[ecrea] Rights and Plight: cultural counter-narratives of the migrant and refugee experiences

CALL FOR PAPERS

Rights and plight: cultural counter-narratives of the migrant and 
refugee experiences

Date: 22-25 June 2017 Venue: University of Westminster, Regent Campus 
and Regent Street Cinema

309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

According to UNHCR, globally there are now more than 65 million forcibly 
displaced persons, including 21 million refugees, who have left their 
homes as a result of conflict, persecution, famine, and environmental 
disasters. Meanwhile, migrants have also courageously left their homes 
of origin behind to voluntarily pursue a better life often motivated by 
freedom, education, economic opportunities or to reunite with family.

While many are tackling the topical challenges of migration and refugees 
few, if any, are addressing it from a cultural narrative or cultural 
rights perspective. The “Rights and Plight” conference, organised by an 
interdisciplinary group of University of Westminster faculties 
representing media, art, design and social sciences, emphasises the need 
to amplify the voices and power of refugee and migrant narrativity while 
connecting dialogues and discussions to policies and inclusion/exclusion 
practices of host societies.

This conference offers a meaningful cross-cultural and interdisciplinary 
engagement with hitherto neglected refugee, migrant and exilic 
experiences presented through a film festival alongside theory, practice 
and policy discussions aimed at policymakers, academics and students, as 
well as to wider publics/citizens. It brings together international 
filmmakers, musicians, and artists who are involved in capturing and 
responding to individual stories of struggles and successes of 
individual migrants and refugees living and working in the UK, from the 
Georgian period to the present day, with policymakers, practitioners and 
academics working globally on migration and refugee issues.

“Rights and Plight” encourages discussion of the hidden opportunities 
and unspoken challenges faced by migrants and refugees. The objective is 
to unravel little known personal and positive stories of migrants in 
changing contexts and to detail their agency, including their vital 
contributions to reshaping cultural landscapes and artistic expression.

We welcome papers internationally from scholars, policymakers, artists, 
filmmakers and civil society group members that will engage critically 
with particular aspects of displacement and relocation, communication, 
media and art. Themes for individual papers and panel proposals may 
include, but are not limited to the following:

o Cultural and human rights of migrants and refugees

o Representative individual and collective refugee and migrant 
narratives through creative industries including newspapers, television, 
film, photography on radio and through the arts

o Representations of refugees and migrants in mainstream media and 
artistic institutions

o The role of Art in addressing trauma, bereavement and loss

o Ethics, policy and the politics of exclusion

o Doing/making art in the time of war

o Rethinking cultural policy and cultural relations in the age of global 
crisis

o Nationalism, populism and inclusion politics

o Migrancy, connectivity and cultural production

o The political economy of othering

o Refugees, migrants and social media: empowerment and denigration

o Secularization and securitization of refugee movements

o Border sorting technologies as techniques of exclusionary control

o Migrant/refugee experiences using a gender lens

PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION

This University of Westminster three-day conference from June 22-25 June 
2017, will consist of keynotes, a practitioner panel, parallel panels, 
plenaries, workshops and a concurrent film festival held at Regent 
Street Cinema. The fee for registration for all participants, including 
presenters, will be £40, with a concessionary rate of £20 for students, 
to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration 
costs. Registration will open in April 2017.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS

The deadline for abstracts and panel proposals is Wednesday, March 15th, 
2017. Successful applicants will be notified by Monday April 3, 2017. 
Abstracts should be 200-words. They must include the presenter’s name, 
affiliation, and email and postal addresses, together with the title of 
the paper and a 150-word biographical note on the presenter. Please send 
all these items together in a single Word file, not as pdf, and entitle 
the file and message with ‘AMC 2017’ followed by your surname. The file 
should be sent by email to (har-events /at/ westminster.ac.uk)

TRAVEL EXPENSES

Participants are responsible to fund their own travel and accommodation 
expenses.

PUBLICATION

Selected conference papers will be eligible for a future special edition 
volume to be published by University of Westminster press.

CONTACT

For more information about the conference or submissions, please contact 
Aimee Fullman at (a.fullman1 /at/ westminster.ac.uk).


The University of Westminster is a charity and a company limited by 
guarantee. Registration number: 977818 England. Registered Office: 309 
Regent Street, London W1B 2UW.

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