Abstract
An often forgotten dimension in the literature on migration and asylum is the sense of community at a very practical, micro-sociological level. What do migration and asylum mean in terms of ‘community’? What happens to migrants’ sense of belonging in the countries of arrival? How does one investigate, sociologically, such processes of community-belonging? What role can the arts and humanities play in these queries, or in the construction of new communities? O’Neill has spent more than a decade investigating these questions, championing community-focused methods such as Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Participative Arts (PA). Rather than giving an account of one specific research project, Asylum, Migration and Community presents the reader with a taste of her work.
After orienting the subject of asylum and migration more broadly in its statistical and juridical context, O’Neill elaborates a quite substantial battery of theories and concepts circumventing globalization and migration, thereby highlighting the specific value of ‘community’. In contradistinction to a more traditional, communitarian interpretation of the term, however, O’Neill strongly articulates the relational and compassionate element of belonging to a community. In other words, ‘community’ is here conceived of as a bond-creating, normative ideal instructing both social research and policy. O’Neill builds her argument mostly on secondary literature, discussing a wide range of complex critical authors from very different backgrounds. The selection of arguments and authors she draws on reinforces the impression of cherry-picking: rather than constructing a more balanced critical framework for analyzing community as an ambiguous process, she presents it as an ideal solution to a wide range of problems.
Strongly in line with her ‘relational’ conception of community, O’Neill uses Theodor Adorno’s and Walter Benjamin’s notions of mimesis to develop the methodological practice of ‘ethnomimesis.’ For Adorno and Benjamin, mimesis expresses a ‘sensuous knowing’, that is, an act of relating to one another through non-discursive art forms. O’Neill complemented their notion of mimesis with ethnographic practice, in which the experience of respondents is communicated to the researcher through the collaborative creation of an artwork. Such a mode of connecting with respondents as human beings is then contrasted with the ‘instrumental reason’ approach reducing people to numbers or targets, characteristic for UK migration policies. The practical relevance of Adorno’s concept of ‘instrumental reason’, however, lies not in O’Neill’s rigorous application of it to the UK policies – which she does only superficially. Rather, ‘instrumental reason’ merely serves as a fully negative contrast to her fully positive notion of ‘ethnomimesis’.
A similar black-and-white perspective characterizes the fourth chapter, quite bluntly addressing the representation of asylum seekers and migrants in the mainstream media as ‘negative’. She does not, however, resort to more detailed concepts in media or discourse analysis, nor does she differentiate between types, degrees or contexts of negative representations. Again, the good practice/bad practice contrast is merely evoked to highlight the positive role of alternative representational forms, such as collaborative art. This causes the foundations of her methodological choices, as well as her inclusive conception of community, to be closed to self-critique. How is the access to community organizations regulated? Which types of migrants remain excluded from such community building? What about migrants who fail to express themselves through art, or refuse to do so because of the sensitivity of their experiences? How are communities forced to reason ‘instrumentally’? Precisely, how does a local sense of belonging and community relate to larger ones? Asking such questions does not mean that they cannot be resolved, nor does it imply that there are many things to gain from ‘ethnomimetical’ practices and alternative representations. But such questions do need to be asked, especially in a book with scholarly aspirations.
The substantial potential of O’Neill’s methods and approaches is illustrated best in the fifth chapter, which presents a more detailed overview of her research projects during the last decade. It is here that she demonstrates the relevance of focusing on community as being-with and belonging, in the context of asylum seekers and migrants. In the research projects she was involved, bridges were built between academia, civil society, artists and migrants through workshops, seminars, conferences and exhibitions. Very often these activities were aimed at a more positive public representation through art forms in which life histories and experiences were absorbed and displayed. And it is here that the relevance of a term such as ‘ethnomimesis’ becomes clear: the multi-sensory connection between humans as human beings, rather than the instrumental reason of UK migration policies merely seeking to reduce the number of migrants. One example which particularly struck me by fulfilling a triple role of community construction, artistic creation and sociological relevance, were the ethnographic walks organized in different cities (p. 152ff). Guided by artist Misha Myers, participants were asked to draw a map of the place they called ‘home’ to a special place in the city they lived, after which they walked through the map together with another participant (or participating researcher). Throughout the walk, the participant would then explain the meanings of the places, objects and buildings they passed: these could be memories of one’s homeland, evoked by the outlook of a specific church; spaces that stood out as typical for the migrants’ new home city; or how objects like walls, open squares or parks reflected human relationships. Afterwards, these walks were discussed in more detail in workshops. Such an example illustrates precisely the value of the notion ‘ethnomimesis’: a guiding ideal for sociologically relevant research aimed at community building through participatory art.
Towards the end of the book, there are three thematic chapters dealing respectively with children, women, and destitution. Their place in the whole of this book is rather unclear: whereas O’Neill’s work is still highly present in the chapter on children, only one section is dedicated to it in the chapter on women refugees, and none at all in the chapter on destitution. I can only assume O’Neill has tried to use these chapters to obtain some attention for these highly problematic issues. One of the main problems, however, is that she relies extensively on NGO research reports and other primary literature, rather than drawing from her own primary research. Partly as a result thereof, these chapters have little depth. It would have been more interesting if she had focused on specifically problematic cases in her own work, thus explicitly linking these problems to her own methods and theories. A more fundamental problem, however, is again the analytical weakness of these case studies. Quite a number of artworks are shown, for instance, and quite a number of fragments from life histories and witnesses are mentioned, but they are not put into any analytical frame at all. Instead, they are merely displayed in a very concise, dense way. They are put together on a stage with no light. Focusing on a limited number of cases or witnesses in much more depth, would have provided a much richer illustration of what O’Neill’s methods are capable of in terms of sociological analysis. But also in terms of lending public visibility to marginalized individuals and groups, one could argue that the representation of such social problems should have been left with the alternative modes propagated by O’Neill: collaborative forms of art.
A similar story can be told with respect to the last chapter, which reads as an extension of the theoretical chapters at the beginning of the book rather than a proper conclusion. It generally discusses the Humiliation Studies revolving around Lindner, while an actually concluding chapter would have been in the right place here, drawing consequences from O’Neill’s work for the construction of concepts and methods, as well as for migration policy on different levels. If this chapter is not altogether redundant, it should have at least been integrated in the opening parts of the book.
In sum, Asylum, Migration and Community provides the reader with a taste of more than a decade of O’Neill’s highly valuable research crossing the boundaries of ethnography, community building and arts. Presenting such an overview in a coherent way is of course a daunting task, and I cannot say that this book lives up to those aspirations. The wide battery of concepts introduced in the theoretical chapters is not consistently applied to the thematic chapters – except for her own notion of ‘ethnomimesis’. Partly as a result thereof, the cases or research projects are not presented in the depth and analytical precision they deserve: instead, they are squeezed together in one lonely chapter. Furthermore, the form of the book seems not in line with the ideas discussed in it: an alternative presentation of social problems through participatory arts. Providing more space for testimonies and collaborative artworks would have been an option, as well as having at least some of the texts co-authored.