A TALE OF “HUMAN POSSIBILITIES”: RE-IMAGINING MIGRATION, HOME, AND HOUSING

Growing conflict, climate change, and increasing authoritarianism are forcing a seismic change in global forced migration. Home is no longer home; home is elsewhere; for many of us, home is a promise and a dream. Home, what are you, and where are you? As migration is tremendously politicized and vilified, so it is with housing — who can afford to buy, to rent, to dream a house today? Are houses for people, or for private equity? Often linked to the word ‘crisis’, the temporalities of migration and housing are not brief but permanent, and they are here to stay for the future that is about to come.

New eras need new narratives. “We think, sometimes,/ That they [refugees] come from countless directions/ From dim-coloured borders/ From the raging fire that devoured them in the beginning/ From absence”, poet Yousif M. Qasmiyeh whispers in Writing the Camp (2021). In Sanctuary (2024), Marina Warner ponders: “Can a memory of literature and the process of making it over and over again build a country of words? Can literature – especially imaginative works of myth, legend, fairy tale and fable – map geographies of home on to surroundings that are not home? Can a story provide shelter?” Shelter is precisely what the People’s Museum fiercely advocates for in Somers Town, one of the few working-class communities in Central London, a symbol of resistance to gentrification, and of solidarity – “[s]olidarity requires us to get over ourselves. Outside ourselves”, writes Luke Williams and Natasha Soobramanien in Diego Garcia (2022).

We are calling for participants to take part in a one-day symposium led by the voices whose work you have just read – and others (journalist Selma Dabbagh, poet Juana Adcock, writer Rabina Khan, and others). This is not a traditional academic conference, but a collaborative exercise to rethink migration, home and housing today. No writing experience is needed; everyone interested in re-imagining these topics is welcome. We are particularly interested in hearing from people outside the walls of academia – as Valeria Wagner has noted writing about decolonial theory – "there is a risk not only of speaking in a jargon understandable only to those who use it — and incomprehensible to those being spoken about — but also of appropriating already existing concepts and thereby repeating the very gesture of power over other forms of knowledge to which the critique itself was directed."

Combining interactive talks, workshops, and active discussions, our hope is that we will draft a collaborative manifesto to be published after the event, pitching leading magazines in the UK.

We would love to hear from you before the event.

If you can, please send us a short paragraph outlining why you would like to attend, along with an image of an object or photograph that means home to you, to [email protected].

Participants will be asked to bring a paragraph or two that outlines their understanding of migration, home, and housing in 2026, and their hopes for their future to the event. Let’s re-imagine together.

The event is co-organized by Irene Praga and Lily Taylor, School of Creative Arts, Culture, and Communication, Birkbeck College, in association with the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.

The event is free to attend – no money is required to think, only the will. Catering will be provided.

Confirmed speakers/workshop leaders: writers Marina Warner, Luke Williams, Selma Dabbagh, and Rabina Khan; poets Yousif M. Qasiyeh and Juana Adcock; Diana Foster from the People’s Museum; scholars and activists Valeria Wagner and Esther Leslie.

Date: Friday 12 June , 9am-5pm (provisional timing).

Location: Birkbeck, room information to follow.

If you have any questions at all, please send us an email at [email protected].

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Collective Name in Progress