New Thinking: Refugees

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What are the best shelters? the right language? how does our view of hosting families change if we look at refugee self help schemes and experiences in camps in Palestine and Syria ? A trio of researchers share their findings with John Gallagher as we mark Refugee Week 2020.

Dr Rebecca Tipton, from the University of Manchester, works on Translating Asylum - an ongoing research project looking at language and communication challenges common to individuals displaced by conflict both past and present https://translatingasylum.com/about/

Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, from University College London, leads Refugee Hosts - an ongoing research project examining local community experiences of and responses to displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. https://refugeehosts.org/

Associate Professor, Tom Scott-Smith, at the University of Oxford, is a 2020 New Generation Thinker and works on Architectures of Displacement - an ongoing research project exploring temporary accommodation for refugees in the Middle East and Europe. It is a partnership between the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University and the Pitt Rivers Museum. https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/research/architectures-of-displacement

All of their work features in the Imperial War Museum London exhibition Refugees: Forced to Flee. You can find more on the website https://www.iwm.org.uk/ and on the website of the AHRC, part of UKRI, which helped put this programme together as part of a series focusing on the latest academic research from UK univerisites https://ahrc.ukri.org/ You can find all the conversations available as Ne w Thinking podcasts on the BBC Arts & Ideas feed and as a playlist here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Karl Bos

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm John Gallowher.
0:39.8	I'm a historian, and during lockdown,
0:42.5	I've been reading books and trying to hear the refugee voices of centuries ago.
0:47.6	Have a listen to this.
0:50.1	Well, how is it, countrymen?
0:53.0	Thank God we are at last delivered from our enemies, and safely
0:56.5	arrived here in England. And thanks be to God, who has governed the heart of the Queen of England,
1:02.5	to receive us so willingly. Let us therefore acknowledge it, and be very thankful to God
1:08.4	and Her Majesty for it. And let us likewise be industrious in whatever
1:12.7	place or station God and Her Majesty will be pleased to put us, and to behave ourselves quietly
1:19.4	and submissively to all people, and remember that we are strangers, and hear upon charity.
1:28.4	These words come from a curious text dating to the year 1710.
1:33.2	It's a phrase book designed to teach English to German-speaking refugees, many of whom
1:38.3	were arriving in England at the time.
1:40.4	It's a fascinating book because, among its simple language lessons, it speaks to worries about
1:45.7	how these new arrivals will be received and perceived, about whether and how they might make
1:51.0	a new home far from their own lands. These questions shaped refugee lives in the 18th century,
1:58.0	and they find an echo in the experiences of many refugees today.
2:03.2	As we mark Refugee Week 2020 and an Imperial War Museum project called Refugees Forced
	...

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