Welcoming Voices

Abstract

There are many studies of migration that focus on the economic and social impact of immigration, but the effect that migration has on cultural practices is less explored. Working with Lithuanian and Polish communities in Lincolnshire between 2016 and 2018, and engaging with local communities through events, outreach activities and interviews, the Welcoming Voices project explored the connections people have and have had with song in their migratory journeys. Played out against the backdrop of tensions surrounding Brexit, the research seeks to explore how engaging with popular music, and especially song, plays a role in assimilation, reorientation, and displacement processes. By listening to the migrants’ own voices, this article considers the subtle, personal and communal ways in which song can inform a sense of self. Where conventional understandings of citizenship might relate to national identity and the idea of the nation state, it discovers that transitional experiences of migration can construct ‘notion-states’—fictive imaginings of both origin and destination countries which are often articulated through personal and emotional relationships with song.

Notes

1 This research has been carried out with the help of Heritage Lottery Fund. It was conducted by the University of Lincoln and cultural solutions uk with the help of inMotion Filmworks. I am grateful to David Lambert, Matthew Lee, Jurate Matulioniene and Magdalene Bednarczyk. Interviews were conducted in English, Polish and Lithuanian between May and September 2017. All translations are by Jurate Matulioniene and Magdalena Bednarczyk.

2 Formed in Poland in 1992 but produced by the British music producer Ian Harris, they have played internationally and gone on to support artists as diverse as Iggy Pop, the Corrs and Travis.

3 Purs quotes Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves in a speech to the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, 14 December 1999.