombing weddings and launching an international craze for novelty socks, his competitors need to match his celebrity. They need to fuse spectacle with politics, to infiltrate pop culture, to sublimate their message into a flashy brand. They need to make themselves unforgettable. (2018) This means that the cultural and social capital generated by digitally intimate media practices is seen as more broadly desirable for younger politicians and political aspirants. Those hailing from migrant backgrounds also display a particular affinity with using digital media for both relatability and spectacle. This is largely due to the mainstream media and political class still being dominated by Anglo and European norms in the Global North, as explicated in the previous chapter and at the beginning of this chapter. What I have argued in this chapter through a close analysis of the mediated performance of Jagmeet Singh (Canada), Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (USA) and Sadiq Khan (UK) is that they evoke a particular kind of aspiration in their racialised constituents and followers in particular. Their social media accounts, campaigns, speeches and other kinds of mediated communications are designed not just to create a sense of intimacy and relatability with ‘ordinary’ people but also to embody a sort of collective aspiration for 74

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changing the still largely monocultural makeup of politics at all levels of government. What merits further attention is the class backgrounds of these political figures and how aspiration intersects with this aspect of their own identity as well as the identities of those they are trying to mobilise. While AOC and Khan have emerged from working class families and this is an explicit feature of their mediated persona as well as narratives of aspiration, this is not the case with Singh who is more markedly middle class. These differences in the mobilisation of class and how it intersects with collective aspirations is where the particularities of the immigrant communities from which they emerge and the neoliberal features of mainstream politics gain salience. Future research on culturally diverse politicians could aim to better understand these specificities and their shifting mediated contexts.

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PART III

Belonging

My interest in belonging and in particular its affective dimensions emerged when I was working on a project with refugee youth and university students that is described in detail in Chapter 6 in this part. As part of the participatory methodology, the participants were encouraged to make short films about belonging and migration after undertaking a number of conceptual and technical training workshops. At the conclusion of this project, my collaborators and I have pursued opportunities with local organisations to scale up this preliminary work, particularly as we found gaps in extant scholarship and policymaking related to how belonging needed to be co-​created in migratory contexts. This co-​creation and its affective and mediated dimensions constitute the crux of how belonging is re-​conceptualised in the concluding part. Belonging is regarded as critical here for refugee and ex-​refugee communities in host countries in the Global North, and follows on from the previous part focused on second-​generation migrants who are already claiming belonging through their aspiration for collective representation. Existing work on multicultural youth in the Australian context, which Chapter 6 explores here, over-​emphasises place of ethno-​cultural origin over other relevant factors when it comes to generating feelings of belonging. While such work does examine current levels of formal and informal civic engagement as it is linked to belonging, there is no evidence of attempts to facilitate it. It is also important to understand where belonging is obstructed (un-​belonging in particular sites) and how it can be shaped and co-​created in place, as well as in the imaginative dimension through social network support. According to the study titled ‘Social Networks, Belonging and Active Citizenship among Migrant Youth in Australia’, different ethnic groups have varying reasons for desiring cross-​cultural engagement (Mansouri et al, 2013). In addition, Mansouri et al found that belonging within groups (family and ethnicity-​based) is seen as a source of comfort, but also as a hindrance for 77

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doing more outward engagement. Also of relevance are findings from the ‘Multicultural Youth Australia Census’, in which belonging was measured using social, cultural, and economic indicators (Wyn et al, 2018). The age group for this nationwide survey was 15–​19-​year-​olds, and it covered youth with ancestral backgrounds from 13 different countries. This study found that while these youth reported a high level of desire to belong, not all of this was recognised or reciprocated. They were also highly engaged in education but experienced higher rates of underemployment. According to sociological work on belonging, it has two dimensions: belonging in place, and belonging as a discursive resource (Antonsich, 2010; Williamson, 2016). In the following chapters of this final part, both these aspects are explored in terms of what is working, what is missing, and what structural conditions can help shape, particularly to generate belonging with the agency of migrants and refugees themselves. There is also existing work on young people and their experiences of everyday life in diverse communities in Australia and comparable multicultural societies. For example, Harris has studied diverse neighbourhoods across Australian capital cities, concluding that young people show attachments to different communities (2016). In his research with young migrants in Leicester (UK), Clayton has observed that they negotiate belonging in everyday life through local as well as transnational ties (2012). He adds that for this group, recognition of their liminal identities ‘does not merely entail the fracturing of bounded ethnic ties, implying a reduction of affiliation, but also the creation of new forms of solidarity’ (2012, p 1688). This means that a range of local ties beyond the ethnic group could assist with generating co-​created belonging, particularly for younger migrants. Similarly, in the context of other culturally diverse regions such as Western Sydney, Noble has noted that migrants are actively engaged in code-​switching, or mobility across socio-​cultural milieus, and this can be generative of belonging (2013). At the same time, multiculturalism as government policy and everyday practice has been perceived to be under threat, especially since 9/​11, and this has impacted the belonging of visibly different minority groups. Harris and Herron looked at the socialisation of youth in the wake of the racially motivated Cronulla riots in Australia in 2005 and concluded that the capacity to relate takes place along multiple axes of difference (2017). In other words, while the presence of casual and overt forms of racism in inter-​cultural interactions cannot be denied, there is also ample evidence of encounters that transcend these racialised power dynamics. To understand where and how this occurs, focusing on the everyday lives of migrants in a wide range of settings is vital. For instance, Pardy and Lee found that while multiculturalism as a policy of tokenism is critiqued within academic literature, it nonetheless has immense discursive value for migrants of varying backgrounds because it helps them lay claim and express belonging to the 78

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‘multicultural nation’ (2011). It is in this spirit that the chapters in this part focus on belonging as shaped by the in-​situ experiences of refugees, ex-​ refugees and their descendants, and how they in turn deploy this agency for creative storytelling. In order to connect a sense of cultural belonging to participation in the polity, scholars have coined the term ‘active citizenship’ and examined its practice among migrant youth (Mansouri and Kirpitchenko, 2016). They argue that this framing of citizenship goes beyond the possession of legitimising documents, and it helps us focus on young migrants’ agency, self-​actualising practices, as well as self-​reflexivity in their social networks. The chapters that follow are based on the premise that investigating and shaping such an affective and participatory dimension of citizenship is especially pertinent at a time when national debates about urban growth and migrant/​refugee integration are at cross purposes. In other words, migrants are often demonised as causing congestion in urban areas, while also being considered crucial for a prosperous economy pivoted on real estate. Such ambivalent messages about the value of migrants cause increasing emphasis on discourses of ‘integration’ in the popular imaginary. While this is useful for the purposes of migrant settlement, it takes away migrants’ agency to shape their own surroundings, which are often located in the very areas of urban growth that are public spaces of contention. Therefore, the framework of active citizenship as affective enables migrants to contribute in a manner that fits in with the notion of integration, and also (re)interprets local and national growth as requiring input from old and new citizens. An example of how engagement and citizenship is affectively demonstrated is seen in Patton’s research on young Muslim youth in Australia. She notes that their citizenship practices can be usefully thought of as performative ‘by focusing on the acts through which marginalised subjects enact themselves as citizens’ (Patton, 2014, p 109). She adds that this takes place through non-​ normative practices in sites of religious worship such as mosques, where youth combine the notion of being a good Muslim with that of being an engaged citizen who cares about social justice. Patton concludes that this is only possible when ‘in order to enact oneself as a citizen, particularly in the cultural sense, one has to develop the feeling that one rightfully belongs to the polis’ (2014, p 110). This feeling of rightful belonging, then, is what underpins any meaningful participation, and will be given qualitative consideration through the case studies of refugee storytellers in Chapter 5 and the participatory project with migrant and refugee youth in Chapter 6 of this part. Finally, the relational nature of belonging means that the dynamics of power and exclusion must also be considered. As noted in the census of multicultural youth in Australia, migrants’ and refugees’ strong desire to belong is often not reciprocated. Socio-​political boundaries impact immigrants’ sense of 79

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belonging, and it also depends on the welcoming capacity of the majority community (Simonsen, 2016). According to research conducted by Mikola and Mansouri, un-​belonging and racism are experienced by migrant youth in a spatial sense, as well as in everyday life (2015). In a similar vein, Zevallos notes that, in the case of a sample of Australian women of Latin and Turkish backgrounds in Melbourne, ‘the women’s experiences of racism and their awareness of a hierarchy of belonging have a strong impact on the ways in which they claim their identities’ (2008, p 40). Countering these forms of racism and exclusion has been found to be more successful when undertaken by youth collectives at the local level (Mikola and Mansouri, 2015, p 210). In line with this, the chapters here underscore how belonging is shaped locally, albeit with wider applicability and through transversal solidarities.

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5

Refugee Storytellers Claim Belonging: Agency, Community and Change Through the Arts As explicated in the introduction to this part, feelings of belonging can be generative of civic participation for refugees, ex-​refugees and their descendants in their countries of resettlement in the Global North. However, these feelings need to be fostered in conditions of reciprocity, and with emphasis on refugees’ own agency and in-​situ connections. In the midst of headlines of a ‘refugee crisis’ across the world on a cyclical basis, both formal and informal advocacy communities band with the creative arts sector to assist those seeking asylum to tell their own stories. On the surface, such initiatives are well-​intentioned and seek to change the minds of those indifferent to the issue, as well as those moderately opposed to more humanitarian refugee policies in many countries that are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention. While it is difficult to provide empirical evidence with a large enough scope to prove that such intentions are unequivocally realised, it is important to understand what it is doing for the refugee storytellers themselves. Are most of these endeavours created in partnership with refugee communities? If not, what impact does the imperative to perform have on those most affected, that is, the refugees themselves? And finally, why do the arts matter for refugee stories, and what kind of stories create solidarities across communities? The purpose of this chapter is to shift the focus on refugee storytelling from the intentions of the non-​refugee interlocutors and the feelings of the audience members to the affective, rational and relational agency of the refugees themselves. Using refugee and ex-​refugee storytellers across a range of mediums as case studies (from primary interviews and secondary sources), it asks the question –​with refugee agency front and centre, what would their stories look like, and how would they help create feelings and 81

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communities of belonging? Educating non-​refugee audiences is not the primary goal of these stories. Rather, they are more vested in the process of recovering and re-​telling traumatic histories in a way that is beneficial for refugees or ex-​refugees themselves. In addition, it creates platforms of inter-​generational dialogue in refugee families and helps them connect with other disadvantaged communities in their new homes.

Introduction: a genealogy of refugee stories In the realm of refugee policies and politics, the issue of stories about and by refugees may seem less significant than meeting their immediate physical needs for food, shelter and safety. Despite this, refugee storytelling events in countries in the Global North with worsening public attitudes (and related official government policies) towards refugees and asylum seekers have proliferated. This chapter demonstrates that refugee stories such as those manifested in the arts are crucial precisely because they entail going beyond refugees’ physical needs and often play a role in facilitating feelings of belonging and overall well-​being. Moreover, like all stories, they are received by an audience whose perceptions contribute to national policy. At the same time, it is important to consider who produces/​f acilitates these stories, whether in the form of curated online or offline texts, or one-​off performance events, and why. Do they exist to empower the refugee participants themselves or rather to help change the minds of those in the audience? In most cases, a combination of these reasons is at play, but good intentions alone are not sufficient and merit further interrogation. According to Nish in her work on representing the ‘precarity’ of refugee lives, we need to pay attention to who facilitates refugee stories, who listens and why: The material and political consequences of a refugee’s ‘story’ shed light on the importance of considering who asks refugees to take up this genre, who hears, circulates, and/​or responds to the stories, and what kinds of ideological work the stories and their circulation perform for refugees, their audiences, and the social and political worlds in which they participate. (2018, p 368) The contextual parts of this chapter contain an overview of two main kinds of refugee stories, that is, those that require refugees to perform their biographical tales of precarity and those that are refugee-​initiated or endow more agency in other ways. I also look closely at an instance where more control is written into the process and the performance –​that of poetry and performance in the UK and US where refugee storytellers get 82

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a chance to exercise their creative agency. This is in contrast to instances where they may be obliged to retell stories of trauma or perform precarity that amplifies their victimhood for a public that can only see them through the lens of abjecthood. Precarity, which Judith Butler refers to as precariousness in her work (2006), is especially applicable to the conditions that refugees find themselves in, and which are therefore expected in the narration of their stories. In so far as precarity involves a state of vulnerability in the context of the nation-​ state, refugees qualify more than any other group as they experience both violence from the state and a lack of state protection from violence (Nish 2018, p 374). In this sense, therefore, refugee storytelling can be a site where their all-​encompassing precarity is expressed, and where there is an opportunity to articulate resistance to hegemonic state and media discourses. Rovisco cautions that while artistic performance can be a vital space of political resistance, ‘one must not assume that all performances concerned with marginalized voices or struggles for inclusion and recognition within the community of citizens are necessarily progressive or emancipatory’ (2019, p 655). In line with this warning, the case studies explicated in this chapter attempt to differentiate between the performance of precarity with and without the agency of refugees themselves, and therefore draw conclusions about which model might be more suited for creating transformative feelings of belonging. In a rhetorical piece for Open Democracy, former refugee Tammas argues that whether or not precarity needs to be part of refugee storytelling depends on the objective, that is, whether it is for the refugee storytellers themselves or for the non-​refugee audience. He adds that the real issue is whether the performance of precarity essentialises refugees or if it is volunteered by them (Tammas, 2019). In addition to the objective of telling such stories and the way in which this storytelling influences how they are packaged, the public response to them can also highlight problems with the rhetoric of individual change. According to Nish, what these responses foreground is that if we celebrate neoliberal, individualised solutions to the immense issues facing refugees, we are eliding their political and material specificity and reproducing existing logics of imperialism and oppression (2018, p 391). She adds that when the audience reads/​witnesses such stories, they often become self-​congratulatory for recognising the subjects as human beings but rarely move towards identifying a concrete problem or political structure (Nish 2018, p 391). This usually means that their responses remain in the realm of individual affect and financial aid. It remains to be seen whether such responses are due to the semantics of the stories themselves or the contexts in which they are embedded. With regards to the context itself, what has been pinpointed as definitively harmful is the imperative to tell stories of trauma, often coming from 83

