Presentation by Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow) at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at New College, University of Edinburgh, 18 February 2016

1. “Where were you?”
Hard words for hard times languages
and justice in a time of war on refugees.
Alison Phipps, University of Glasgow

2. Lampadusa 2013:

3. Where are your monuments, your battles,
martyrs? … in that gray vault. The sea. The
sea has locked them up. The sea is History.
(Derek Walcott)

4. Australia and Boat People
Barat Ali Batoor

5. Silence & Vigils

6. Chronic humanitarian situation facing
refugees
- Chronic situation of well
over 15 years.
- -UK dispersal policy
- Use of detention and
deportation
- Successvie Immigation
Acts
- Development of a culture
of disbelief
- Systematic abuse of
human rights in UK

7. “Refugee Crisis”
2 Events (Badiou)
- The change of heart by
a politician and a
country.
- Aylan Kurdi image
• https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=i9kv-
rmvGKg
• (TM1.20)

8. Refugee ‘Crisis’ responses
We have Room
Glasgow sees Syria
Task Force
Resettlement (VPR)
scheme
Lesvos/Calais Aid
MSF
Refugee/EU/ UK policy
based on Australian
Solutions

9. ‘Refugees’
Designated as in need of
special care under UN
convention, 1951.
Until status is granted
there is no escape from
the liminal state and the
danger it poses.
Categories of protection.

10. Refugee Migrations
• Two-thirds of the world's 61 million
refugees (2015) are living in developing
countries. Many are living in large refugee
camps. (Source: UNHCR.)
• In 2012 Scotland hosted around 2,000
asylum seekers
- a tiny proportion of the world's refugee
population, and around 10% of the total
number of asylum seekers making claims in
the UK. (Source: UK Government, 2013.)

11. Contd/
• Asylum seekers make up less than 0.5% of the population
of Glasgow (where the vast majority of asylum seekers in
Scotland live).
• If all the refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland gathered
at Hampden stadium it would be less than 40% full.
• In Europe, in 2012 the UK ranked 11th in the European
Union in terms of asylum applicants per head of
population. In terms of absolute numbers of applications,
• France, Germany and Sweden all received more than
the UK. France and Germany both received almost three
times more than the UK. (Source: UK Government, 2013.)

12. Human Capital vs Human Lives

13. Lederach & Lederach
Project-driven mentalities
& logistical sequencing of
events for addressing
change misses out on the
metaphors of lived
experience.

14. Underlying Stories: Languages, justice
& healing?
“You are stingy with your
language. You do not
speak to us in the street”

15. “Where were you?”

16. The Churches: Ambivalence and
Courage

17. Presence and Absence
St Andrew’s Malta
Caritas
Night Shelter
Gosford Anglican
Bute
“Where were you?”

18. Hell exists and its Destitution/
Detention/ Deportation

19. Sharing the World: Crossing again
Meeting a stranger outside of
our own boundaries is rather
easy, and even satisfies our
aspirations, as long as we can
return home and appropriate
between ourselves what we
have in this way discovered.
To be forced to limit and
change our home, or our way
of being at home, is much
more difficult, especially
without being unfaithful to
ourselves. (Irigarary, 113)

20. “You have to Change your Life”
• Practice of hospitality
• Loss of an innocence
• Church & Community
• Conversion to the way
of the poor.
• Miracles, faith, hope.
• Justice not charity.

22. An Open Letter

23. It’s War

24. “Where were you?”: GRAMNet
PTC principles
Events, networks, projects
Policy interventions
Media
Art

25. Singing Good-bye to Red Road

26. AHRC: Researching Multilingually at
Borders
• Languages as a social
category
• Languages under Pain
and Pressure.
• Troubling the cult of
English/monolingually
masked research.

28. Languages and Creativity in the Pursuit
of Healing
Languages as data-bytes
or languages as the
primary facilitators of
social integration and
healing.
Liturgies of welcome and
prayer as an antedote to
Babel

29. Multilingual Democracies
To the forces of
monolingualism and ‘English-
only’ policies the multilingual
subject stands as a quixotic
figure.
A killjoy.
Sanctions. Deportations based
on language (& gender)
A condition requiring artistry.
And defiance.

30. Good English

31. How to become a multilingual
Democracy
ESOL provision
Language deficit models
Learn from International
Relations and diplomacy
Stop using languages as a
proxy for diversity.
Learn from multilingual
contests and places of
pain and pressure.

32. Learning with Gaza

35. 1 month later:
Designing Arabic Training in Gaza
• Nazmi Al Masri – TEFL
model/ AFL quality
• Employability/peace
project
• Conflict and
Compassion are central
concerns

36. IUG Multilingual campus: 6 languages
.1‫اللغة‬‫العربية‬
2. English
.3‫עברית‬
4. Braille
5. Arabic sign language
6. Art, Languages &
technology designing gifts
& furniture by engineers &
physically impaired people
(Mosaic Works, Arabesque
work)

37. Gaza teaches back

38. Language and the Arts of Resistance

39. We Refugees: Arendt
“The concomity of the
European peoples went to
pieces, when, and
because, it allowed its
weakest member to be
excluded and persecuted.”
(p119).

40. Agamben
If in the system of the nation-
state the refugee represents
such a disquieting element, it
is above all because by
breaking up the identity
between man and citizen,
between nativity and
nationality, the refugee throws
into crisis the original fiction of
sovereignty.
(Agamben, Symposium, We
Refugees p.117)

41. Where were you? What did you do?
• Reverential Contexts (Sontag)
• Cultural actions
• Changing language and languages
• Artistry
• New theologies of hospitality.
• Prayer & Protest on the streets
• And the church?

43. The Academic Border Guard

44. Researching Multilingually at the Borders of
Language, the Body, Law and the State
Alison.phipps@glasgow.ac.uk
@alison_phipps
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com