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ENQUIRE PROJECT DETAILS BY GENERAL PUBLIC |
| Project Details |
| Funding Scheme : | General Research Fund | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Number : | 18601921 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Title(English) : | Spaces of Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Narrative | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Title(Chinese) : | 不穩定的空間：移民、空間性和難民圖像小說 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Principal Investigator(English) : | Dr Banerjee, Bidisha | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Principal Investigator(Chinese) : | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Department : | Department of Literature and Cultural Studies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Institution : | The Education University of Hong Kong | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| E-mail Address : | banerjee@eduhk.hk | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tel : | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Co - Investigator(s) : |
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| Panel : | Humanities, Social Sciences | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Subject Area : | Humanities and Arts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Exercise Year : | 2021 / 22 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fund Approved : | 249,209 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Status : | Completed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Completion Date : | 31-12-2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Project Objectives : |
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| Abstract as per original application (English/Chinese): |
The refugee crisis of the 21st century is one of the most challenging the globe has faced; today more than an estimated 68 million people are displaced from their homes. Postcolonial and diaspora studies have been slow to respond to the need to reconceptualize theories of migration in the context of the new age of migration. The traditional articulations of diasporic identity formation are lacking in theorizing refugee identities characterized by statelessness, violence and precarity. The kinds of transnational affiliations that foster diasporic identity formations are often absent in the case of refugees on the move as are the engendering of hybrid and cosmopolitan identities so celebrated in diaspora studies. Scholars like David Farrier (2011) and Agnes Woolley (2014) have called for diaspora studies to engage with questions of asylum and the “refugee crisis” of our time that has brought to the fore debates about national sovereignty, migration and border control. They underscore the importance of “envisioning new ways of belonging” (Woolley 2014, 9) for refugees. We wish to address this lacuna in diaspora studies by drawing attention to the spatialities of refugee migration as delineated in several refugee graphic narratives. The last decade has seen the publication of a number of Anglophone and Francophone graphic narratives often characterized as refugee graphic narratives, grappling as they do with the urgent questions raised by the refugee crisis. “Spaces of Precarity” considers the liminal and transitory spaces of migration spaces like refugee camps, borders and detention centres as well as the open seas often depicted in refugee graphic narratives. Following critics like Simon Gikandi (2010) and Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2000) who have theorized the refugee as a new kind of Other that challenges global cultural flows, this project argues that the depiction of these spaces in graphic literature, offers us new opportunities to theorize migration and diaspora based on reconfiguring spatiality. In doing so, this study brings together refugee studies, migration and diaspora studies as well as the study of graphic narratives. The project also considers the specific formal, narrative, and aesthetic features of graphic narratives including the spatiality of the graphic narrative’s page in an attempt to explore the ways in which the graphic form may be particularly suited to depicting the plight of refugees. At the same time, critical scrutiny of these features will also interrogate potential scenographical limits of the medium in representing the range of refugee experiences "appropriately." 21 世紀的難民危機為全球所面臨的其中一個最具挑戰性的危機。迄今，估計有超過 6800 萬人流離失所。在新移民時代移民的框架下，後殖民和離散研究對重新定義移民理論的需求反應遲疑。事實上，傳統的論述對離散身份建構，特別是難民獨有的無國籍、暴力和不穩定的特徵缺乏理論化的探討。「不穩定的空間」這項研究計劃希望透過關注難民圖像敘述所描繪的難民遷移的空間性，來填補離散研究中的漏洞。為了達到研究的目的，本計劃將透過探討移民的閾限和過渡空間，例如難民營、邊境和拘留中心，以及關於難民的圖像敘述中經常描繪的公海，來說明視覺文學對這些空間的描述，特別是根據空間性重新配置的論述，為我們提供了理論化遷移和離散的機會。 |
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| Realisation of objectives: | Objective 1: Contribute to recent scholarship on the Anglophone and Francophone refugee graphic narrative and critically interrogate the genre's characteristics. We have fully met this objective of the project. The PI and Co-I curated and co-edited a special issue for the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. The special issue proposal was accepted by the journal in October 2023. We then wrote a call for papers. We received many excellent abstracts in response to the call for papers and finally accepted 13 abstracts. My Co-Investigator Dr. Arnold and I met in summer of 2024 to plan the curation of the special issue. We also wrote and contributed two single authored articles of our own to the special issue. This special issue (forthcoming with several articles already being published online) titled Spaces of Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Novel (same title as the GRF project), makes a very important contribution to questions about the depiction of precarious spaces in refugee graphic novels. In particular, the issue attempts to explore the graphic depiction of the spaces of migration in Anglophone and Francophone refugee graphic novels. In addition to the Special Issue, Dr. Arnold and I have written/published 3 single authored articles. Objective 2: Provide a theoretical and literary-critical rejoinder to the celebratory accounts of diaspora that have come to dominate the discourse more recently. We