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well-​intentioned allies. According to Rovisco, such imperatives lead to an ‘aesthetic of injury’ (Salverson, 1999), which in turn facilitates further powerlessness in the discursive construction of refugees: the ‘aesthetic of injury’ re-​tells the stories of others by playing out a discourse of victimhood, which codifies the very powerlessness and violence they seek to address. Stories and images of injury can be problematic because when the subjects of representation (migrants, refugees) are constructed as victims or oppressed there is a risk that audiences perceive them purely as subjects deserving pity and lacking agency. (2019, p 652) Despite this critique, there is a reason why such discourses are still prevalent and reinforced in every new kind of refugee story/​storytelling event in the Global North in particular. Tammas is of the view that this takes place alongside the good intentions of allies because ‘there is often an expectation that refugees owe the wider public their stories’ (2019). Such an expectation of sharing one’s story is often turned into an obligation. As he draws from his own experience, Tammas offers that when he politely declined an invite to share his story from an institution that had previously supported him, a senior staff member told him that they were very disappointed that he wasn’t able to give a few minutes of his time to help with their outreach work given what they had done for him (2019). This anecdote shows that an expectation of gratitude is often used as an instrument to coerce stories of trauma from refugees. Therefore, the case studies chosen for this chapter interrogate this expectation and in turn perform other ways of ‘evoking’ an affective response from the audience which is more generative of belonging for the refugee storytellers themselves. In terms of alternative ways of telling refugee stories while still engaging audiences, Ong and Rovisco conclude that these need not involve the performance of precarity or rehearsal of past trauma (2019, p 144). They argue that in crisis contexts, conditions of conviviality may work better ‘by striking lighter emotions and generating softer affective registers’ (Ong and Rovisco, 2019, p 144). Such conviviality is seen as better for the refugee storytellers as it enables the audience to see them as more than the sum of their traumatic histories. According to Salverson’s pioneering work on disavowing an aesthetics of injury in relation to refugee videos in Canada, what is called for is a theatre and a pedagogy that ‘recasts the script of injury’ (1999). She explains that this can be done by inviting an encounter that ‘does not dismiss empathy, but rather challenges the terms on which it is negotiated’ (Salverson, 1999). Again, in the case studies of the ex-​refugee poets and performers that this chapter focuses on, their texts tell both extraordinary and ordinary stories to draw in the audience. This particular 84

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mode of mediated stories is more conducive to a ‘politics of endurance’ for refugees, asylum seekers and their allies, especially in circumstances where structural conditions rarely change. Looking at three kinds of artistic interventions, Ong and Rovisco suggest a template for such politics that may draw on different qualities: ‘from pragmatic commitments to alleviating harm, and from addressing immediate needs to creating political solidarity that in turn directly exposes broader structures that create or perpetuate oppression’ (2019, p 141). What is common across these attributes of a politics of endurance is prioritising the agency of the refugee subjects/​ storytellers themselves over rehashing scripts of injury that the audience may be more accustomed to.

Facilitating agency, creating belonging in refugee storytelling Existing narratives of refugees in the popular media usually cast them as abject subjects or security threats. In the interviews that Rovisco conducted with migrant and refugee artists in the UK, a consistent thread was the recognition that displaced people gain presence in public life through the very narratives that construct them either as abject or as threatening (2019, p 652). Therefore, the arts has become an important mediated site of intervention where such discourses can be contested and where marginalised voices can be heard and valued on their own terms (Rovisco, 2019, p 652). This kind of work is important and not just to make individual refugee storytellers feel good about themselves and their artistic practice. According to Woodrow, a ‘storytelling as healing’ approach (as opposed to a more collective and political reading of narratives) has tangible consequences for policy formations informing the provisions of settlement support (2017). The well-​being and feelings of belonging of refugees being resettled in communities are therefore at stake if the dominant context and approach of refugee stories is not contested. At the same time, participatory methods for eliciting these stories need to be used carefully in refugee storytelling contexts as they do not constitute a fool-​proof mechanism of generating agency. Through their participatory media project, Rodriguez-​Jimenez and Gifford report that they learned ‘giving young people space to represent who they are is not a straightforward process’ (2010, p 39). They elaborate: ‘Providing space to speak does not mean that they will easily appropriate that space. Especially for recently arrived young people with refugee backgrounds, participatory approaches do not necessarily encourage agency’ (Rodriguez-​Jimenez and Gifford, 2010, p 39). In other words, some projects may require a degree of structure to facilitate the personal and creative agency of the participants. Additionally, facilitators ought to be aware of ethical concerns such as the proliferation of 85

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refugee and migrant stories that essentialise their past trauma and cast them solely as victims (Rodriguez-​Jimenez and Gifford, 2010, p 36). It is also important to keep in mind that most existing refugee narratives are not easily categorised as either only performing precarity or solely focused on encouraging agency. In fact, many tend to exclude and include at the same time. For instance, looking closely at two screen representations of Sudanese Australians, Bilbrough argues: Immigration and Unlimited are rich sites for a discussion of these inconsistencies and contradictions in terms of discourses about Sudanese-​Australians, racism and belonging as both texts simultaneously include and exclude Sudanese-​Australians from a normative Australian identity in their privileging of particular narratives and voices. While each text celebrates the success of their respective protagonist, each also enables ‘breathing space’ (Hage, 1998) through production practices. (2018, p 54) Another view is that the trauma that refugees have undergone can be represented without sensationalising it. According to Burrell and Horschelmann’s research on visual narratives of refugees in Europe, showing trauma without overplaying it leaves scope for the reader/​viewer to recognise and relate to both the banality and the universality of these situations (2019, p 54). In other words, it opens up a space for seeing refugees as similar to oneself in that they have a domestic life and simultaneously view their trauma or any extraordinary conflict in their life in the context of the relatable domesticity. In terms of how agency is depicted, this can range from the decentring of whiteness (or Europeanness) in refugee narratives to prioritising the circulation of these stories in spaces that promote public engagement. For the former, Burrell and Horschelmann give the example of a film in which northern Europe is refracted through the eyes of refugee ‘others’ (2019, p 59). They add that this is rare in the dominant media in Norway and the UK, and that by placing Syrian men at the centre of knowledge, it is the Europeans and their landscapes that are othered in their testimonies (Burrell and Horschelmann, 2019, p 59). Similarly, in a refugee-​centred documentary film called Wait, Rovisco notes that the character of Hayder is accorded a strong subject-​position (2019, p 657). This is accomplished by giving him an opportunity to speak publicly of his own experience of the hostile British asylum system, and thereby turning the audience members into witnesses (Rovisco, 2019, p 657). At the same time, it is the circulation of the film in various reception contexts that are generative of widespread engagement (such as film festivals) that points towards the value of listening in affirming refugee agency, which in turn produces belonging. Rovisco recounts an 86

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event organised by Amnesty International in Leeds where there was a panel discussion on refugee rights, and Hayder reported that this was ‘the first time that I feel that I’m a human’ because he had just received his passport and this life event was very well-​received by the film’s audience (2019, p 657). She adds that this event and its recollection is noteworthy not only because Hayder is listened to and can discuss the film but also because his humanity is acknowledged beyond the confines of the text (Rovisco, 2019, p 657). The listening stance in collaborative digital storytelling projects facilitates the agency of participants. In turn, this sense of agency can assist in moving beyond hackneyed (and often untruthful) frames of representation. For instance, in the case of their project with three refugee women who produced their own digital stories, Lenette et al observed: In contrast with the more common presentation of ‘trauma stories’ which are all too familiar in refugee studies, we learn about the unique ways in which these three women make sense of disrupted lives, using their own frames of reference and their own voice in the digital stories. These are their ‘preferred’ stories in narrative terms, which highlight the usefulness of the methodology with marginalised participants. (2019, p 83) As a consequence of prioritising refugee participants’ voice and agency, and bringing this about through a collective process, this kind of participatory storytelling can also be a tool for advocacy in policymaking (Lenette et al, 2015, p 999). In other words, the use of recorded stories from the perspective of otherwise marginalised communities can help ensure that policymakers have considered their needs and that their processes are meaningfully consultative. The significance of policymaking in this area notwithstanding, the primary goal of this chapter is to investigate the agency of refugee storytellers rather than to gauge their impact on non-​refugee audiences. Given this, next I will consider two case studies of contemporary refugee storytellers who perform/​ publish their work in a range of media genres and for diverse audiences. Their accounts of their practice and how it intersects with their refugee/​ ex-​refugee identity are framed using Dutch cultural theorist Mieke Bal’s conceptualisation of ‘migratory aesthetics’ (2019). This framing provides a way of looking at alternative representations of migration and refuge that are process-​oriented and deliberately avoid othering perspectives.

Case studies: Amir Darwish (UK) and Ifrah Mansour (US) Darwish is a British-​Syrian poet of Kurdish origin who lives in London. Born in Aleppo, he arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker during the 87

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second Gulf War. Darwish’s first book of poetry, Don’t Forget the Couscous, was published by Smokestack in 2015. His poetry has been sold in the US, Pakistan, Finland, Morocco and Mexico. For Darwish, his poetic work literally led to political arrest and, eventually, being rendered stateless: The story started when I was sixteen. After much reading, I questioned my identity, where I came from, who am I and mostly why no country accommodates Kurds, the people I belong to. That was when I wrote my first poem, and it was about Kurdistan. I wanted to read it to someone. Eventually, I did so to my brother’s friend, who turned out to be an informant. He informed the secret services about it, who visited me with machine guns and questioned me. In one way, they were good critiques as they asked if I had further inspiration, what does inspire me, do I believe in Kurdistan as a country and so on. In the end, they arrested me. My mother sold her gold to pay for a bribe, release me, and smuggle me outside the country, and ever since I became a poet in exile. (Email correspondence with author, 2021) Darwish’s account illustrates that poetry was a means for him to articulate his deeply held political beliefs even before they turned him into a refugee. At the same time, he commented that it functioned as an emotional outlet for him, and also as a unique genre in that it engages all the five senses. In a similar vein, Bal distinguished migratory aesthetics from other kinds of stereotypical depictions of migration as they are vested in intercultural encounters that engage the five senses (2019, p 99). Therefore, in Darwish’s case, politicised poetry and the migratory aesthetic are inseparable and have resulted in material consequences in terms of his longing for place(s) of belonging. In my correspondence with Darwish, he mentioned that he sees poetry as a long-​term instrument of change. He envisages its role as that of diagnosing social ills, but in a delicate way so that it is palatable to people who might be habitually opposed to change. Inherent in this view is a belief in the instrumentalisation of contemporary forms of poetry for social transformation. Therefore, this kind of refugee-​led storytelling can be seen as doubly effective for affective belonging as it is generative of creative well-​being for the practitioners themselves. It can also facilitate understanding of these subjects for non-​refugees who bear witness to these stories. Where poetry and comparable art forms differ from media reports on this, for instance, is in leading with an affective over a cognitive understanding of refugee-​related issues. Further, it is the feelings of the refugee/​ex-​refugee storytellers that remain at the centre of the experience rather than those of their allies. It is through this exercise 88

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of agency in poetry that the category of the refugee that bureaucratic performances of precarity call forth may be transmuted into a more expansive notion of belonging (Gron, 2019, p 9). For instance, Emi Mahmoud, a Sudanese American poet similarly speaks of using poetry to heal and counter dehumanising narratives in an interview with Peyton (2017). More specifically, Mahmoud speaks of how as a young Muslim woman who grew up in Philadelphia, she discovered that poetry allowed her to articulate her experiences, and she therefore made it her mission to ‘put people back in front of the numbers’ in her refugee-​centred poems (Mahmoud cited in Peyton, 2017). Darwish has also performed his poetry in a range of venues across the UK and reflects on one particular interaction with a young audience member that moved him: the most fantastic question was from a nine-​year-​old who asked me if I feel British now? I thought such a big question from such a clever young man did hit the nail right in the head. I struggled to answer him. Eventually, I said that feeling home or being British or Syrian does not matter. What matters more is that the people around you make you feel at home as people are the most essential thing in life. They are the ones who build homes. While the question recounted by Darwish suggests that young people who may be less exposed to stereotypes and mainstream media narratives of refugees may be more open to seeing them as potentially British, Darwish’s response is indicative of feeling validated in his take on belonging. Moreover, in suggesting that one’s location or the identity stamped in a passport matters less than the home one constructs relationally, he is speaking to the processual nature of belonging for those who have migrated in particular (Tsalapatanis, 2019). This notion of belonging as an affect generated over time and in relation to people in turn resonates with a feature of migratory aesthetics –​that of highlighting the process over the product (Bal, 2019), whether it applies to making art or attempting to feel at home. The focus here is on becoming and using one’s imagination for forging connections with others in the new home. It is worth noting that refugees’ creativity and aesthetic agency is often derived from elements of their cultures of origin. In other words, a crucial aspect of their work is taking pride in these cultures rather than merely representing them as places of precarity. This is evident in Darwish’s poem titled, ‘Sorry!’, which has the subtitle: ‘An apology from Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslims) to humanity’. What follows in the poem is not a sincere apology but a tongue-​in-​cheek one wherein he lists everything that Islamic cultures have given to the world and thereby affirms these 89

