Pockets of Togetherness – Tales of resistance Zine

‘Pockets of togetherness – Tales of resistance‘ is a short publication in forms of a multi-media zine with stories about resisting the UK Hostile Environment immigration policies through togetherness and care. It comprises a selection of texts and photographs from a co-creative workshop weekend in 2023 at the Monkton Wyld Court Farm in Dorset. I coordinated this 3-day residential with a group of migrant women activists from London, with whom I have previously been working and campaigning.

‘Pockets of togetherness’ is part of my on-going PhD research at Birkbeck University, London, funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council). My PhD explores the every-day survival and resistance practices of migrant women with ‘no recourse to public funds’ in the UK.

NO RECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS (NRPF) is an immigration policy of the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ applying to migrants with limited or no leave (permission to remain), that denies people access to any form of statutory support based on their immigration status, i.a. welfare, housing, or child benefits. Through its intersectional effects it disproportionally pushes Black single mothers into destitution reproducing the disposability of Black women’s lives.

I situate NRPF as contemporary expression of the UK’s colonial enterprise, which as a form of ‘slow violence’ functions as a key mechanism contributing to the precarisation of racialised life in the UK.

Beyond damage – desire, imagination and creative practices.

Researching the severe suffering caused by the UK’s immigration system, there seems to be an urgency to uncover or tell the stories of this invisiblised injustice. However, there is an inherent risk of reproducing that same violence in this project of uncovering or evidencing it, which Eve Tuck (2009) conceptualises in her critique of what she calls ‘damage-focused research’. In short, research that focuses on and retells the oppression and damage done to certain communities and in doing so continuously reinforces their brokenness. Instead, she introduces a ‘desire-based framework’:

“Desire, yes, accounts for the loss and despair, but also the hope, the visions, the wisdom of lived lives and communities. Desire is involved with the not yet and, at times, the not any-more. [...] Desire is about longing, about a present that is enriched by both the past and the future. It is integral to our humanness.” 
Eve Tuck, 2009. Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities (p.417)

This is particularly pertinent in the context of border(ing) violence where migrants and refugees are constantly forced to re-tell their stories to social workers, Home Office employees and so on in order to prove their deservedness and ultimately humanness. In her article ‘Performing im/mobility: Going beyond the testimony trap’, Alexandra D’Onofrio (2019) argues how creative methodologies are becoming an emerging tool within migration studies that can help avoid such a narrow focus on the linear retelling of (past) violent migration journeys – what she calls the ‘testimony trap’.

The imaginative and collaborative aspects of creative practice can be a way to reflect on “the imaginary realm of migration” (D’Onofrio, ibid) within contexts of im/mobility in more fluid ways. Creativity is something that can help communities to engage with the “the not yet and, at times, the not any-more” (Tuck, ibid) and not only imagine but actually practice and start make new worlds and ways of being. As Augusto Boal famously said about the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed‘, theatre can be a ‘rehearsal for the revolution’, as can music and other art forms. Through the use of collaborative and creative practices in my work,I want to experiment how activist research can expand our fieldwork encounters beyond data collection towards creating a space for imagination, dialogue, collective learning, care and community and solidarity building.

Research as a creative, caring, and communal intervention, in which together we rehearse, we practice our voices and train our muscles of imagination to start to think about what a world without borders could look or sound like.

Material and embodied practices for collaborative knowledge production

Throughout the 3-day research residential, we engaged in a series of embodied and material practices. One focus of our activities was the engagement with the natural environment and material around us. We went on walks and collected objects to create small installations which then, in turn, triggered new conversations in the group. Everyone crafted a small box with some objects, notes, and artwork which became a form of collective “counter-archives of resistance” (see Sergio Calderón Harker’s 2024 article on this). The group later called these boxes ‘pockets of togetherness’ which became the name of our zine.

Credits

Storytellers in the zine: Agnes, Amanda, Fahmida, Faiza, Fatima, Florence, Mary, Mavis, Olukemi, Rozaline
Child care & support team during the residential weekend: Andy, Hamid, Hayat, Lisa, Sasha, Tamara
Partner Organisations: South London Refugee Association and Monkton Wyld Court
Funding: Open Society University Network Engaged Research Fund
Photos of the boxes of togetherness: Judit Hölzle-Kuhn
Project coordination, publication edit & design, background texts of the zine: Rebekka Hölzle