have fully met this objective of the project. One of the main motivations behind this project was to provide a rejoinder to the celebratory accounts of diaspora and migration that have for long dominated the discourse with discussions of hybrid and cosmopolitan identities. It is only more recently that diaspora and migration studies have begun to take the refugee crisis of the last fifteen years more seriously. By focusing and theorizing on the connection between the precarious spaces that migrants traverse and occupy on their transnational journeys, and their identities, our project makes a valuable contribution to reconceptualizing migration as a complex and fraught endeavor. By engaging with concepts like “fugitivity,” and “refugitude,” (Gui), questioning categories in literary studies like “global literature” or “World literature” (Lehman), studying spectrality in graphic novels as a way for migrancy to express itself (Sapp), contributors to the special issue enable us to see migration in new and different ways. We also call for a foregrounding of often marginalized texts like the refugee graphic novel. Mike Lehman proposes the category of transit literature that includes “undisciplined texts like the postcolonial graphic novel which put pressure and disrupt these existing categories.” Objective 3: Explore the affective representation of refugee camps in graphic novels as spaces where refugees practice home making and belonging We have fully met this objective of the project. Two contributors to the special issue (Gui and Dalal), explore graphic novelist Matt Hyunh’s portrayal of a refugee camp in Malaysia in his 2013 novel Ma while another (Howell) studies the French Vietnamese graphic novelist Clément Baloup’s three volume graphic novel series Mémoires de Viet Kieu. She critiques the “potential reproduction of tropes of victimhood” in the series and instead of seeing the precarious spaces of migration and those of “confinement and immiseration,” Gui emphasizes the potential for hope, intimacy and tenderness in these spaces (Gui). Articles like these, allow us to reimagine spaces of migrant confinement and endless waiting, in more subversive ways. While Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of “bare lives” has contributed much to refugee studies, it has also often had the unintended consequence of fixing migrant identity as always already abject and lacking agency. In our analysis, we attempt to move beyond the abjection and victimhood of migrants to explore more dynamic identities that not only humanize, but also give voice to the refugee. Objective 4: Explore the representation of the open seas as well as the liminality of transit zones, borders, detention centres and carceral spaces as depicted in refugee graphic novels. We have fully met this objective of the project. The majority of the contributions to the special issue include articles theorizing the spatiality of the seas or of carceral spaces in refugee graphic novels. In particular, Safdar Ahmed’s award winning graphic novel about Australia’s notorious detention systems, Still Alive: Graphic Reportage from Australia’s Immigration Detention System, received particular attention (Lehman, Jackson et al and Michael). Interestingly, several of these writers chose to study the aesthetic aspects of Ahmed’s novel, thereby commenting not only on the spatiality of carceral spaces as depicted in the novel, but also the spatiality of the page, panels and questions of framing (see Jackson et al). In addition to the PI’s article on the depiction of a barren, waterless Mediterranean in the refugee graphic novel Mediterraneo, we received several other articles (Sethi, Vari, Mohan and Chandrasekharan), that consider the spatiality of the sea as a bordering agent, a perilous space to traverse, and explore the refugee seascape as trope in graphic novels. The PI is also writing an article on carceral spaces in Tings Chak’s Undocumented” The Architecture of Migrant Detention to be submitted to Image and Narrative. Objective 5: Offer workshops, talks, seminars to primary, secondary and tertiary students and members of the general public on the question of refugees and their representation in graphic novels While we were able to disseminate our scholarship through conference presentations, this objective proved to be difficult to achieve in other ways, though we now feel that we have fully achieved the objective after changing our strategy. Secondary schools in Hong Kong are often on very tight schedules because they need to prepare their students for the public examinations. Although we approached some schools with offers to introduce selected refugee graphic novels to their students, we were not able to get into any school. This compelled us to alter our strategy and incorporate more graphic novels into our teaching in the following ways: Dr. Banerjee (PI): Since the PI teaches students in the BEd (English) and BEd(English) and BA(Language Studies) Double Degree programme, who are training to be English teachers as well as Professional Development Courses (PDP) for in-service English teachers in Hong Kong, she introduced pedagogical materials and conducted workshops on refugee graphic novels in both these courses. This enabled the trainee and in-service teachers to study the exploration of spatiality in the novel while also to consider pedagogical strategies in using such novels in the English language classroom. Dr. Arnold (Co-I): - 2024 + 2025: conducted a three week module in the 3rd year UG “French & Francophone studies” major at UCT dedicated to “Migration in images” with the graphic narrative Humains (Troubs & Baudoin 2018) on Mediterranean migration as required reading - 2022, 2023, 2024: conducted a 6 weeks course in the BA Hons Postgraduate “French & Francophone studies” programme at UCT dedicated to intermediality and postcolonial graphic narratives, amongst which featured discussions on graphic works on migration. The materials were very well received by the students in both Hong Kong and Cape Town. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Summary of objectives addressed: |