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contributions. Similarly, Syrian American poet Amal Kassir speaks of how Islam is connected with creativity in her eyes. She explains that although it is the most controversial religion in the world, it is the creative spirit inherent in it that compels her and others in her community to have faith (Kassir and Zietlow, 2019, p 324). Kassir is also specific about the role of language in her creative repertoire and views it as an endowment of her faith, thereby claiming belonging to it and to the creativity it helps engender in a migratory context. Ifrah Mansour is a Somalian American multimedia and performance artist who arrived in the US at the age of ten with her family who were fleeing the civil war in Somalia, which began in 1991. She creates art across a number of media –​poetry, video, sculpture and plays, and also teaches it as she has a teaching degree. Similar to Darwish, Mansour mentioned in her online interview with me that she ‘loves telling a story in as many genres as possible so she can touch a story, feel a story, be part of it, be far away from it’. She added that she ‘loves using all five senses to breathe life into a story’, thereby echoing the migratory aesthetic that is similarly vested in evoking affect through sensuous engagement. Other prominent themes in her body of work include the experiences of child refugees, and how art can heal and also build bridges (especially in contrast to the scripts of mainstream media). What is foregrounded in her art is the agency of refugees in offering kindness and neighbourliness so that they are perceived as equals rather than as subjects deserving of pity or charity. In designing her solo theatrical performance piece titled, ‘How to Have Fun in a Civil War’, Mansour was interested in exploring intergenerational dialogue and healing, told through the eyes of a seven-​year-​old refugee girl and a puppet. She commented that the reception was noteworthy for her community as Somali parents brought along their children. As a consequence, during the post-​show discussion, civil war survivors ended up telling their stories to the next generation for the first time. Mansour added that she felt really joyous to be part of this passing of history, which is what storytelling means to her. For non-​Somalis in the audience, it served an educational purpose. The reason it was seen as affective for the older generation of Somalis in attendance is because it adhered to the migratory aesthetic of telling stories from the inside. Applying this aesthetic to the medium of film, Bal elucidates: If a film of migratory aesthetics is to avoid the usual exteriorized, even eroticized othering, a constant negotiation between outside and inside perspectives is needed. One aspect that the concept of migratory aesthetics clarifies is the intimacy of the film, with a consistent situating of the filming inside the group of people concerned. It is from the inside that it becomes possible to bear witness to what I call, for want 90

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of a better term, the ‘hybridity-​within’ that characterizes migrant situations. (2019, pp 93–​4) Following this approach of centring insider perspectives, Mansour’s work is successful in avoiding an othering standpoint and mobilising the feelings of her Somali audience precisely because they see it as an ‘insider’ story. In speaking for this community, she reasons that many shy away from telling stories that are painful because it will cause them to appear less strong to their children. She adds that this is also likely because oftentimes there is shame in being attached to a refugee label as one’s country of origin didn’t prioritise peacemaking or because one couldn’t have conventional birthdays as a child due to not having a permanent home. Given this context of shame associated with one’s place of origin, Mansour’s performance was able to conjure up a transitory yet timely space of affective belonging for them. As a result, they felt safe and comfortable in sharing their stories with their offspring. At the same time, when retelling tales of trauma, Mansour ensures that her performance is made palatable for a younger audience through the use of humour. This is especially important when considering the agency of the refugee or ex-​refugee artist as they are exercising care in narrating prior experiences of precarity while also educating those who didn’t experience it directly. Mansour emphasises that given a substantive audience of her work includes the children of Somali refugees who have settled in the US, she is careful to re-​tell without re-​traumatising. She adds that she wants these children ‘to look up to their parents as “heroes” ’, thereby foregrounding the insider dimension of migratory aesthetics again in addition to her artistic agency. Mansour’s take on an older generation’s trauma can also be read as part of what Bui (2016) calls, ‘the refugee repertoire’. Referring to an emergent body of artwork produced by second-​generation Southeast Asian American youth that foregrounds the performative aspects of being the children of refugees, she comments that they counter ‘the assimilationist script that the life of the refugee concludes with resettlement and all pain vanishes with time’ (Bui, 2016 p 128). In addition to representing the resilient power of their communities, these young artists also display ‘the creativity of those born after war to stage their own production of memory’ (Bui, 2016 p 129). In other words, it is also worth paying closer attention to the agency and aesthetics of those who may not have experienced (or remember experiencing) refugee trauma but have nonetheless inherited these stories and related affects from their parents. While the literature on belonging does not directly address this group, Mansour’s artwork is testament to how certain kinds of mediated stories can facilitate feelings of belonging to one’s own stories, whether experienced oneself or inherited, and thereby engender community belonging. This agency in the retelling of stories could also, to 91

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an extent, help address the limitations of the precarious framing of refugees discussed earlier in this chapter.

Discussion: belonging through ‘transversal politics’ What is particular to Ifrah Mansour’s generation and worth noting in their claim for belonging is a capacity to express solidarity and form alliances with other marginalised groups in their new homes, thereby embodying a kind of ‘transversal politics’. In her seminal work on recognition, feminist scholar Nira Yuval-​Davis distinguishes transversal politics from ‘identity politics’ thus: [they are] dialogical politics in which all the participants in the dialogue see themselves not as representatives but as advocates of particular collectivities and social categories. … The strength of transversal politics as an alternative to identity politics lies in the construction of common dialogical understandings of particular political situations rather than of common political action as different social locations might establish different priorities for emancipator action while sharing the same political values. (2017, p 163) This understanding of ‘transversal politics’ means that in the case of artists like Mansour who come from a refugee background, they may not act on behalf of other disadvantaged communities but are increasingly forming alliances with them. These alliances in turn facilitate their affective belonging in their country of residence. In her case, Mansour speaks of how her family felt ‘discarded as a refugee’ on arrival in the US, and this makes her think and care constantly for others in similar situations, such as the homeless in her home state of Minnesota. Mansour also displays her solidarity with the Indigenous peoples of North America by pointing out that many live in worse conditions than what she and her family found in refugee camps. To enact these feelings of kinship, she joined a group called ‘the truth collective’, which creates art and feeds people on a block in her neighbourhood that was burned down. She adds that it consists of members who are from communities that are deeply marginalised for social or economic reasons but who find a sense of belonging with others who want to ‘bring more good into the world’. In a similar vein to transversal politics, Godin and Dona’s work looks at the young Congolese diaspora and their use of social media to remediate the stories of their refugee parents and engage with other causes (2016). They found that particular projects enabled these young people to re-​ politicise ‘their positions among other dominant discourses within and beyond the diaspora, not only as Congolese young people but as global citizens’ (Godin and Dona, 2016, p 68). Although this is an instance of social 92

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media rather than artistic practices enabling agency and transversal politics, they nonetheless speak to the value of self-​representation in forging new communities, exercising one’s agency, and claiming affective belonging for the children of refugees.

Conclusion In this chapter, I commenced with how refugee tales in storytelling events and dominant media in the Global North are expected to narrate tales of precarity and/​or gratitude towards the country of residence. The good intentions of allies aside, it is important to interrogate whether such narratives prioritise the creative agency of refugees and ex-​refugees themselves, and whether they facilitate or hinder a sense of belonging to one’s history as well as to new local connections. Following an overview of the literature on refugee storytelling and examples from creative media across the Global North, I presented two case studies of refugee storytellers: poet Amir Darwish from the UK and artist Ifrah Mansour who resides in the US with her family. Interviews with these storytellers unveil the importance of ‘process’ in their feelings of belonging, and the presence of migratory aesthetics in their body of work in so far as it emphasises insider knowledge, engagement with the senses and careful retelling of trauma by using humour and other devices. Mansour’s biographical story and her artwork and advocacy also underline how the children of refugees are engaged in building alliances with other marginalised communities, thereby shedding light on the reciprocal creation of local belonging in the new home. It is on this note that this chapter will conclude with calls for more research on this generation and the range of media they consume and produce to advocate not just for their communities of origin but others like them who may be structurally disadvantaged. The examples of secondary and primary mediated stories explored here are testament to how the exercise of agency by refugee and ex-​refugee practitioners can create an affective register within their communities that is conducive of belonging. This in turn offers counter-​narratives to the tales of refugee precarity that are expected of them in bureaucratic settings as well as some well-​meaning storytelling contexts organised by allies.

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Belonging as Affect: Towards Paradigms for Reciprocal Care in Community-​Based Research Moving from case studies of storytelling by refugees to a project which attempted to facilitate them in situated, reciprocal conditions, this final chapter aims to advance our understanding of belonging and its affective dimensions. It begins by reflecting on belonging as a ‘feeling of our times’, albeit a political one that attempts to move past a superficial, libertarian focus on harmony in new migrant communities. Instead, through the case study of a recent migrant community project with a creative outcome based in South West Sydney, I examine what belonging looks and feels like when the focus is on co-​creating cultural safety through approaches that favour reciprocity and creative agency. This lens on belonging also reverses the discursive construction of new migrants as those requiring integration initiatives to fit in or of certain others in need of de-​radicalisation. Instead, it asks: what will make them feel safe enough to invest in local and national communities? This is not to discount the value of resettlement programs and English-​language classes. Rather, the focus here is on augmenting existing programs with projects that decentre the majority community and make space for cultural belonging to emerge in a reciprocal manner. Therefore, this chapter spotlights the following aspects of belonging: (1) it is more effective than ‘identity’ as a point of solidarity in the 21st century; (2) it needs to be seen as a ‘reciprocal affect’ and not just as an individual feeling to make solidarity possible; (3) its manifestation in the local and/​or the creative is a way to ground and enable reciprocal affect, re-​conceptualise and co-​create belonging that is more culturally mobile while being safe.

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Introduction: situating the self and South West Sydney As I draft this chapter, I’m nestled in a corner of the Level 2 open space near the lifts at the University of Wollongong’s South West Sydney campus that is now nearly three years old. While trawling through the literature on belonging, I hear one male student at the elevator calling out to his friend on the other side of the closing doors: ‘I love you, bro’. He stretches out his right arm to stop the door as his compatriot utters, ‘Love you too, this semester has been good ’coz of you’. I’m floored by this expression of homosocial affection, which I rarely see in masculine Anglo contexts such as sections of my workplace. I giggle to myself. Beyond the surprising nature and context of this particular articulation, I wonder about whether the students at this campus feel a sense of belonging here (it is a vertical campus without bars and cafes, after all). And then I marvel at the fact than in less than three years, this part of Sydney has become such an important source of belonging for my own 1.5-​generation migrant academic self. For me, this specific sense of ‘feeling-​at-​home’ in the Liverpool Central Business District (CBD) was far from instantaneous. It was a gradual getting to know the streets and its residents, frequenting ethnic grocers and the local Westfield shopping centre, befriending the security guards at the campus as well as council staff that got me here. I had no instrumentalist goals around research collaboration to begin with as I thought to embed myself in the area and begin to learn about it before formalising any research plans. My first encounter with the streets of the Liverpool CBD was one rife with ambivalence because prior to this, I had never lived or worked in an area with a significant proportion of working-​class people of colour. Therefore, I had to persist with the ambivalence and discomfort to see its potential for manifesting a less-​obvious form of ‘belonging’. In this chapter, I focus on the case study of a project situated in the city of Liverpool, a local government area (LGA) located in South West Sydney due to its fast-​g rowing and culturally diverse youth population. As per 2016 Census data, this LGA is highly diverse with ancestral backgrounds from Italy (6.7 per cent), India (6.5 per cent), Lebanon (6 per cent), Vietnam (5.2 ), and China (5.1 per cent) among others. According to the ‘Liverpool Youth Strategy 2012–​2017’, ‘Liverpool’s population of young people is consistently higher than Greater Sydney’, and about 31 per cent were born overseas (Liverpool City Council, 2012, p 16). Prior to the global COVID-​19 crisis, Liverpool was profiled as a hub of urban and employment growth due to land release, redevelopment and the building of a new airport in nearby Badgery’s Creek. Like the rest of the nation and the world, the impact of global economic recession will be felt in Liverpool and by its existing diverse migrant communities, especially the youth. While the project was undertaken prior to the COVID-​19 pandemic, it was vested in fostering 95

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belonging and intercultural networks among youth. Both of these objectives are likely to be even more significant in the socio-​economic recovery of this region, which was deemed an ‘LGA of concern’ due to a higher rate of infections during Sydney’s 2021 lockdown. It has been noted that due to the intersection of working-​class and culturally diverse communities in this area, it continues to bear the disproportionate impact of the pandemic (Fitzsimmons, 2022). I focus on belonging in the very situated context that is Liverpool as it is an area where socio-​economic growth potential, disadvantage and cultural diversity overlap. The take on belonging here is similarly drawn from extant research and builds on it by amplifying its transformative affective dimensions in multicultural settings. According to Bissell et al in the introduction of their edited book titled Social Beings, Future Belongings: Reimagining the Social, belonging is both a feeling and a set of practices (2019, p 2). Following Wright and others, they argue that the potential of belonging is in its productive ambiguity (2019, p 2). Perhaps this ambiguity can be understood as ‘affect’ in that it is a situational and embodied feeling that may not be easy to articulate and name as a clear-​cut emotion. When belonging is ascribed the taxonomy of nationality, or the naturalness of a pre-​determined emotion associated with primordial identity, it becomes limiting and limited. Bissell et al also use the work of Wright and Amin to suggest that belonging is now provisional, and it would be useful to consider how ethical and political implications change when we see ‘belonging’ as referring to an event or an everyday encounter. This then becomes a feeling that is not pre-​determined but one that comes into being through affective encounters, and acting in responsive ways (2019, p 5). Building on the case studies of the previous chapter where belonging is understood as a process, this chapter uses this notion of a processual development a of ‘belonging’ as productive rather than pre-​determined, as affective rather than definitive and as reciprocal rather than individualistic to understand how it helps create a safe space in a university-​funded migrant community project in South West Sydney. Such a re-​ conceptualisation and re-​centring of belonging is essential to move the focus away from ‘identity’ and ‘integration’ in the official discourses and everyday practices around multiculturalism in immigrant settler societies such as Australia. This is not to suggest that these terms have no value in particular contexts. For instance, identity politics can be generative in anti-​racism struggles that follow a strategic essentialist approach, and integration can be useful in advocating for cultural maintenance among migrant groups. However, this chapter begins with an overview of the academic literature on ‘belonging’ to make a case for its particular value in contemporary multicultural suburbs, and then explicates the case study to unpack its practice. 96

