Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2015

There is a great deal of literature on east–west European migration that argues that push factors for moving West are discrepancies in economic situation and living standards. The British press similarly says that there is ‘a new wave of labour migration’ of those ‘seeking out better wages’. However, what is not asked is whether there are any other kinds of movement from Eastern Europe. This article will, instead, look at Eastern European migration through the lens of artists. However, artists are not normal migrators as they take part in a perpetual movement across Europe. Their particular type of short-term, multi-directional movement can be better described as mobility. In order to demonstrate this, I explore the mobility patterns of artists from the Baltic cities of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, where cross-border movement out of these emerging art cities is vital for survival and for getting onto the global art market. While these artists might be seen as an elite mobile class who can move at ease, I will dispel this myth by charting the underlying politics of their mobilities.

This article focuses on the transcultural, Oscar-nominated Scottish Yemini documentary film-maker Sara Ishaq, especially her films The Mulberry House and Karama has no Walls. I place Ishaq’s film in the context of a subgenre of non-fiction films, the increasingly important human rights documentaries, and I also align her work with the concept of ‘accented cinema’ and ways in which the hybrid identities of transcultural film-makers – operating in what Homi Bhabha describes as the ‘third space’ – translates into their films. The main argument is that the ‘politics of justice’ has inspired many minority and women’s groups in the world but that the simple epistemology of the human rights films is complicated by the hybrid identities of transcultural film-makers and the complexities of the domestic sphere where affect and politics are being played out.

Xenophobia is becoming an increasingly common response to migration within the Global South, often taking the form of collective violence against migrants and refugees. It has also permeated central and local state structures leading to systemic discrimination, denial of basic rights and constant harassment of migrants and refugees. For a decade or more, South Africa has been plagued by xenophobic violence directed at Zimbabweans living in the country. Botswana is another major destination for Zimbabwean migrants but has not experienced violent attacks motivated by xenophobia. This does not mean that Zimbabweans are welcome in that country. On the contrary, xenophobic attitudes are highly prevalent amongst the citizenry and within government and manifested in a range of negative stereotypes. This article documents the rise of xenophobia in Botswana and provides empirical evidence from research with Zimbabwean migrants in Gaborone and Francistown of how xenophobia is actually experienced by its targets. In order to explain the existence of xenophobia in Botswana, usually considered one of Africa’s most stable, economically prosperous and stable countries, the article draws on the literature on new nationalisms in Africa.

This article explores how the arts-for-social change company, Big hART, responded to the Cronulla riots in Western Sydney, Australia. The riots were instigated on 4 December 2005 following an altercation between three Anglo-Australian lifeguards and a group of men identified as being of Lebanese background. Big hART’s creative response, ‘Junk Theory’, involved the collaboration of youth from diverse cultural groups in the Sutherland Shire and resulted in a moving-media installation that projected digital stories onto the sails of a junk boat. With its message, ‘It’s harder to hurt someone when you know their story’, the work raises important questions regarding diversity, social cohesion and the corporeal force of community-based art. My critique of this work is the starting point for my interest in the material – and often subtle – ways that racialized bodies come to be produced through multiculturalism discourse. I want to add to the contemporary scholarship account of a tension between theoretical/political multiculturalism and its everyday engagements, by utilizing Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to examine the multicultural body in both public and creative space. The article uses performativity to consider how it is that certain bodies came to be seen as beyond the limits of not only the Cronulla beach, but humanness itself. It then considers how the same theory makes way for slippages, which, if harnessed, may be used to deconstruct the racialized body in everyday art forms.

This article provides a critical cultural analysis of Fatih Akin’s On the Other Side; a celebrated European drama and a multiple award winner, as a case study depicting contemporary German Turkish intercultural dynamics. It focuses on the politics of intersectional representation of Turks and examines implications of strategic cinematographic othering in today’s Germany, marked by growing Islamophobia. Building upon Chancellor Merkel’s 2010 statement about the death of German multiculturalism, as well as her 2015 statement about multiculturalism being a ‘White Lie’, this article introduces a concept of Monoculturalism and explores its on-screen manifestations and cultural implications for the contemporary Europe.

The South Asian stereotype has been presented on British television through programmes such as Mind Your Language (LWT/ITV, 1977–79) and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum (BBC Television, 1974–1981). This article traces the journey of the South Asian stereotype from the racist undertones presented in British television comedies of the 1970s to the British Asian comedy show Goodness Gracious Me! (BBC Television, 1998–2000) that used the stereotype to gain a sense of ownership and represent British and South Asian identity through a South Asian lens. In recognising the South Asian presence on British television, it has been identified that the traditional stereotype has shifted from the marginalised depiction of the ‘other’ to a representation of the British-Asian subject as an integral part of multicultural Britain. Using the television drama Second Generation, an illustration of how British-Asian female identity no longer relies on previous South Asian stereotypes has been made, demanding a new way of seeing and gaining cultural understanding.

This article is a critical reading of Mimmo Paladino’s ‘Gateway to Lampedusa/Gateway to Europe’, a memorial built in Lampedusa to honour the lives of thousands of immigrants who died trying to reach Italian shores. It considers how the monument’s ambiguous representation of migrants reveals the deeply contradictory position of Italy towards the mass immigration it has experienced in recent years, and it contextualizes the creation of the memorial in 2008, the year Berlusconi’s third government began. The close analysis of Paladino’s bas-reliefs illustrates the iconographic reification of old colonial stereotypes that essentialize and dehumanize the immigrants in order to separate them from the supposedly superior Italians. Ultimately, the article argues that the Gateway to Lampedusa reflects an ideal vision of Italy that is rhetorically crafted to support a culturally and racially pure image of the country. Thus the representation of immigrants is intrinsically tied to Italy’s process of self-definition that both accepts and rejects aspects of the historical past in order to maintain a self-image grounded in cultural and social heterogeneity.

Popular culture is an important domain in which postcolonial notions of diaspora are being negotiated. In this article, we focus on Marseilles, France, and the Comorian diaspora that currently represents one of the city’s major migrant populations. More precisely, we focus on the talent show Étoiles Rasmi (2013) as well as the oeuvre by Franco-Comorian slam artist Ahamada Smis. While situated in different spheres of popular culture, Étoiles Rasmi as well as Ahamada Smis’ artistic work hinge on shared ‘diaspora spaces’. We will point out how both aim(ed) at inscribing notions of Comorian culture into a broader cultural market in Marseilles and argue that both contribute to a renegotiation of the postcolonial and intersectional power relations that have been shaping notions of Comorian diaspora in Marseilles. Two categories in particular come to be negotiated in this context: generation and ethnicity. In this article, we thus situate Étoiles Rasmi as well as Smis’ work within positionalities of ‘younger generations’ of a ‘Comorian diaspora’ in Marseilles. In this regard both can be understood as reinventing or re-performing ‘Comorian culture’, affirming the role of notions of ‘ethnicity’ with respect to constructions of ‘diaspora’.

Caribbean Spaces: Esc apes from Twilight Zones, Carole Boyce Davies (2013) Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 250 pp., ISBN: 9780252079535, £18.49

Dest ination It aly: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative, Emma Bond, Guido Bonsaver, Federico Faloppa (2015) Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 467 pp., ISBN: 9783034309615, £45.00

Voicing the voiceless on radio: Language as the only tool – migrations, cultures and identities with audio and no visuals in the digital screen era

A review of the Spanish radio programme A Vivir, que son dos días, directed and presented by Javier del Pino