Debates on forced migration often assume that one is either a refugee or a citizen. To put it more starkly, refugees supposedly want nothing more than to relinquish their refugeeness and become instead, citizen. Accordingly, photographic representations of the journey of transformation and self-reinvention, in emphasizing a trajectory from refugee to citizen, take for granted the power of the nation-state in defining citizenship. However, migrant justice activists, Indigenous activist-scholars, and theorists whose protest against and refusal of 'border imperialism' are dislodging the concept of citizenship from the exclusive purview of the nation-state. More than a status dispensed by the state, citizenship is enacted.
This presentation considers the visual forms that such an action might take, especially in creating the possibility of 'refugee citizenship,' a concept that critic Donald C. Goellnicht invokes to denote alternative forms of citizenship that challenge nation-state frameworks. Through a focus on diverse forms of portraiture, I consider the ways that photographic practices constitute acts of refugee citizenship.
Photographic Acts of Refugee Citizenship with Thy Phu
Friday, 6 December 2024, 1:00 PM 2:00 PM (EST); 1800-1900 (UTC)
See: https://www.byforcollective.com/events/thy-phu
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