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Belonging: an agential overview This chapter contends that the most important reason to privilege the language of belonging, and to attempt to see it as an affect (both individual and collective), is that it is agency-​endowing for migrants themselves. In other words, it enables them to ‘feel’ and articulate their own identity, instead of being at the receiving end of the language of objectification often employed by state policies and mainstream media discourses. For instance, a 2009 document titled ‘Australia’s settlement services for migrants and refugees’ outlines the federal government’s ‘Living in Harmony’ programme. While this programme is not classified as a settlement service, it is described as a key component of the government’s plan for ‘integrating migrants and fostering social cohesion’ (Spinks, 2009, p 9). Further, social cohesion itself is seen to come about through the promotion of ‘respect, participation, a sense of belonging, and Australian values’ (Spinks, 2009, p 9). Despite clearly mentioning ‘a sense of belonging’ as integral to facilitating social cohesion, the close-​ending of this with ‘Australian values’ makes such belonging a conditional object. In other words, the belonging seen as contributing to ‘social cohesion’ has to be done on the terms of the majority community. In a critique of the official use of the term ‘social cohesion’, Ho (2013) argues that since the 2000s we observe a shift in multicultural policy from ‘social justice’ in the 1970s and 80s to ‘productive diversity’ in the 1980s and 90s. This move is significant for the re-​conceptualisation of belonging suggested in this chapter because the focus on harmony has been ‘depoliticising and incapable of addressing the “hard” issues of racism and inequality’ (Ho, 2013, p 38). In order to begin addressing these in a socio-​political climate that is averse to the language of identity, belonging poses as a useful conceptual and practical tool. This is because it potentially centres the concerns of migrants and refugees without threatening the legitimacy of the nation-​state as a place to claim belonging to. It is only when we flip the dynamic of centring the majority community that we can begin to see the cultural and creative practices of migrants and refugees as enabling of their own belonging. Centring their practices also makes them integral to the national canon rather than being seen as token signifiers within it. This sentiment of needing to broaden the idea of what constitutes Australian cultural or creative practice was also expressed in the audience feedback received at the screening of the short films made as part of the project, which is explored in detail later in this chapter: From what I know about Sydney, it seems like the Inner west or Eastern suburbs are seen as ‘creative hubs’ where the artists live, and where cultural production happens. This is a really skewed, and white-​centric construct that needs to be problematised, and I really think that these 97

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films explore the creative practice of people not from this ‘center-​point’ that usually don’t have such a platform. I think there is really a need to de-​link Sydney from white-​centric notions of creative practice, which is tied to the geography in which the Western suburbs are seen as void of creative practice. (Audience Respondent 6) This audience response also maps the idea of who is seen as belonging, and who is excluded onto a literal geography of the city of Sydney. Such a mapping is important because belonging is often articulated in national terms even when its exclusions play out in the everyday lives of migrants at a local level (see, for instance, Koleth 2015). Therefore, this chapter attempts to articulate how the fostering of belonging can be localised as well. In their book on belonging and identity, Hedetoft and Hjort tease out the origins of belonging, and they outline how it is shaped by political and cultural dimensions: the English word belonging is a fortuitous compound of being and longing, of existential and romantic-​imaginary significations and associations, shaped and configured in multiple ways by the international system of nationalism as simultaneously a political and a cultural ordering principle. … It raises questions about cultural, sociological, and political transformative processes and their impact on imagined and real boundaries. (2002, pp ix–​x) While such a political and cultural definition brings the affective aspects of belonging in the context of a changing geo-​political landscape to the foreground, there are concerns raised about where and how belonging ought to be tethered. Hedetoft and Hjort ask, if globality isn’t a good enough emotional substitute for nationality, can a ‘multicultural local’ generate that kind of emotional attachment? Based on these queries, they conclude that belonging requires territorial and historical fixity (Hedetoft and Hjort, 2002, p xviii). As aforementioned, the case study in this chapter will elaborate on how local multicultural belonging can be a source of affective attachment. At the same time, local belonging is also a site of ‘cultural mobility’, and this can be generative of a kind of safety that is a signifier of concreteness. Academic literature on belonging has emerged since the 1990s and attempts to distinguish it from identity are ongoing. For instance, Tsalapatanis argues that the two terms should not be conflated; belonging is an abstract relational concept ‘compared to identity’s more categorical individualistic bent’ (2019, p 13). Moreover, if belonging is to be re-​conceptualised as a pluralistic and affective sense of being with diverse others, then it must be pushed beyond the ‘conceptual confines of identity’ (Bissell et al, 2019, p 4). When considered this way, it is possible to see belonging as a gradual 98

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process rather than given at birth or via an official document. In her seminal work on the politics of belonging, Yuval-​Davis posits that for most people today, social and cultural citizenship, and the belonging that arises from that is gradual, multi-​layered and includes attachment to multiple collectivities (2011, p 146). This is of consequence, she adds, because it impacts ‘people’s access to a variety of social, economic and political resources’ (2011, p 147). In other words, contemporary attempts to understand belonging as affect must contend with its multifarious attachments, as well as its exclusions. Bringing the focus back to newer migrants and refugees, there is a degree of consensus among migration studies scholars that their sense of belonging is divided between at least two national entities and what these entities represent in cultural terms. In his empirical research with immigrant populations in a Southwestern city in the US, Brettell concludes that first-​generation migrants have ‘a bifocality of outlooks and a dual sense of belonging’ (2006, p 96). He adds that while many choose to become naturalised American citizens for pragmatic reasons, their cultural belonging is still strongly rooted in their place of birth, and hence their identities are shaped by both places (Brettell, 2006, p 96). While the sort of political belonging that is bestowed by public institutions and the law is an important dimension of belonging for migrants, this chapter is more interested in the everyday unfolding and becoming of belonging for this group. In this sense, then, belonging is to be seen as an affect that comes about in a relational milieu and is most effective when there is a high degree of reciprocity. For instance, in her work with Vietnamese Australian communities in their ordinary settings, Nunn suggests that, ‘belonging is inherently relational, negotiated through processes of seeking and granting, asserting and rejecting, in which individuals and groups have varying degrees of agency’ (Nunn, 2017, p 218). When we move across ethnic groups in these settings, other considerations come to light. The dual sense of belonging is not adequate to forge connections with those not of the majority community, or one’s own ethno-​linguistic group. In other words, belonging needs to be more expansive to produce alliances with those with whom one shares a (recent) migrant status. Strath argues that the longing for belonging needs to be stretched in diverse suburbs where other ‘others’ are present, thereby also suggesting a form of ‘transversal politics’ as seen in the previous chapter: When applied to our multicultural urban environments today homeland connotes nostalgia and diasporic longings for a remote distance and a remote past. There is a need for an alternative conceptualization that emphasizes the continuities and overlappings with other migrant communities and develops ties to the larger polity in which migrants live, a conceptualization that emphasizes solidarity in the cityscapes of diversity. (2008, p 31) 99

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She similarly critiques the term ‘multicultural’ as it is practised in the European context, as it does not produce solidarity across cultural borders (Strath, 2008, p 31). In the case of Australia, however, research performed with migrants themselves indicates that ‘multiculturalism’ has a different cadence in culturally diverse settings, as compared to what it means to theorists and policymakers. For instance, Nunn found that in her interviews, multiculturalism was an important discursive site of belonging as it enabled migrant interviewees to lay claim to a multicultural nation (2017, pp 226–​7). Keeping this in mind, the present chapter will attempt to straddle the ground between re-​theorising belonging so that it is more conceptually relevant to the present and doing this alongside an analysis of feedback from a creative migrant community project based on the notion of belonging.

Migrant community projects and approaches Projects that facilitate creative storytelling and/​or civic participation in migrant communities in diverse urban areas of Sydney have been ongoing and have especially gained momentum since the early 2000s. According to Salazar, who has partnered with community organisations to undertake projects of this kind in the culturally diverse suburb of Parramatta (also located in Western Sydney), endeavours of this kind are found to be ‘both effective and empowering in each local context leading to community leadership, social/​cultural inclusion and as an interface for inter-​generational/​cultural dialogue’ (2010). One of the audience respondents for the project on which this chapter is based also highlighted their anti-​racism dimension as being more profound than witnessed in other kinds of corporate enterprises that claim to improve inclusion: I really want to thank you and anyone who contributes to the ‘less heard voices’ to be heard. It is easy to talk about inclusion, anti-​racism, and multi-​culturality in expensive suits and dresses in huge conference rooms. However, we need people to roll up their sleeves and talk to these ‘others’, to listen to their stories, to fund their films, to bring them on the platform. This needs to continue until everyone is on the platform and the binaries of ‘us/​them’ is weakened if not disappeared. (Audience Respondent 7) Therefore, projects that aim to empower marginalised communities, such as migrant and refugee youth in disadvantaged areas, also have the benefit of increasing the exposure of the majority community to these voices and stories. These multi-​pronged benefits, however, are not a given. They are highly dependent on certain kinds of processes and facilitation approaches that are participatory in nature. Through their own participatory media project, 100

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Rodriguez-​Jimenez and Gifford report that they learned that ‘giving young people space to represent who they are is not a straightforward process’ (2010, p 39). They elaborate: ‘Providing space to speak does not mean that they will easily appropriate that space. Especially for recently arrived young people with refugee backgrounds, participatory approaches do not necessarily encourage agency’ (Rodriguez-​Jimenez and Gifford, 2010, p 39). In other words, some projects may require a degree of structure to facilitate the personal and creative agency of the participants. Additionally, facilitators ought to be aware of ethical concerns such as the proliferation of refugee and migrant stories that essentialise their past trauma and cast them solely as victims (Rodriguez-​Jimenez and Gifford, 2010, p 36). In keeping with this, the participants in the project examined here were not required to narrativise their own experience of migration, whether that entailed suffering or integration. The only criterion was that their short film address an aspect of belonging and migration that was also explored in the pre-​production workshops.

Case study: ‘Passage: ​Stories of Migration and Belonging’ –​background and methods In response to the growing cultural diversity in Liverpool and other parts of western and South West Sydney, the relevant city councils, multicultural service organisations in the area, as well as community arts initiatives are endeavouring to empower marginalised groups. This has thus far taken the form of community gardens, food tours and catering start-​ups, art and craft stalls, and digital storytelling workshops. While these workshops have been found to be effective in facilitating the agency of participants over their own lives and stories, the material is rarely seen outside of the contexts in which it is produced. In addition, there is rarely any evaluation of its medium-​term impact on the community. Therefore, the project titled ‘Passage: Stories of Migration and Belonging’ aimed to address these gaps by (1) partnering University of Wollongong (UOW students with new migrant/​refugee participants and having a community-​wide launch of their productions; and (2) conducting an evaluation on the basis of feedback obtained from participants, facilitators and the screening audience, ensuring that the data could be used as seed material for future projects of this kind with a larger scope. Funding for Passage was obtained from the University of Wollongong’s competitive Community Engagement Grants Scheme (CEGS), whose aim is to facilitate partnerships with local communities. The project was the first of its kind in South West Sydney to entail a collaboration between a university based in the area (UOW), a community arts and media organisation (CuriousWorks), as well as a multicultural community organisation and social business (Settlement Services International, or SSI). While Western Sydney 101

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University has a longstanding reputation of working with community media and arts, especially in the City of Parramatta, this has not yet been attempted in South West Sydney. In November 2018, three teams of two participants each were recruited by myself and the SSI coordinator. At the first workshop on 23 November, CuriousWorks facilitators Steph Vajda and Sandra May introduced teambuilding and filmmaking concepts. A participant information pack was circulated, and consent forms were signed and collected. For the second workshop on 14 December, I, as the conceptual project leader, delivered material on cities, migration and belonging. This was to assist the teams in thinking about relevant ideas and possible stories over the break. At the third workshop on 15 January 2019, the mentors from CuriousWorks and UOW checked in with the teams on the ideas they developed over the break. Sandra May then delivered material on basic filmmaking techniques, and the pairs began storyboarding so that the production process could begin. At the final formal workshop later in January, the teams began to finalise their story ideas and prepare detailed timelines for production and post-​ production. Over the subsequent month, they shot their stories at various locations around South West Sydney. The films were then edited by CuriousWorks mentors at their studio in Casula and approved for screening by the project team in March. On 27 March 2019, a screening event was organised at the university’s Liverpool campus. It was open to the public and had near-​full attendance and constructive feedback via online interaction and audience questionnaires. The films were also screened at the Big Screen in Macquarie Mall (approved by the Liverpool City Council) for two weeks in April. They are currently available online via the video streaming platform, Vimeo. According to the facilitators of the project from the partner organisations, it is commendable that all three teams successfully completed the workshops and produced high-​quality short films for screening and online distribution as similar projects usually have a high rate of attrition.

Discussion: findings on processes, encounters and spaces Feedback from project participants was sought via a standard survey undertaken by CuriousWorks that was shared with all the project partners, as well as one-​on-​one audio recorded interviews conducted by me. In addition, 10 members of an audience of about 50 at the screening event responded to a detailed qualitative interview sent via email immediately after the event. I also sought feedback from the workshop facilitators and the SSI coordinator, as mentioned in the prior section. In this part, I will consider these responses to contribute to the project of re-​conceptualising belonging outlined earlier in this chapter. All respondents have been de-​identified in line with the human research ethics protocol under which this project was approved. 102

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Belonging as process All six participants reported having learned from the project, and they also mentioned that it contributed to and helped develop their prior understanding of ‘belonging’. According to respondent Y, who is a university student, and whose family migrated from Iraq five years ago, ‘belonging’ was a process of gradual transitions: I found it very difficult to belong to this country and I’m actually still in my belonging process. However, this project was like an eye opening for me as I found out that everyone has a belonging story and belonging sometimes does not really means that you born somewhere and you belong to it, it is much bigger concept then it looks. (Y’s email to author) In this way, participants commenced the journey of thinking of, and feeling about belonging as something that could occur beyond a country of birth affiliation. A couple of team members also spoke of how the project itself gave them access to networks that assisted with their understanding of belonging in the context of migration. According to respondent M, who is a second-​generation migrant from Greece: All members of the project contributed life stories and were happy to get to know each other, thus making the experience much more rewarding. I am fortunate to have made some very special friends and my experiences during the project have enriched my own life and knowledge of migration and belonging. (M’s evaluation for CuriousWorks) This testimony also speaks to the theme of belonging as an affect conducive to safety and meaning, which will be explored in detail in subsequent sub-​sections. For the only international student participating in the project, it was especially beneficial in terms of learning about various kinds of migrants to Australia. Participant T also reported she was keen to ‘spread the word’, thereby touching upon the aspect of belonging that lends itself to establishing an emotional community of advocacy on particular issues: I feel more connected to other individuals, especially refugees and migrants as I understand more about their struggles entering new country. By sharing the [creative productions] from our project, I’m able to get the messages across friends in my networks and I’m eager to have a chat with anyone interested in it. I think by spreading the words, 103

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it will result in some changes finally in terms of behaviours, perspectives and governmental policies. (T’s evaluation for CuriousWorks) Along similar lines, one of the audience respondents also expressed interest in the advocacy angle of the expression of affective belonging, and how it has historical precedents: I believe in ‘being heard’ and ‘speaking out’. There was a time in America when buses were segregated to black and white parts and Rosa Park refused to give her seat up to a white passenger, and started something. So, making such films, raising awareness, and sharing that ‘it is OK to be different’, that ‘it is fine to look different’, and we can all cohabit peacefully can lead to change, socially and politically, though change takes time. (Audience Respondent 7) The contribution of creative cultural productions to the feeling of belonging for old and new migrants, and its capacity for inter-​cultural understanding, is thereby understood as a gradual but vital process.

