Narrative and ethical (in)action: creating spaces of resistance with refugee-storytellers in the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how a multimodal narrative methodology can open a creative, relational and safe space, in which refugee-storytellers negotiate their positioning within racialised power imbalances. Personal narratives that facilitate storytellers’ agency have a potential to empower and elicit social change. When refugees are denied their right to claim/speak/act, the act of narrating becomes a vehicle for social change. Creative workshops delivered in the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in 2016–17 enabled us to co-construct a relational space with refugee participants, based on the principle of ethical hesitancy. In this paper we argue that the relational space offered possibilities for refugee storytellers to resist and challenge the representation of refugee stories, whilst giving rise to ethically important moments. These moments provide important perspectives on how practitioners and researchers can use narrative processes in creating spaces of resistance and social change with refugee participants.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative research
• ethics
• refugee studies
• social change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this paper we use the term refugee to mean all people who have fled persecution, without alluding their legal immigration or citizenship status or the complex legal systems that govern asylum in Europe.

2. Source: Displaces- Photography narratives project with the residents of the Calais camp https://educatingwithoutborders.wordpress.com/displaces-a-project-by-gideon-mendel-and-calais-jungle-residents.

3. Source: Displaces- Photography narratives project with the residents of the Calais camp https://educatingwithoutborders.wordpress.com/displaces-a-project-by-gideon-mendel-and-calais-jungle-residents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cigdem Esin

Cigdem Esin is senior lecturer in Psychosocial Studies and co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research. Her research interests are in narrative methodologies, interconnections between gender, power and politics, migrant and refugee narratives and visual storytelling.

Aura Lounasmaa

Aura Lounasmaa is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences Foundation programme, Psychosocial Studies and Life Stories in the Jungle short course. Aura is the director of the Erasmus+ funded Open Learning Initiative course, which introduces refugees and asylum seekers in the UK to higher education. She is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Narrative Research.