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| Research Outcome | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Major findings and research outcome: | This project aimed to address the undertheorized representation of the refugee spaces of exception as depicted in refugee graphic novels. Our contemporary age of migration, has seen the burgeoning of nonplaces representing “a new form of legal limbo where persons may be detained indefinitely in a situation that is de jure ‘temporary’ but de facto ‘permanent’” (Mitchell, 134). We proposed to ask how this precarity of place and identity might determine the framing of migrant identity. How are refugee identities formed in such spaces, opening up, through identity formation, the "nonplace" to the "place"? While considering camp, aquatic and carceral spaces in refugee migrations through the scholarship of the PI and Co-I, the Special Issue produced by this project engaged with a large number of refugee graphic novels (over fifteen) in both French and English, to explore these and other kinds of migrant spatialities. The major findings are listed below: 1. Graphic novels redefine the placelessness of spaces of refugee transit by representing them as sterile, violent or precarious but also often as affective spaces of belonging. Spaces like the boat, the camp and the detention centre, are often re-presented in affective ways as spaces of belonging, hope and community formation that challenge essentializing forms of identity. 2. Following Hillary Chute’s claim that the features of the graphic novel form - frames, panels and gutters - are particularly well suited to telling traumatic stories, our findings suggest that the comic medium may be used very effectively to explore restorative spatialities and resist victimization in the context of confinement. Such narratives also allow us to “un-world the Humanities” (Lehman in Special Issue) by transgressing established narrative forms in new and innovative ways. 3. The liquid-liminal spaces of oceans and seas that the migrants traverse, are represented in a multitude of complex ways as spaces of transition. Whether underscoring the connections between slave trades of the past and current refugee migrations, using the sea to visualize the trauma and acute vulnerability of refugee migrations, or heightening the cruelty of deterrence policies by exposing the many deaths that lie hidden in the depths of the sea, refugee graphic novels represent thalassic spatiality in striking ways that merit attention. 4. Graphic narratives counter stereotypical representations of refugees by allowing the readers to bear witness in immersive and empathetic ways to individualized refugee journeys. Exploring their spatial identity in these journeys, further challenges normative refugee visibility. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Potential for further development of the research and the proposed course of action: |
In writing the special issue article, two areas of further development of research have emerged for the PI. They are: 1. The exploration of the sea as affect in the context of refugee graphic novels. 2. The intersectional violence of environmental ruination, and anti-refugee border policies, and the intensifying relations between the depleting landscape and the death of the migrants. Refugee graphic novels often portray these themes in powerful ways. Both these areas bring together environmental humanities and migration studies. I submitted a GRF grant application (2024), “Grieving Migrant Death, Mourning the Planet: Dissensual Art Practices as a Mode of more-than-human Solidarity and Relational Care.” Although this project considers artworks in a broader sense (including films, photography, art installations, etc), studying these issues in refugee graphic novels may be one aspect of the project. I will also be presenting a paper titled “Resisting Necro Hydrology: The Mediterranean as Affect” at the “Eco-Emotions: On Water” conference organized by the research initiative Eco-Emotions: Affective Response to Environmental Change in and through Literature (University of Oslo). The paper analyzes graphic novels that portray the comingling between the abject migrant and the ravaged environment thereby calling into question notions of borderization and environmental extraction. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Layman's Summary of Completion Report: | In bringing together discussions of spatiality in more than fifteen refugee graphic novels, Spaces of Precarity makes an important contribution to the scholarship of this recently emergent genre. In addition to the Anglophone graphic narrative, the Francophone bande dessinée has decisively contributed to the formal, aesthetic, and political renewal of the medium since the early 1990s. The project engages with both the Anglophone and Francophone traditions of the refugee graphic narrative, thereby increasing its sphere of impact. Through close engagement with graphic narratives by diverse artists such as Matt Huynh, Yvan Alagbe, Gipi, Ali Fitzgerald, Safdar Ahmed, Clement Baloup and sevedral others, this project draws urgently needed attention to refugee representations, visibility and spatial identity. In concert with books like the forthcoming Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (Candida Rifkind and Dominic Davies, Wilfred Laurier Press, June 2025), the special issue produced by this project has the potential to create significant impact in the discourse surrounding the refugee graphic narrative. Through the other outcomes of the project – pedagogical training, graphic analyses and collaboration with creators of the graphic novel Au-dela L’Exil – the project has achieved impact beyond academia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research Output | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Peer-reviewed journal publication(s) arising directly from this research project : (* denotes the corresponding author) |
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| Recognized international conference(s) in which paper(s) related to this research project was/were delivered : |
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| Other impact (e.g. award of patents or prizes, collaboration with other research institutions, technology transfer, etc.): |
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| SCREEN ID: SCRRM00542 |