Creation of safe space The responses and feedback obtained from the project evaluations also indicated the importance of the creation of a ‘safe space’ and how the facilitation process aided the same. They suggest that the creation of such a safe space is reliant on what I identify as three core principles that are also conducive to storytelling and creative mediation: respect, relatability and reciprocity. For starters, with regards to the workshop approach itself, participant H commented through the CuriousWorks evaluation that, ‘The space was always safe and I always felt comfortable to speak up. Loved working with [the facilitators].’ This response is indicative of the significance of ‘acceptance’ for a feeling of safety and thereby generating affective belonging. According to one of the audience responses, this connection to belonging was evident in the films themselves: Belonging means being accepted, safe and loved in a community of loved ones, kin and friends. Yes, the films show how migrants could feel unbelonged and belonged at the same time by different groups of people. (Audience Respondent 5) Acceptance in turn is linked to feeling trusted and respected by facilitators and other project participants. This means that as one of the cornerstones of creating a safe space for affective belonging, respect needs to be established, communicated and felt from the outset. In her commentary for the CuriousWorks evaluation, participant M noted the value of this feeling: 104

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The faith and trust shown by fellow members in telling their heartfelt and often emotional stories is something that I will hold dear and has also enabled me to have a stronger awareness of the varying differences and difficulties often faced by immigrants during a harrowing experience. Similarly, participant T indicated that she felt welcome, and it was easy to mingle with other project members. She also highlighted the pairing process as effective as ‘I had a chance to discuss and develop ideas in deeper length with my partner’ (T’s evaluation for CuriousWorks). In my own phone interview with T, she mentioned that the safe space was primarily enabled by having participants with relatable experiences. She added that this was a contrast to her tutorial groups at the main university campus, which mainly consisted of domestic Anglo students. This observation makes it imperative to point out that while this was not part of the design of the project, all six participants ended up being female and first or second-​generation migrants (with three from refugee backgrounds). Future research will have to explore whether safe spaces would need to be facilitated differently in a larger project consisting of team members with more varied experiences and/​or ethnic origins. In addition to respect and relatability, respondents also suggested that reciprocity of effort was present, and vital to creating an environment that was safe and conducive to belonging. In my face-​to-​face interview with her, participant M commented that she felt the group worked because of ‘listening’. In other words, there was mutual respect for each other’s stories and backgrounds, and therefore a degree of listening reciprocity when experiences or ideas were being shared. This is similar to the findings of the focus groups conducted by Wille (2011) among South Sudanese communities in Canberra. She found that for the men in this cohort, it was important for the wider Australian community to get to know them (Wille, 2011, p 91). This was because ‘by learning to know each other, a two-​way integration, a common belonging may develop where all members of the society acknowledge and see the need for each other’ (Wille, 2011, p 91). Therefore, the notion of reciprocity is key to establishing a safe space in a small-​scale project, and it appears to be applicable to the wider context of migration wherein integration means reciprocal effort, and this is more likely to result in belonging for newer migrants.

Similar yet different Despite the earlier comment about relatable experiences, some participants mentioned that there were also notable differences among them. 105

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However, these differences were not seen as a barrier to participation and collaboration. For instance, in her evaluation for CuriousWorks, participant H noted: I got to work with my mum which was special. I also got to work with young artists, which is always special. We’re all so likeminded yet different, it was nice to be in a room with different people who share similar yet different experiences. In a similar vein, participant K remarked on the similarities existing alongside difference: ‘This workshop has impacted me in variety of ways most importantly it made me understand other people’s struggle and suffer and how can we all be so different yet so similar’ (K’s evaluation for CW). These responses echo research on solidarity theory (based on feminist and post-​colonial views) that promote ‘reflective solidarity’ as a space that ‘allows the exploration and articulation of differences while providing inclusive understanding of “we” ’ (Nikunen, 2018 p 23). This is not dissimilar to the transversal politics of the children of refugees explicated in the previous chapter. What was noted in the project under discussion, however, was the particular conditions that enabled solidarity to take shape, particularly in the midst of differences (in terms of lived experience, priority concerns, and political perspective). Finally, audience responses to a question about their understanding or definition of belonging suggest that the films and the accompanying introduction from participants at the screening event aided in their own re-​conceptualisation of belonging. For example, one of them noted: Belonging means being connected to whoever is my family or friends at this moment, being free to explore the environment I live in. The films confirmed my idea that belonging does not have to be from your birth family or culture, or birthplace, but having freedom to be yourself with who and where you are. (Audience Respondent 2) This response demonstrates both cultural safety and inter-​cultural mobility, stasis and movement as being integral to adjusting our notion of affective belonging in global migratory contexts. This also resonates with the participants’ experience of finding belonging outside of their immediate family and intra-​ethnic kinship and friendship circles. In this way, the belonging facilitated through the project’s facilitation process and final products may have been effective in generating affective relations with other ‘others’, even if in a transitory sense in a relatively disadvantaged multicultural milieu. 106

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Conclusion As explicated in this chapter, the notion of belonging in relation to migration has received attention since the 1990s. Those writing on it have also attempted to distinguish it from identity as it is considered to be more relational and less definitive. In addition to providing an overview of how belonging has been theorised and endowed with more agency from migrants themselves, I have attempted to re-​conceptualise it so that its affective and iterative dimensions are foregrounded. The case study of a small-​scale migrant community project located in the diverse satellite city of Liverpool in the state of New South Wales, Australia assists with this re-​conceptualisation. The feedback from the participants, screening event audience and partner organisations for the project yielded three principles of belonging –​namely, belonging as process, the creation of safe spaces, and the emphasis on similarities as well as differences to forge reflective solidarities. For future research on belonging, I argue that these principles could also be trialled in the broader context of multiculturalism in Australia and comparable immigrant nations in the Global North. That is, it is worthwhile examining further whether a sense of cultural safety and reciprocity from the receiving community make a noticeable and documented difference to the sense of affective belonging of newly arrived migrants and refugees.

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Conclusion: Care and Resilience in the Face of Increasing Precarity – COVID-​19 and Beyond In addition to summarising the key findings from the previous six chapters of the book, this concluding chapter is a call for solidarities across differences to enable care as a culturally inflected emotional framework that governs all our relations with others. It argues that in times of increasing socio-​ economic precarity due to neoliberal policies and public health emergencies, and their amplification of racial divides, there are instances where the embodied capacities of care are working for collective change. Examples of this include migrants and refugees demonstrating their agency through a range of food-​based social enterprises servicing the elderly, the sick and stranded overseas students during the COVID-​19 pandemic. Following Berg and Fiddian-​Qasmiyeh, such reclamations of agency ultimately call for a dismantling of the guest–​host binaries that have been used to characterise the emotions of migration in the public sphere (2018). The departing case study presented in this concluding chapter is that of an ensemble film based in Western Sydney that was created by writers from culturally diverse migrant and refugee communities residing within its suburbs. This example is one of centring the agential storytelling of and by migrants, albeit not shying away from interrogating stereotypes and claiming an affective space in a mainstream film festival. It is only when transformative emotions change the tone and content of the public debate about those migrants and refugees who are in our community that we can begin addressing the even greater precarity of those rendered completely immobile (such as refugees in detention centres and camps, domestic workers, and their offspring who are considered stateless).

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Chapter summaries This book commenced with an overview of the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, and how this approach is calling for a re-​ configuration of traditional migration studies. Such an adaptation entails viewing migration as more than a sum of rational choices by migrants, or on issues of migration, and thereby also centring their agency in a holistic sense. In doing so, the book is particularly interested in those complex affects associated with migration in the public sphere, and which are mediated through various platforms that have the potential to be transformative emotions of social change. The subsequent three parts therefore focused on case studies from migratory contexts in the Global North explicating ‘empathy’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘belonging’. The second chapter examined the politics of leadership empathy as manifested by New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, in the aftermath of the terror attacks on mosques in Christchurch in 2019. In doing so, it traced the shifts in emotional rules regarding public display of emotion by leaders and citizens alike, and established how evoking empathy in affective communities is both expected and conditionally effective. In the first chapter, I looked at the audience responses after the screening of a refugee-​ themed documentary in a regional city in Australia to understand how empathy is felt and articulated as well as the conditions in which it is likely to transmute into action. Moving to the part on aspiration and centring the experiences and representations of established migrants, the third chapter of the book undertook a close analysis of an Asian American and an Asian Australian onscreen comedian. It paid particular attention to the online communities of reception among people of colour and to the notion that these second-​generation migrant media practitioners are seen as embodying the collective aspirations of their communities to be represented beyond the conventional professions that symbolise socio-​economic mobility. In the fourth chapter, I focused on the social media campaigns of three culturally diverse politicians in the US, the UK and Canada. My intention was to demonstrate how practices of ‘digital intimacy’ constitute a kind of populism for diverse, usually young political leaders that facilitates the channelling of collective aspiration for their followers and constituents. The final part on belonging then shifts the spotlight to more recent refugee arrivals as well as descendants of refugees in contexts of settlement. Chapter 5 highlighted refugee storytelling that centres their agency in deciding what stories are told, under what conditions and for what purpose. The case studies from the US and the UK examined in this chapter underscore the importance of claiming belonging through such an exercise of creative agency. In the final chapter, the complexity and transformative potential of belonging was further explored through a participatory filmmaking project based in a diverse 109

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satellite city of Sydney, Australia. Both chapters in the third part gesture towards the creation of solidarities among communities that are variously disadvantaged, yet co-​habit in spaces where they can safely listen, share stories and foster a sense of agency over their own lives. It is on this note that the concluding chapter will surmise existing literature on solidarities and care among migrants, what this means in the wake of crises such as COVID-​19 and suggest directions for future research on mediated emotions that have the potential to be transformative for migrants and discourses of migration.

Migrant agency during COVID-​19 One of the distinguishing features of public health and related economic crises such as the COVID-​19 pandemic is its impact on the perception and everyday lives of migrant workers. Both highly skilled migrants such as medical professionals and those in so-​called low-​skilled jobs such as supermarket checkout workers have been variously described as ‘frontline’, ‘essential’ or ‘key’ workers since 2020. For instance, in the case of the UK (which is also a pattern seen in other OECD countries), 22 per cent of all essential workers working across the health and social care sectors in 2019 were foreign-​born (Kumar et al, 2021). At the same time, those who have been ‘habitually underpaid in their occupations and typically made the scapegoats in the public anti-​immigration discourses in their host countries’ are now being recognised as essential for the system (Odermatt, 2021, p 12). This is exemplified through measures such as special arrangements like charter flights or housing being made available for migrant workers in food processing plants, and for carers across Europe in 2020 (Odermatt, 2021, p 12). However, this apparent valuing of such migrant workers belies the risks they have faced while lacking the basic social protections that are enjoyed by other workers (Kumar et al, 2021). This means that the recognition accorded to them needs to be holistic and unconditional as opposed to responding solely to market conditions. In addition to essential workers, many other types of migrant collectives engaged in civic practices that contributed to COVID-​19 relief in their local areas. For instance, in Montreal (Canada), asylum seekers volunteered to work in care homes while in Campagno di Roma (Italy), young African migrants have been growing, packing and delivering fresh food to the local community (Kumar et al, 2021). In Australia, where the author was located during the peak of the pandemic, stories also emerged of ‘ethnic restaurants’ among other types of food establishments turning into social enterprises servicing vulnerable communities during the crisis (Lam, 2020). Many of these were using crowd-​funding campaigns to support their efforts to feed temporary migrants and overseas students who were rendered jobless and did not have access to government support payments (No Author, 2020). This 110

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is undoubtedly a better demonstration of intra-​community care and migrant solidarities than seen, for instance, during the Indian international student crisis of 2009–​10 (Mason, 2011). At that time, migrants who had been living in Australia for a while and characterised as the ‘model minority’ were pitted against disenchanted students (Khorana, 2014). In the contemporary moment of crisis, groups such as ‘Sikh Volunteers Australia’ (Travers, 2020) have extended their support beyond disadvantaged non-​citizens. Popular media platforms in Australia, such as a current affairs show titled The Project on Channel Ten have featured stories of this cluster of enterprising migrant volunteers as they are seen cooking curries for firefighters during the bushfires in early 2020 alongside dropping off meal boxes to hundreds of elderly citizens forced into quarantine in the face of COVID-​19. Before March 2020, when coronavirus-​related local shutdowns were a distant reality, many enterprising Australians were using the #IWillEatWithYou campaign to champion Chinese restaurants that were rapidly losing clientele in the face of a surge in anti-​Asian racism and Sinophobia (Marsters, 2020). On the one hand, this abandonment of Chinese Australian food establishments has now morphed into daily instances of racial abuse towards Asian Australians. On the other, using food to show solidarity towards racialised groups has a longer history in Australia and comparable immigrant nations, as I explore in my book The Tastes and Politics of Inter-​ cultural Food in Australia (Khorana, 2018). For instance, after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016, several groups organised to share food with their neighbours, immigrants and refugees. One such group is the ‘Syria Supper Club’ in northern New Jersey, which organised weekly dinners where Syrian refugees were breaking bread with people in the area who had signed up online. These food-​related civic endeavours were, and continue to be, seen as manifestations of migrant culture and agency. They are seen as both affective and effective in contexts where direct political conversations are not feasible. Given this history, what is new is that many of these communities, who may have been targeted by eruptions of hate speech and/​or violence in the past, are coming forth to assist those rendered most materially vulnerable now (O’Brien, 2020). This insight on migrants and refugees as more than mere economic contributors or burdens on the state has the potential to impact multicultural policy and encourage an emotion and affect lens in scholarship about migrants themselves. Instead of abandoning multiculturalism as an ideal and cornerstone of nation-​building in these times of a global upsurge in xenophobia and populism, this is an opportunity to re-​fashion it as enriching the civic fabric. Local governments in particular can play a lead role in working with migrants and refugees in their communities to facilitate their sense of agency and civic enterprises during and beyond crises such as the pandemic. 111

