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Practices of welcome with refugee and asylum seeking migrants in rural Wales: ‘literacies of doing’ and the (re) writing of place / Sarah Foster
Swansea University Author: Sarah Foster
DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.66105
Abstract
This thesis examines practices of welcome with refugee and asylum seeker migrants in rural Monmouthshire, Wales. Centred on two case studies, it explores how people with very different experiences and histories of migration, and very different senses of familiarity with being in rural Wales, encount...
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Swansea, Wales, UK
2024
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Shubin, Sergei ; Closs Stephens, Angharad |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66105 |
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| Abstract: |
This thesis examines practices of welcome with refugee and asylum seeker migrants in rural Monmouthshire, Wales. Centred on two case studies, it explores how people with very different experiences and histories of migration, and very different senses of familiarity with being in rural Wales, encounter each other through activities such as walking, cooking, dance, celebrations and outings, which take place in a variety of spaces from homes to community venues to hillsides. While there is valuable scholarship to be drawn on about welcome in the city, this study shifts the focus to a rural setting, one that is often considered unconnected to global issues such as migration and one which is often experienced as unwelcoming by racialised and minoritised groups. The theoretical framework brings Sara Ahmed’s work on modes of encounter together with conceptualisations of language as social participation. It draws on Doreen Massey’s conceptualisation of space as the intersections of stories so far set in wider power geometries and also to the complex relation to place that Avtar Brah’s notion of diasporic space offers. Moving away from ideas of integration the thesis advances the idea of ‘literacies of doing’ as way of reconceptualising relations of hospitality and emphasising the ways in which space and place are re-written through the spoken and unspoken language practices that members of these groups engage in as they find ways of being together. The approaches to research are grounded in a feminist praxis that seeks to account for, but not necessarily resolve, the issues of researching across inequalities. The methodology is considered as a form of creative bricolage, working with the resources available at the time (during the pandemic). This echoes the creative and improvisational ways of engaging with each other across difference that was evident in both case studies. |
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| Keywords: |
migration, welcome, rural, Wales, refugees, literacies |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |