‘You didn’t know where you were going’: Testifying to the Experiences and Emotions of Statelessness

Dr Jordana Silverstein, University of Melbourne

How do people who have been stateless remember their experiences, their migration journeys, and their lives in a new country?

Friday 20 June 2025, 3–4.30pm

In the New Adam Smith Building, room 414A, University of Glasgow (Gilmorehill campus) – for directions click here; nearest subway is Kelvinhall.

Abstract

In this paper I draw on the words offered – in oral history interviews I’ve conducted in recent years – of people who have been stateless and who migrated to Australia. Listening carefully to them, I think through the ways in which people remember their experiences of statelessness, their migration journeys, and their life in Australia. Drawing on the conception of “stateless memory” offered by Marianne Hirsch, I seek to bring to the surface the complicated narratives that people who have been stateless articulate, working to understand the bonds between people and place - that exceed the categories offered by the nation-state - that some of those who have been stateless create in and through their memories of their statelessness.

Bio

Dr Jordana Silverstein is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow based in the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at the University of Melbourne, and a Visiting Affiliate at the Menzies Australia Institute, Kings College London. A cultural historian, she’s the award-winning author of Cruel Care: A History of Children At Our Borders (2023).

Postgraduate masterclass

Ahead of her talk, Dr Silverstein will also be offering a postgraduate masterclass on oral history approaches to stateless and refugee histories (1–2.30pm in a nearby venue). For more details please contact Benjamin Thomas White: benjaminthomas.white@glasgow.ac.uk

First published: 1 June 2025

<< News