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Ethics of care and transversal solidarities Crises pre-​dating the COVID-​19 pandemic, such as the Syrian refugee crisis that brought forth a series of responses from governments in Europe, also spotlighted the role of ‘solidarity’ politics and the emotions that are associated with both migration and migrants. In a special issue of the journal Critical Sociology, the editors focused on solidarity as a transformative practice during this crisis, explaining: It is a relational practice; it is contentious; it emerges strongly in moments or conjunctures (such as the economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the climate crisis and currently the health/​Covid-​19 crisis) … it is generative of political subjectivities and collective identities; it entails alliance-​building among diverse actors; it is inventive of new imaginaries; it is situated in space and time and organised in multi-​ scalar relations. (Jørgensen and Schierup, 2021, p 848) Reflecting on the use of ‘solidarity’ more broadly in migrant and refugee literature, Bauder and Juffs suggest that it is a concept that escapes any single definition and that, based on its genesis in the Enlightenment tradition, it can have both emotional and reflexive dimensions (2020). This part therefore has two objectives: to map research on solidarity as a care practice, and to do so primarily in relation to migrants and their civic practices as opposed to the solidarities that non-​migrant white allies might articulate towards disadvantaged migrant communities. In her book on the politics of compassion, Ala Sirriyeh foregrounds the equality inherent in a relationship of solidarity, explaining that it is understood as ‘“standing together” because of pragmatic shared interests and/​or because of shared values, not based on a hierarchical relationship’ (2018, p 34). She links such an understanding of solidarity to the notion of compassion as it based on a ‘feminist ethics of care which recognise that humans are interdependent rather than autonomous’ (Sirriyeh, 2018, p 34). One of the examples in her book documents the evolution of an undocumented youth movement from being outwardly focused to building solidarities within the community itself (Sirriyeh, 2018, pp 158–​9). Another notable case study examined by Atac et al in the wake of the refugee crisis is ‘Trampoline House’, a Copenhagen-​based initiative that is independent, self-​governing and operates as ‘both a support centre for refugees and asylum seekers and accommodation for newcomers alongside locals’ (2021). It is also worth noting that the initiative was started in 2010 by a group of asylum seekers in collaboration with artists, students and professionals as a response to the Danish government’s restrictive asylum policies (Atac et al, 2021). In the everyday life and built space of Trampoline House, encounters between 112

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people from different walks of life, positionalities and statuses are encouraged so that transversal solidarity can be built. Such instances of solidarity initiated by migrants in collaboration with others during and beyond times of crisis merit greater attention as they centre migrant agency and practices of providing, as well as receiving, care. Another attribute of transversal solidarity that warrants amplification, this time from cross-​platforms storytellers of migrant backgrounds, is the ethics of care around representing communities with which one shares some but not all experiences of structural disadvantage. In her seminar work on ‘speaking nearby’, leading Vietnamese American scholar and filmmaker Trinh Minh-​ha describes this feeling and expression of solidarity as an appropriate strategy as it is: a speaking that does not objectify, does not point to an object as if it is distant from the speaking subject or absent from the speaking place. A speaking that reflects on itself and can come very close to a subject without, however, seizing or claiming it. A speaking in brief, whose closures are only moments of transition opening up to other possible moments of transition. … It is an attitude in life, a way of positioning oneself in relation to the world. (Minh-​ha cited in Chen, 1992, p 87) Taking up this challenge of positionality, Korean American poet and writer Cathy Park Hong adapts it to the context of her work and explains that ‘writing nearby’ her Asian American condition means that she is compelled to ‘write nearby other racial experiences’ (2020, p 104). This writing nearby means that she is not merely interested in writing about racial identity, which is, in a way, a reaction to whiteness and often siloes particular ethnic experiences. Rather, she wants to both tell her story and find a form that decentres whiteness altogether (Hong, 2020, p 104). Based on the case studies described and analysed in this book, I contend that such a decentring of whiteness through both content and form is central to affective, agential storytelling by migrants.

Transformative solidarities after COVID-​19 As soon as COVID was declared a global pandemic in late February of 2020, the Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared in his opening remarks at a media briefing: ‘Our greatest enemy right now is not the virus itself. It’s fear, rumours and stigma. Our greatest assets are facts, reason and solidarity’ (cited in IOM, 2020). Scholars working on the crisis in relation to migration have also noted that it requires ‘global cooperation and transnational solidarity rather than nationalist isolationism and protectionism’ (Odermatt, 2021, p 14). However, the reality is that there 113

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were global populist tendencies that commenced in 2015 soon after the start of the refugee crisis in Europe and that these have intensified after the onset of COVID, thereby undermining solidarity towards migrants. As Odermatt notes, ‘the good citizen in these pandemic times is the immobile citizen: the one that stays at home’ (Odermatt, 2021, p 10). What, then, can we say about the future of solidarities for and among migrants, let alone those that are likely to result in long-​term social change through affective mobilisation? According to the IOM report on COVID and migration, social media has played the dual role of being used to spread anxiety and hate, as well as to ‘counter stigmatization and discrimination and display solidarity’ (2021). It mentions a number of instances of such solidarity such as hashtags like #iamnotavirus launched by Chinese communities and media outlets featuring stories of how migrants are supporting affected communities. At the same time, Odermatt’s research shows that whereas migrants’ caritative solidarity forms were attracting some media coverage, ‘migrants’ political solidarity towards refugees has been neglected altogether’ (2021, pp 3–​4). This means that future research on solidarity could hone in on these relationships of care in addition to the networks between new migrants and those perceived as natives or more established residents. Writing from a settler colony, I am also compelled to add that Indigenous–​migrant relations in everyday life and during crises receive scant attention but are pivotal to unpack. On the one hand, migrants are complicit as settlers in the project of colonisation in these nations and must attempt to educate newer members of their communities about First Nations histories. At the same time, their transversal solidarities with other migrant communities need to be underpinned by a decolonial approach to be genuinely transformative (Khorana, 2021). To summarise, in an atmosphere of heightened localism, notions like solidarity within a transnational framework are seen as still having vital currency. Ang argues that these instances of civic practice during COVID-​19 manifest a kind of ‘critical cosmopolitanisation’ in that they ‘gesture towards a cosmopolitan horizon by working critically against the grain of self-​interested divisions and particularist exclusions that still prevail’ (2021, p 611). She adds that cosmopolitanism in such cases ‘should not be seen as an ideal condition or vision, but as a socially and politically grounded process of ongoing cosmopolitanisation’ (Ang, 2021, p 611). In a similar vein, Ho and Maddrell look at local and ordinary acts of solidarity during the pandemic to point out that it has highlighted existing, as well as new, forms of collective action that: challenge inequalities, principally in response to housing and healthcare, and towards entrenched racial injustice and violence, as demonstrated in the cross-​racial Black Lives Matter solidarity protests across the USA and internationally. (2021, p 6) 114

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They offer a direction for future research for social and cultural geographers in terms of probing ‘quiet’ acts of care undertaken by ordinary people during COVID, and how these cross-​cut more organised forms of activism and advocacy (Ho and Maddrell, 2021). Perhaps echoing the transversal and transformative solidarities of the public health crisis, the Black lives Matter protests also called forth support and allyship from other racialised communities, such as Asian Americans (Lang, 2020) and Muslim Americans (Hussain, 2020). This included calling out anti-​Black racism in private realms, like among their own families, as well as creating educational resources and shareable Instagram zines that ‘not only address how to fight anti-​Blackness, but also provide context about the history of Asian American and Black solidarity’ (Lang, 2020). What these emerging models of mediated solidarity underscore is an ethics of care that is cognisant of the language of justice and human rights but is also equally attuned to the need for affective mobilisation of communities. According to Held writing on such an ethics of care, ‘Rather than rejecting the emotions as threats to the rationality and impartiality seen as the foundations of morality, the ethics of care attends to and values such moral emotions as empathy and shared concern’ (2006, p 129). She adds that it is only when the presumption of care is met that most people become concerned enough about whether others’ rights are respected or recognised (Held, 2006, p 132). As explicated through the ordinary acts of care and solidarity in this chapter, such an ethics of care is a sort of ‘globalisation from below’ (Held, 2006) which may counter the capitalist forms of globalisation that have run rampant, and both created and reinforced socio-​economic inequities prior to COVID. Although conceptualised just before the start of the COVID pandemic, Here Out West is one such example of a mediated migrant story that manifested globalisation from below. At the same time, it also claimed space in a mainstream exhibition venue due to a growing affective recognition of agential storytelling of migration, by migrants.

A departing case study of migrant stories and agency in the mainstream: Here Out West An anthology or ensemble film usually makes us think of romantic comedies released over Christmas that showcase a global city through inter-​connected plot lines or a series of vignette-​like character studies by critically acclaimed directors. Produced by Western Sydney-​based company Co-​Curious and Emerald Productions and released in 2021, Here Out West neither showcases the glamorous harbourside post codes of Sydney, nor does it assemble together the works of renowned creative personnel. Nonetheless, it is as globally oriented and locally inspired as Australian cinema gets. That is because the locale here is the most culturally diverse region of the nation, 115

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Western Sydney. The sheer diversity of languages, foods, religious practices and creative traditions of its residents has historically not been enough to change the perception of the region as deprived of cultural capital (Gladstone, 2019). The writing and producing team of Here Out West set out to change the perception of working-​class migrant suburbs in Western Sydney. They accomplished this by re-​conceptualising what it means to have cultural capital while staying true to the locales and communities they grew up in. Consisting of stories from the Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, Bangladeshi, Lebanese, Kurdish, Chinese, Turkish and Chilean migrants who call Western Sydney home, the film is much more nuanced than say, advertisements for ‘Harmony Day’ that celebrate cultural signifiers like food without deeper engagement. In that this kind engagement draws on the affective pride in one’s community, it makes the film stand out among other media representations that have been based in the area but have reeked of clichés (Dreher, 2018). Beginning with the story of a newborn kidnapped from a public hospital, we move through many other archetypal locations including a soccer field, a parking lot, an apartment block, a recently arrived refugee family’s house, rides in buses as well as cars embodying aspiration, a Chinese restaurant where the owner insists on wearing traditional garb and the site of a new housing development with house and land packages on offer. These settings are as heterogenous as the people who live, work and move through them, yet the film attempts to bring them together through the themes of affective kinship –​with one’s own biological family and with the community of those many familiar and imagined others who feel a similar sense of pride in being a ‘westie’. One of the most poignant stories from the film is that of an intercultural friendship between three young men, written by Arka Das. As one witnesses them chasing each other around run-​down apartment blocks and under motorways, every stereotype of racialised masculinity that the audience has been exposed to thus far surfaces. One thinks they will shortly be irrationally violent with one another, or that the chase involves illicit substances, but it turns out there is a comedy of errors entailing romantic interest, family and forgiveness. Premiering at the Sydney Film Festival in October 2021 where I first saw it, the film surprised everyone (including its eight young writers and five female Australian directors) by being picked as the opening night film. After all, Western Sydney had been branded as ‘the LGAs of concern’ by that stage, making it feel even more remote and dangerous to visit by the rest of the city. The disproportionate impact of the Delta outbreak led a number of writers and journalists with connections to the West to start raising their concerns (Pham, 2021). They were vocal about how it was represented in the media, treated by the New South Wales government with harsher 116

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restrictions during lockdown, and the resilience and civic practices of many of its communities. In a similar way, the writers and directors of Here Out West are writing back to misrepresentations and misperceptions of Western Sydney through this film. In an interview following its theatrical release last week, two of the writers, Vonne Patiag and Bina Bhattacharya talked about how there is a burgeoning artistic community in Western Sydney and it is finally getting some recognition through the film (cited in ‘Upcoming Attractions’, 2022). They also consider the local aspect as key to storytelling by people of colour. This narrative of agential storytelling, or of ‘taking things in their own hands’, with a little help from supportive mentors and funding agencies is not an isolated incident. As noted in Chapter 3, in Australia and comparable immigrant countries, growing populations of young, second-​generation migrants have grown up with YouTube and Netflix. For them, watching year after year of national, commercial television where they don’t see themselves reflected is no longer enough (Khorana, 2020b). In the era of globally accessible digital media, many creative practitioners from these communities are bypassing ‘mainstream’ executives and institutions to find ways to create and showcase their own content, mostly on their own terms. Referred to as ‘the new second generation’ in the US (Zhou and Bankston III, 2016), they are claiming their agency and right to be represented as legitimate national subjects (Cmielewski, 2021). The children of migrants and refugees in particular are resorting to self-​ representation and advocacy after having been let down by practices and mindsets that persist in creative arts and media industries. These roadblocks exist despite recent reports and haltering progress towards institutional change. Practices that persist include typecasting actors from ethnic backgrounds in roles that stereotype their communities or only funding a certain number of ‘diverse’ projects per funding cycle in order to tick a box. Stories that centre marginalised subjects, however, still need to reach broad audiences to shift perceptions and policies. Here Out West has set a leading example by opening a major film festival in a city with a significant migrant population, many of whom live on its fringes. What remains to be seen is whether it will lead to a meaningful shift in paradigms of storytelling and broader discourses around migration by mobilising the affective responses of non-​migrant audiences.

