Communicating Migration: Migrant Resistance, Resilience, and Activism
February 14 - 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Communicating Migration:
Migrant Resistance, Resilience, and Activism
Migrant experiences are complex. They are characterised by a number of transitions, contradictions, and simultaneities that are not necessarily observable from a single political or economic orientation. Studying the phenomenon of migration in its multiple dimensions can offer a glimpse at how migrant groups interact with state policies and citizenship codes that subject them to violence and exploitation.
What does the experience of migration mean to those who have lived it? And what can new and digital media offer migrant people in regard to self-representation?
To answer this question, the webinar hosts/features research from transnational scholars in the fields of human mobility, communication, media, and rhetorical studies who employ diverse research methods to describe how migrants and migrant communities carve their spaces of belonging in a hyper-nationalist world through storytelling via both traditional and new media communication technologies.
For migrants, developing communication strategies is a vital practice of finding social connections, navigating the pressures of assimilation, and maintaining links to various cultures. While migrants’ experiences of being subjected as foreigners are similar: they build communities by telling stories, engage in social media activism, protest in the streets, write scholarly criticism, create art projects, and spread awareness about their cultures.
Digital event – how to participate
Register here
A zoom link will be sent to you before the event.
PROGRAM
Welcoming speech – Fr. Aldo Skoda, Director of SIMI, Rome, Italy
Migration policies and human rights – C. Mario Russell, Executive Director, Center for Migration Studies New York, New York, USA
The mobilization of media and surveillance technologies to control migrants in the U.S. – Michael Lechuga, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA
Relationship between digital media, popular culture, and identity making – Arthur D. Soto Vasquez Assistant Professor at Texas A&M International University, Laredo TX, USA
Online Activism and Community Building – Sergio Fernando Juárez, Assistant Professor of Intercultural Communication at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA
Migrants’ Being and Belonging beyond the Layers of Loss – Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA
Church, migration and the role of faith-based organisation – Pat Murphy, Director of Casa del Migrante in Tijuana, Mexico USA
The importance of international networks to expand opportunities for education of migrants and refugees – Anthony J. Cernera, President and co-founder of Being the Blessing Foundation and co-founder and team leader of the Refugee and Migrant Education
Moderator: Veronica De Sanctis, PhD, Project, Research and Communication Manager at SIMI, Rome, Italy