Dis-placements: Spatial Stories of Migration II
My Session Status
The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and national identity. However, recent debates about immigration, diversity, multiculturalism and the visibility of cultural symbolisms raise controversial, often polarized public opinions. Policies of migration have accentuated divisive interpretations and legitimized isolation among multiple cultural communities, instead of promoting dialogue. This session seeks proposals that investigate spatial stories of dis-placements in order to broaden our understanding of migrant spaces and to inscribe cultural movements into the collective narratives of Canadian culture. We are interested in hearing narratives about places, peoples and practices that critically analyze discourses around migrations in relation to the Canadian built environment. Migrations are expressed in places: spaces of inhabitation, institutions of integration and education, architectures of surveillance, spaces of resistance, commercial enterprises, community centres and spaces of national/cultural representations. Migrant spaces can be read from the perspectives of peoples: communities, families, individuals, professionals, organizations, architects, planners, policy makers, residents, citizens, refugees, immigrants, or people with no legal status; and their practices: spatial appropriations, manifestations, solidarities, manipulations, exclusions, integrations, transfers, pedagogies or isolations.
How can we revise narratives of the Canadian built environment to include critical perspectives of migration? How are migrant places, peoples and practices integral to visibility (or lack thereof), accessibility (or lack thereof), separation, discrimination, or integration? How is hostility or hospitality embedded in spatial compositions? How is spatial agency inherent to migration landscapes? We welcome papers that address intersectionality through historical, theoretical and contemporary issues, lessons or challenges around race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, legal status, and disability. Submissions from scholars and independent researchers using interdisciplinary, ethnographic, feminist, participatory research methods, methods of vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes are encouraged.
Sub Sessions
Home is a deceptively simple term connecting a vast network of people, places, objects, and emotions. As people move from place to place, home manifests through inhabitations of built form. These spatial identities are records of movement which reinforce the importance of home as an architectural research site to learn about diverse diasporas in a rapidly globalizing world.This research explores a process for understanding diasporic spatial identity through how people remember, inha...
Displacement, describing a sense of uprootedness, is seemingly irreconcilable with the grounding quality of domestic space. However, the practice of housework and homemaking allows forcibly displaced people to reconstruct home elsewhere. While historical feminist movements in the West have advocated for a radical socialization of housework in an effort to value its labour and extend its visibility to the public realm, these views fail to address the importance of homemaking as private plac...
Food offers a means of examining spatial stories of migration. As a set of heritage activities, the preparation, storage, and consumption of food offer multisensorial and evocative ways of exploring cultural identity and a sense of belonging, particularly for members of diasporic communities. Immigrants and their descendants often have to modify traditional recipes and make do with different domestic technologies and spatial configurations. They become everyday designers, active agents in ...