Future research agenda: on embracing discomfort, reclaiming care The objective of this book is to magnify the importance of an emotions and affect lens for understanding public discourses about migration so that migrant and refugee agency over their own lives and futures can be 117

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reclaimed. In the process of doing so, I have identified empathy, aspiration and belonging as complex affects that have often been appropriated for individualised, neoliberal ends by the media and political class. However, their ambivalence also lends itself to being reclaimed as emotions of social change. As the case studies unpacked in each part of this book demonstrate, conditions that are conducive to reclaiming these emotions and amplifying migrant agency are possible to structurally create and facilitate. For future research, I propose other emotions that are associated with ambivalence, especially vis-​à-​vis their relationship with social change and a justice approach to media and migration studies. These include, but are not limited to: anger, settler guilt and anxiety, and resilience. It is also worth noting that there is a groundswell of popular women of colour feminist memoirs in the Global North that has begun dealing with the productive possibilities of such emotions. In addition to Minor Feelings referenced earlier in this chapter (Hong, 2020), others worth noting are Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper (US), White Tears/​Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad (Australia) and The Ungrateful Refugee (UK) by Dina Nayeri. In scholarly research across a range of humanities and social science disciplines, anger has already been identified as ambivalent and potentially useful for social justice work. For instance, Zemblyas notes the educational potential of the anger of students in school settings (2007). She adds that in the context of education, a viable politics of anger ‘needs to be sufficiently flexible to acknowledge the socio-​political configurations of power relations, underwrite the complexities of social justice pedagogies, and recognize the unavoidable ambivalent character of anger as both revealing and concealing’ (Zembylas, 2007). While this is not contextualised for a school with migrant and refugee students, it is certainly applicable in those settings. Similarly, a growing body of work is acknowledging and reflecting on the guilt, anxiety and associated discomfort felt by white settlers in immigrant settler nations. In her work on ‘white fragility’ in relation to such experiences of discomfort, DiAngelo notes that for white people, it is important to embrace the discomfort that emerges from encounters with settler or white guilt (2018). She elaborates that while it is uncomfortable to ‘consider one’s racism and involvement in racist systems’, one needs to question why one needs to get rid of this discomfort in the first place. DiAngelo doesn’t view the acceptance of such discomfort as an end in itself, but rather as a first step than can pave the way for more productive subsequent actions (2018). Along similar lines, Lisa Slater draws on the work of Indigenous scholar Irene Watson to elucidate the importance of ‘meditating on discomfort’ in a settler colonial context (2017). She adds that not doing so ‘limits our capacities to reimagine belonging, and thus social justice’ (Slater, 2017: 13). In the context of the themes of this book, such an acknowledgement of discomfort for non-​migrant communities in the Global North is essential 118

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for a decentring of whiteness. This decentring is in turn a necessary pre-​ cursor to amplifying the agency of migrants and refugees. Related to a re-​conceptualisation of anger and discomfort is a deeper, more situated examination of care which has been explored in relation to COVID and solidarities earlier in this chapter. Pioneered by feminist Carol Gilligan (1993), an ‘ethics of care’ is understood as a morality that is based on emotions, such as care and relationality, as opposed to dominant moral theories grounded in justice and rationality (1993, 28–​29). Also canonical in the field of care is the work of political and gender theorist Joan Tronto in her book, Moral Boundaries (1993). While both these important works date back to the 1990s and suggest longstanding interest in care, particularly in feminist theory, there is renewed interest in re-​visiting care in the wake of COVID-​related lockdowns across the world. As noted earlier, this is with regards to care as an affect, but also as a form of labour that was considered ‘essential’ in local contexts and as an ethical obligation with regards to the treatment of migrants without access to welfare in OECD nations. In her work on the revival of care in other fields, de la Bellacasa draws on Tronto’s formulations regarding an ‘integrated’ act of care that brings together its affective and ethical dimensions with material practices (2017, p 4). She explains that bringing together these dimensions allows us to emphasise ‘that a politics of care engages much more than a moral stance; it involves affective, ethical, and hands-​on agencies of practical and material consequence’ (de la Bellacasa, 2017, p 4). At the same time, de la Bellacasa concedes that care remains a politically ambivalent emotion as the work on it still has to contend with the essentialising of women’s experiences and connotations of purity and innocence (2017, pp 7–​8). In keeping with this, any contemporary engagement with care, especially in the realm of migration studies, must resist oversimplifying it and instead work with its ambivalence. Finally, in the spirit of unsettling care and embracing discomfort, reclaiming some emotions with the intention of facilitating/​enacting migrant and refugee agency is crucial work for future research and storytelling. Reclaiming in this context needs to be thought of as political work that makes an ongoing effort to improve existing conditions while often working within them. Such reclaiming is a means of questioning what is taken-​for-​ granted, whether in material terms or in the discourses that are prevalent about it. For the mediated emotions of migration to enable significant shifts in the ways we perceive migration and migrants, and the means by which migrants reclaim their agency, we need to also reclaim the language and practice of care. This translates into making mediated expressions of care desirable in political leadership, using care and hospitality as reciprocal emotions in relations between migrants and non-​migrants, and fostering solidarities among those that speak from positions of intersecting disadvantage without burdening them with more care work. 119

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140

Index A active citizenship  79 aesthetic of injury  84 aesthetics, migratory  87, 88, 89, 90–​1, 93 affect  1, 2, 4, 5, 9–​10, 30, 43, 56, 109 affective turn  1, 4, 109 aspiration  47, 50, 53, 56–​7, 59, 65, 70, 72 belonging  8, 77, 79, 88, 89, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99, 103, 104 and Black Lives Matter  3, 4 empathy  36, 39, 41 agency  1, 30, 31, 43, 99, 101, 108 creative agency  83, 85, 93, 94, 101, 109 of migrants  4–​5, 9, 46, 48, 79 of refugee storytellers  82–​3, 85, 86–​7, 89, 90, 91–​2 of refugees  13, 79, 81 Ahmed, Anum  53 Ahmed, Sara  1, 4 allies  84, 85, 88, 93, 112 Alter, C.  72 Aly, Waleed  61 ambivalence  9, 95, 118, 119 Amnesty International  87 Ang, I.  114 anger  3–​4, 25, 50, 52, 53, 59, 62, 70, 72, 118, 119 Ansara, Alice  59 Ansari, Aziz  53 Appadurai, A.  45–​6 appropriation  4, 9, 17, 39, 118 Ardern, Jacinda  7, 11, 17, 32–​3, 34, 36, 37–​41, 42, 43–​4, 109 artists  85, 90–​2, 97, 112, 117 arts  12, 81, 82, 85, 90–​2, 101–​2, 117 Asian Americans  12, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52–​8, 67, 109 Asian Australians  12, 22, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 58–​61, 109, 111 aspiration  9–​10, 11–​12, 45–​8, 109, 116, 118 Asian Americans  49, 50, 51, 52–​8 Asian Australians  49, 50, 51, 58–​61 collective  12, 45, 47, 48, 50, 57, 59, 61, 64, 73, 74–​5

digital intimacy  63, 70–​1, 72, 74–​5 individual  12, 45 Khan, Sadiq  73–​4, 75 Ocasio-​Cortez, Alexandria  71–​2, 74, 75 Singh, Jagmeet  68–​71, 74, 75 urban  73, 74 aspirational multiculturalism  61 asylum seekers  6, 10, 11, 15–​16, 82, 85, 110, 112 in Australia  19–​20 critical empathy  18, 20, 21, 25–​31 documentaries  23–​8 humanisation discourses  21–​2, 29 as objects of feeling  17 policy  15, 19–​20, 25, 26 see also refugees Ataç, I.  112 audience  6, 7, 10–​11, 12, 13, 15, 19–​31, 60, 61 agency, and social media  43 comedy  50, 54–​5, 56, 58, 59, 60 documentaries  22–​8 and proper distance  29, 30 refugee stories  82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91 short films  97–​8, 100, 104, 106 and witnessing  31 Australia  8–​9, 78 Asian Australians  12, 22, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 58–​61 aspiration narratives in  46–​7 asylum seekers in  19–​20 digital divide in  3 documentaries  24–​8 emotional public sphere in  34 ethnic comedy in  51 humanisation discourses  22 international students in  5 ‘Living in Harmony’ programme  97 media  15, 17, 20, 26 narratives about refugees/​asylum seekers in  15 Sudanese Australians  86

141

MEDIATED EMOTIONS OF MIGRATION

B Bal, Mieke  87, 88, 90–​1 Baldassar, L.  5 Ballantyne, G.  52 Ballingall, A.  69 Bauder, H.  112 belonging  8, 9, 10, 13, 77–​80, 81–​2, 89, 94, 95, 97–​100 and alliances  92, 93, 99 ambiguity of  96 cultural/​creative practices of migrants  97–​8 definition of  98 dimensions of  78 Passage: Stories of Migration and Belonging project  101–​2 as a process  89, 96, 98–​9, 103–​4 reciprocal  96, 99, 105 refugee stories  82–​93 safe space  104–​5 similarities and differences  105–​6 and social cohesion  97 transversal politics  92–​3 Berg, M.L.  108 Berlant, Lauren  5 Bhattacharya, Bina  117 Bilbrough, P.  86 Bilici, M.  52 Bird, K.  64, 65, 66 Bischof, D.  68 Bissell, D.  96 Black, J.H.  66 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement  3, 4, 55, 115 Boccagni, P.  5 Boochani, Behrouz  16 Booker, Cory  57 Bourdieu, P.  46 Brennan, Teresa  4 Brettell, C.B.  99 Broockman, D.E.  68 Brown, Rosemary  69 Bucchino, R.  71 Bui, L.  91 Burrell, K.  86 Busbridge, R.  61 Butler, Jean Kelly  17 Butler, Judith  83 C Canada  48, 63, 64, 65, 84, 108, 110 diverse political representation in  66, 67 Singh, Jagmeet  68–​71, 74, 75 South Asian Canadians  66 care  ethics of  28, 112–​13, 115, 119 ‘integrated’ act of  119 practices  112, 113, 115, 119 and precarity  108–​19 Cast from the Storm (documentary)  23

Caygill, M.  37 centring  6, 18, 28, 58, 91, 97, 108, 109 Chakraborty, D.  3 Chapman, M.  38 Chasing Asylum (documentary)  23 Chattoo, C.B.  51 Chaudhary, A.  36 Cheung, A.  72 Choy, G.  11 Christchurch massacre  7, 11, 32, 37–​41, 42, 109 citizenship  8, 13, 17, 66, 79, 99 civic participation  81, 100 civil war  27, 90 Clark, B.  46 class  36, 45, 46, 75 middle class  47, 54, 69, 75 working class  3, 8, 9, 71, 72, 73, 75, 95–​6, 116 Clayton, J.  78 clicktivism  26 collective action  114 see also solidarities comedy  49–​62, 109, 115, 116 comedians  7, 12, 50, 52 ethnic comedy  51–​2, 63 Hussain, Nazeem  12, 50, 52, 58–​61 Minhaj, Hasan  12, 50, 53–​5, 56–​8 and social justice  51 community  migrant community projects  100–​1 research  101–​6 screenings  11, 22–​4, 31 compassion  15, 16, 20, 21, 29, 34, 38, 112 Constance on the Edge (documentary)  23 cosmopolitanism  114 COVID-​19 pandemic  2–​3, 8–​9, 32, 70, 96 and Black Lives Matter  3 and digital divide  3 and female leaders  37 migrant agency during  110–​11 and political leadership  44 creative agency  83, 85, 93, 94, 101, 109 critical consciousness  28 critical empathy  17, 18, 20, 21, 25–​31, 35, 37, 38, 41 Cronin, S.  60 Croucher, S.M.  3 crowd-​funding campaigns  110 cultural capital  47–​8, 52, 54, 59, 61, 66, 116 cultural safety  13, 94, 106, 107 CuriousWorks  101–​6 Curtin, J.  39 D Daghigh, A.J.  40 Darwish, Amir  87–​90 de la Bellacasa, M.P.  119

142

Index

decentring  13, 22, 27, 50, 52, 53–​4, 55, 86, 94, 113, 118–​19 dehumanisation  15, 20 Denmark, restrictive asylum policies  112–​13 DiAngelo, R.  118 diaspora  3, 55–​6, 58, 92 Digital Intimacy, Media, Technologies  digital divides  3 intimacy  7, 48, 63, 70–​1, 72, 74–​5, 109 media  3, 7, 51, 74 storytelling  87 technologies  3 discomfort  18, 30, 31, 59, 95, 118–​19 diversity  63–​4 cultural  46, 63, 64, 65–​8, 95, 96 in representation  63–​4 documentaries  11, 20, 22–​3, 31, 86–​7 community screening  22–​4 Freedom Stories  24–​8 Dona, G.  92 Don’t Forget the Couscous (Darwish)  88 doxic empathy  18, 37 Dreher, T.  27 Duffy, M.  41 Dutta, N.  55 E El-​Enany, N.  21 Elias, A.  2 Elleissi, M.  61 Eloquent Rage (Cooper)  118 emotions  1, 2, 4–​6, 9 and Black Lives Matter  3, 4 emotional communities  11, 33, 36, 41, 42–​3 emotional public sphere  33–​5 emotional rules  41–​2 mediated  6–​7 sociology of  8, 19, 78 empathy  9, 10–​11, 15–​18, 21, 109 audience  22–​4, 25–​30 critical  18, 19–​31, 35, 37, 38, 41 depoliticisation of systemic issues  10, 21 doxic  18, 37 and emotional communities  41, 42–​3 failure of  17 in humanisation discourses  21–​2, 29 leadership  32, 33, 34, 35–​41, 43–​4 mediated  19–​21, 34, 36, 37 neoliberal  35–​6 and power relations  16 engagement  79, 116, 119 community  8, 20 cross-​cultural  77 with films  20, 21 with global other  36 online  72

public  86 using social media  32, 40, 71 equality, and solidarity  112 essential workers  3, 8, 110 ethnic comedy  51–​2, 63 ethnic restaurants  110 ethnocinema  29 Europe  21, 86, 110, 112, 114 F Facebook  26, 32, 50, 56 Falzon, J.  47 Feldman, L.  51 feminism  4, 10, 21, 37, 106, 112, 118, 119 Fiddian-​Qasmiyeh, E.  108 filmmaking  22–​8, 102, 104, 106 see also documentaries First Nations  114 Floyd, G.  3 food, and solidarities  111 Freedom Stories (documentary)  11, 20, 24–​8 Friere, P.  28 G gender, role in empathetic political leadership  35–​7 Giacomelli, E.  3 Gifford, S.M.  85, 101 Gilligan, C.  119 Global North  1, 2, 11, 12, 15, 16, 39, 63, 77 digital divide in  3 public discourse of  5–​6 refugee storytelling in  82, 84 Go Back to Where You Came From (documentary series)  22 Godin, M.  92 Goldstein, P.  54 Greaves, L.  39 H Hargreaves, Kirk  38 Harris, A.  29, 78 Harris, K.  57 Hedetoft, U.  98 Held, V.  115 Here Out West  115–​17 Herron, M.  78 Hjort, M.  98 Ho, C.  97 Ho, E.L.  114 Holland, J.  36–​7 Homecoming King  53 #HometoBilo  16 Hong, Cathy Park  113 Hörschelmann, K.  86 ‘How to Have Fun in a Civil War’ (Mansour)  90 Howard, John  27, 46 Hughes, L.  3

