UNESCO Chair Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts (RILA)

South-South migration has the potential to reduce inequalities and contribute to development. This potential has yet to be fully realised. MIDEQ works with a global network of partners in twelve countries in the Global South, organised into six migration ‘corridors’, to transform understanding of the relationships between migration, development and inequality.

The University of Glasgow team is working on cross-cutting work package Arts, creative resistance and well-being: to create migratory aesthetics, demonstrating how the arts and humanities can expand social-scientific and scientific frames of reference for research into migration and inequality, creating environments where human well-being is valued and flourishes.

The team have published several posts on the MIDEQ blog and summaries with links are below:

• 31 August 2020: Researching multilingually: meeting, greeting, eating
  Prof Alison Phipps reflects on greeting colleagues in mother languages, a tiny effort at equity and courtesy, and the importance of placing oneself in the position of linguistic vulnerability.
• 19 August 2020: Se anomaa entua obua da: 'The bird that does not fly does not eat'
  Does your culture have textiles that tell migration stories? Naa Densua Tordzro introduces the concept of 'Se anomaa entua obua da' or 'The bird that does not fly does not eat' by highlighting its use in Ghanaian wax print designs.
• 19 August 2020: Two part series on Hamadzi, Memory as Silence 
  By Dr Gameli Tordzro 
  

Memory in Sound, Silence and the Compassion of Music
Do you have memories that have migrated with you from one place to another? From one language to another? Are there any memories you know you keep because they have never found expression in another language? 

Memory, Language Learning and Remembering a Forgotten Language
Have you ever discovered that words in your mother tongue occur in new languages you have learnt? Have you had memories you thought were no more existing awaked by a new sight and sound? Dr Gameli Tordzro writes how as he migrated the languages he used migrated into the silent spaces in his memory. 

• 19 August 2020: three-part series on 'expressions of travel' 
  sezvazviri (literal); midziyo (items/objects); and zvirevo (proverbial)
  By Tawona Sitholé

(1) Mazwi e Nzendo: Sezvazviri (literal)
​In this offering Tawona Sitholé turns, and returns, to his mother tongue (Shona) to explore expressions to do with the movement of people. These mazwi e nzendo (expressions to do with travel) are from his own memory and also from several long, long-distance calls with his youngest ancestor – his elderly mother.

(2) Mazwi e Nzendo: Midziyo (items/objects)
What are your own language resources? What item/objects describe or influence your own sense of journey?

(3) Mazwi e Nzendo: Zvirevo (proverbial)
Known sayings (idioms) offer something more intangible to our reflections on migration. What idioms describe or influence your own sense of journey?

• 19 June: Ŋutefe Ʋɔdriba (Memory Dragon)
  Researcher-artists begin introducing some concepts from traditions outwith those which are more normally associated with the discourse of migration studies or intercultural communication in the academic literature. In this post Dr Gameli Tordzro introduces his concept of the ‘Memory Dragon'
• 8 June 2020: hekani pa ruwaré
  Tawona Sitholé introduces the concept of the ruwaré. In Shona it is a rockface, and any traveller who finds themselves here, not least one who is also migrating, finds no tracks or visible path to follow. 
• 8 June 2020: Objects series: Burkina Faso
  A conversation between Bonayi Hubert Dabiré and Alison Phipps, we hear Dabiré describe the objects he has chosen first of all in his mother language - ‘sa langue maternelle’ - Bambara, then describes these in French, his working language.
• 4 June 2020: Vessels, Thread and Cloth
  In a series of reflections and writings the reserachers in work package 11 (WP11) offer a gallery of objects which act as levellers for human beings in their needs for food, water, and clothing. 

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First published: 1 September 2020