Join us for a new session in the Localities of Welcoming programme, which gathers activists, scholars and people living in forced displacement and inflicted immobility, from across the full spectrum of migration experience and study, to discuss the complex dynamics of interpersonal, organisational and discursive experiences in localities of intensified hostility and determined welcoming.  

For many, the ‘work’ of migration remains massively under-acknowledged and more often invisibilized. For undocumented and vulnerable people on the move, work and self-organization for one’s own continued subsistence, as well as in support of others, is often largely obscured by the threat of criminalization and/or represented through the prism of ‘passivity’ that conditions the perception of victims of forced displacements. Meanwhile, for volunteers and many activists, the expectation of uncounted labour, of a perpetual capacity to function beyond the call of duty as such, shapes experiences of engagement and belief in one’s capacity to build towards a more welcoming world. Moreover, these expectations are often characterized by a strongly gendered bias towards established patterns of invisibilized female labour in situations of daily care, resulting in work-life (im)balances that are major factors in the questions of sustainability and resistance discussed in our previous session ‘Localities of Welcoming – Cultures of Care’ (18 Nov 2021).  

In this second chaired discussion of the 2021-22 cycle, we will consider the pressures of working in these conditions, where the informal economy meets the imperatives of survival for many, asking who is doing the work of welcoming, at what costs, with what effects to local economies and livelihoods? 

The Localities of Welcoming Network is an initiative led by Professor Sue Clayton, Goldsmith’s University of London, and Professor Anna-Louise Milne, University of London Institute in Paris, to support transnational dialogue about the effects of border regimes. It is also supported by a steering group that includes Theodoros Fouskas (University of West Attica), Maria Pisani (L-Università ta' Malta), and Pru Waldorf (Refugee Solidarity Summit).

Presenters

• Theodoros Fouskas, sociologist, specializing in migration, migrant labour, health and migrant community organizations (Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Policy, School of Public Health, University of West Attica, Greece) 

• Pru Waldorf (Refugee Solidarity Summit) is a former grassroots volunteer humanitarian activist and volunteer project coordinator who worked on the ground in Greece for 2 years. She is also a Humanitarian Responder trainer ( Humanity CIT), a Trauma-informed Yoga teacher (Our Mala, Yoga Clinic & Accessible Yoga Academy ) and a mindfulness coach (CBRT), who has led projects dedicated to building capacity resilience and fostering regenerative cultures of care across grassroots networks. 

• Abel Mavura, research student/worker (La Casa, Paris)