143

MEDIATED EMOTIONS OF MIGRATION

humanisation  11, 20, 21–​2, 25, 27, 29, 30 humanitarian migrants  1, 10 humour  91, 93 see also comedy Hussain, N.  12, 50, 52, 58–​61 hybrid distribution  23 hybridity  91 I identity  13, 39, 53, 63, 75, 87, 89, 96, 97, 98, 107 ethnic  50 racial  16, 113 shared  29 and solidarity  94 identity politics  92, 96 Ilott, S.  52 inclusion  38, 47, 50, 67, 83, 100, 106 inclusive narratives  17 inclusive populism  40 Indelicato, M.E.  5 infotainment  51, 54 Instagram  7, 70, 71 Islamophobia  38, 39, 40, 52, 70 #IWillEatWithYou campaign  111 J Javan, A.  25, 27, 28 Johnson, C.  44 Joly, D.  60 Jones, H.  16 Jørgensen, M.B.  112 journalism  6–​7 Juffs, L.  112 K Kassir, Amal  90 Khalafalla, Khaled  61 Khan, Sadiq  12, 63, 73–​4, 75 Khoo, O.  22 Kirkpatrick, Heather  22–​3 Kirkwood, S.  21 Kondabolu, Hari  53 Kozak, O.E.  54 Krishnamurthy, Sowmya  54 Kurdi, Alan  21, 30 L Lagarde, Christine  36 Landau, E.  69, 74 Lee, J.C.H.  78 Lees, R.  66 Leftly, M.  73 Legally Brown  12, 50, 58–​61 Lenette, C.  87 Li, D.  38 listening  27–​8, 39, 86, 87, 105 Liverpool  95–​6, 101 Lobb, A.  18, 37 local governments  3, 111 London  73–​4, 87

Lotz, Amanda  51 Luckhurst, M.  58, 61 M Macron, Emmanuel  39 Maddrell, A.  114 Mahmoud, Emi  89 Malik, N.  39, 40 mandatory detention  9, 15, 19–​20 Mansour, Ifrah  90–​2 Mansouri, F.  77–​8, 80 Martin, S.  47 Mary Meets Mohammad (documentary)  22–​3, 24 May, Sandra  102 Mazer, S.  38 media  6–​7, 26, 28, 30 and emotional communities  42–​3 Facebook  32 forms  3, 6, 7 hashtag  24, 42 imagery  17 Instagram  7, 70, 71 mediation  6, 10, 11, 28–​9, 36, 37, 38, 42–​3, 49–​50 mediatisation  34 Netflix  7, 12, 52–​3 representation  20, 28, 30, 37 social media  3, 7, 10, 12, 26, 30, 32, 41, 42–​3, 44, 48, 63, 70–​5, 92–​3, 109, 114 TikTok  70 Twitter  3, 24, 42, 56–​8, 67–​8, 70, 71, 72 YouTube  53, 70 Merkel, Angela  35, 36, 44 methodological nationalism  5 migrants  4, 45–​6, 79–​80 agency of  4–​5, 9, 46, 48, 79 cultural/​creative practices of  97–​8 first-​generation  4, 9, 47, 99 humanitarian  1, 10 international students  2, 5, 103–​4 migrant community projects  100–​1 second-​generation  4, 9, 46, 47, 49–​50, 52, 58–​9, 61, 72, 73, 77, 103 temporary  2, 110 see also refugees migration  1, 4 attitudes to  1 discourses of  1, 2, 5–​6, 7, 9, 10, 41 and emotions/​affect  see affect; emotions migratory aesthetics  87, 88, 89, 90–​1 Mikola, M.  80 Minhaj, Hasan  12, 50, 53–​5, 56–​8 Minh-​ha, Trinh  113 Minor Feelings (Hong)  118 mobility  45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 61, 106 model minority  55, 57, 111 Modi, Narendra  57

144

Index

Morrison, Scott  46 Morsi, Y.  59–​60 Mortensen, M.  30 multiculturalism  1, 31, 60–​1, 78–​9, 96, 99–​100, 107, 111 Muslims  34, 37–​8, 39, 40, 43, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 60, 61, 73, 79 N Nagesh, A.  39 Naidoo, L.  47 Nash, P.  72 nationalism  1, 5, 113 neoliberalism  12, 18, 35–​6, 75, 83, 108, 118 Netflix  7, 12, 50, 52–​3, 117 Neumann, Klaus  16, 19, 20 New Zealand  7, 11, 17, 32, 33, 37–​41, 43–​4, 109 Ngai, Sianne  4 Nguyen, L.  69 Nikunen, K.  22 Nish, J.  82, 83 Noble, G.  78 Northover, K.  60 Norway  86 Nunn, C.  99, 100 Nussbaum, Martha  21 O Obama, Barack  16, 35–​6 Ocasio-​Cortez, Alexandria  7, 12, 63, 71–​2, 74, 75 Odermatt, E.  114 Ong, J.C.  84, 85 Overington, C.  46 P Papacharissi, Z.  42–​3 Pardy, M.  78 participatory action research  24 participatory filmmaking project  109–​10 participatory methods  85–​6, 100–​1 Passage: Stories of Migration and Belonging project  101–​2 Patiag, Vonne  117 Patriot Act  12, 50, 52–​8 Patton, C.  79 Pedwell, Carolyn  16, 17, 18, 21, 35, 36 performance art  90–​2 Però, D.  4, 5 Peyton, N.  89 phenomenal television  51, 56 photographs  11, 20, 30, 38, 41, 42, 43 Pitkin, Hanna  64 Podkalicka, A.  52 poetry  7, 13, 113 performance  13, 82, 84, 87–​8 published  88–​90 political opportunity structures  66

politics  4–​5, 12, 26 Ardern, Jacinda  7, 11, 17, 32–​3, 34, 36, 37–​41, 42, 43–​4 Khan, Sadiq  12, 63, 73–​4, 75 leaders  33–​4, 35–​41, 43–​4 and media imagery  17 mediatisation of  34 Merkel, Angela  35, 36, 44 Obama, Barack  16, 35–​6 Ocasio-​Cortez, Alexandria  7, 12, 63, 71–​2, 74, 75 politicians  32, 33, 48 representation  63, 64–​8 Singh, Jagmeet  12, 63, 66, 68–​71, 74, 75 transversal  92–​3 populism  1, 2, 40, 63, 69–​70, 109, 111 Power, Paul  20 power relations  5, 16, 37, 118 precarity  13, 82–​3, 84, 86, 89, 91, 93, 108–​19 Probyn, Elspeth  4 process, belonging as  89, 96, 98–​9, 103–​4 Project, The  111 proper distance  11, 28–​31 Proudfoot, S.  70 public, affective  3, 7 public attitudes  1, 20, 21, 82 public discourses  1–​2, 4–​10, 110, 117 public engagement  86 public feelings  12 public health  3 public sentiment  10 public sphere, emotional  33–​5, 38, 41–​3, 44, 45, 47, 53, 108, 109 Pym, T.  60 R race  2, 36, 46, 60, 67, 68, 71, 74 racism  2, 38, 40, 54, 59, 67, 68, 80, 97, 118 Rae, J.  58, 61 Rahim, A.R.  40 Rahman, Aamer  58, 61 Rao, M.  55 reflective solidarity  106, 107 Refugee Council of Australia  19 refugee crisis  21, 81, 112, 114 refugee repertoire  91 refugees  9, 13, 109 children  20, 21, 23, 25, 90, 91, 92–​3 critical empathy  18, 20, 21, 25–​31 dehumanisation of  15, 20 documentaries  23–​8 and humanisation discourses  21–​2, 29 humanisation of  15 narratives of  85 precarity of  82, 83, 89, 91 sense of belonging  77, 81–​93, 85, 99 trauma of  86, 91 see also stories, refugee Relman, E.  71, 72

145

MEDIATED EMOTIONS OF MIGRATION

Remnick, D.  71 representation  descriptive  64, 65, 66, 67, 68 diversity in  63–​4 media  20, 28, 30, 37 politics  63, 64–​8 substantive  64, 65, 68 symbolic  64 resilience  25, 27, 108–​19, 117 Ristovska, S.  30–​1 Rizvi, J.  39 Robertson, S.  11, 46 Rodriguez-​Jimenez, A.  85, 101 Roosevelt, Franklin D.  71–​2 Rosenwein, B.H.  41, 42 Rovisco, M.  83, 84, 85, 86 S Saalfeld, T.  68 safety  cultural  13, 94, 98, 106 safe space  104–​5 Salazar, J.F.  100 Salverson, J.  84 Scheibelhofer, E.  47 Schierup, C.  112 settler colonialism  9, 15, 30–​1, 51–​2, 63, 96, 118 Sikh Volunteers Australia  111 Silverstone, Roger  6, 11, 28, 29, 31 Singh, Jagmeet  12, 63, 66, 68–​71, 74, 75 Sirriyeh, Ala  112 skilled migrants  1, 68, 110 Skrbis, Z.  17 Slater, Lisa  118 Slote, M.  41 smart narrowcasting strategy  31 Smith, M.D.  69 Sobolewska, M.  65, 66 social capital  66, 74 social cohesion  97 social enterprises  108, 110 social media  3, 7, 10, 12, 26, 30, 32, 41, 42–​3, 44, 48, 63, 70–​5, 92–​3, 109, 114 solidarities  11, 22, 34, 39, 41, 80, 100, 108, 110, 111, 119 as an appropriate strategy  113 and belonging  92 and communities  33, 36, 110 and equality  112 and food  111 and identity  94 political  18, 85 reflective  106, 107 transformative  113–​15 within transnational framework  114 transversal  92, 93, 112–​13 Solomos, J.  4, 5 ‘Sorry!’ (Darwish)  89

Sotomayor, Sonia  35 South Asian Canadians  66 Stahl, G.  46 Stegmaier, M.  67 stories, refugee  113 aesthetic of injury  84 and agency of refugee storytellers  82–​3, 85, 86–​7, 89, 90, 91–​2 and allies  84 conviviality  84 Darwish, Amir  87–​90 facilitators of  82, 85–​6 genealogy of  82–​5 humour  91 Mansour, Ifrah  90–​2 participatory methods  85 precarity  83, 89, 91 public responses to  83 trauma of refugees  86, 91 storytelling  13, 43, 59, 79, 81, 85 strategic witnessing  31 Stråth, B.  99–​100 Suleyman, C.  74 Sundar, P.  37 Sundaresan, M.  55 Svašek, M.  6 Syria Supper Club  111 Szörényi, A.  20 T Tammas, R.  83, 84 Tan, M.  59 thematic analysis  56, 63 Thomas, Steve  25, 27 TikTok  70 Trampoline House  112–​13 transformative solidarities  113–​15 transversal politics  92–​3, 99 transversal solidarities  92, 99, 112–​13 trauma  13, 44, 82, 83–​4, 86, 91, 93, 101 Trenz, H.  30 Triffitt, M.  46 Tronto, Joan  119 Trudeau, Justin  39, 63, 70, 74 Trump, Donald  54–​5, 57–​8, 111 Tsalapatanis, A.  98 Twitter  3, 24, 42, 56–​8, 67–​8, 70, 71, 72 U Uberoi, E.  66 Ungrateful Refugee, The (Nayeri)  118 United Kingdom  65, 82, 86, 87–​8, 89 British Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates/​politicians  67, 68 diverse political representation in  66, 67–​8 ethnic comedy  52 Khan, Sadiq  73–​4, 75 United States  82 Asian Americans  12, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52–​8, 67

146

Index

diverse political representation in  67, 68 ethnic comedy in  51–​2 Ocasio-​Cortez, Alexandria  71–​2, 74, 75 V Vajda, Steph  102 Venkataramanujam, Prashanth  58 video activism  30–​1 Visalvanich, N.  67 von Makhashvili, Ana  3 vulnerability  10, 83 W Wahl-​Jorgensen, K.  6 Wait (documentary)  86–​7 Watkins, M.  47 Watson, Irene  118 Western Sydney  3, 47, 78, 100, 101–​2, 108, 116, 117 White Tears/​Brown Scars (Hamad)  118 whiteness  50, 60, 86, 113, 119 Wille, J.  105 Williams, B.  44 Williamson, R.  34 WITNESS (NGO)  31

witnessing  11, 17, 19–​31 Wollongong, University of  24, 95, 101–​2 Wong, Ali  53 Woodrow, N.  85 Woodward, I.  17 workshops  101–​2, 104, 106 Wright, K.A.  36–​7 Wright  96 X xenophobia  1, 2, 39 Y Yang, Andrew  57 Yell, S.  41 Young, Iris Marion  18 youth  45, 77–​8, 79, 80, 91, 95–​6 YouTube  53, 70 Yuval-​Davis, Nira  92, 99 Z Zembylas, M.  118 Zevallos, Z.  80 Zhang, L.T  3 Zhao, S.  3 Ziems, C.  3

147