Visualising War and Peace: Combating Reductive Refugee Narratives with Lina Fadel

Press/Media: Research

Description

This podcast episode is part of a mini series exploring forced displacement as one of the many legacies of conflict.  Alice interviews Dr Lina Fadel, an Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University. Lina discusses toxic representations of refugees and migrants in the media and politics and reflects on the different connotations that are associated with those two different terms ('refugee' and 'migrant'), and wider tendencies to categories some forced migrants as 'worthy' and others as not. She also gets us thinking about who controls knowledge production and storytelling about migrants (largely people with no lived experience of migration), and explains what she means by 'the tyranny of the single narrative' - i.e. reductive storytelling, that flattens all migration experiences into one simple, often negative account, that does not do justice to the diversity or complexity of different migrant journeys. 

Period15 Feb 2023

Media contributions

1

Media contributions

  • TitleVisualising War and Peace Combating Reductive Refugee Narratives with Lina Fadel
    Degree of recognitionInternational
    Media name/outletThe University of St Andrews' Visualising War and Peace Research Project
    Media typeWeb
    Duration/Length/Size58:30 mins
    Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
    Date15/02/23
    DescriptionThis episode is part of a mini series exploring forced displacement as one of the many legacies of conflict. Alice interviews Dr Lina Fadel, an Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University.During the episode, Lina shares her own story of forced migration from Syria to Scotland, and discusses some of the challenges that she has faced as she has made a new home in the UK. In particular, we reflect on the hard work that forced migrants have to do to establish a sense of belonging, and the ways in which people around them can undermine that hard work. We also discuss toxic representations of refugees and migrants in the media and politics. Lina reflects on the different connotations that are associated with those two different terms ('refugee' and 'migrant'), and wider tendencies to categories some forced migrants as 'worthy' and others as not. She also gets us thinking about who controls knowledge production and storytelling about migrants (largely people with no lived experience of migration), and explains what she means by 'the tyranny of the single narrative' - i.e. reductive storytelling, that flattens all migration experiences into one simple, often negative account, that does not do justice to the diversity or complexity of different migrant journeys.
    Producer/AuthorUniversity of St Andrews - Dr Alice Konig
    URLhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1717787/11911596-combating-reductive-refugee-narratives-with-lina-fadel
    PersonsLina Fadel