University of Amsterdam
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Cultivating resilience while navigating uncertainty is crucial for refugees. In the Netherlands, after receiving asylum and the right to work, refugees are often urged to adapt or evolve in hopes of successfully integrating into the Dutch economy. How do forced migrants who pursue work in creative enterprises help us rethink the relationship between forging new lives and uncertain futures? In this paper, resiliency of refugees is presented as a process of creative performance and experimentation. Efforts taken by refugees to explore, or ‘self-potentialize’, new future creative pathways suggest that resilience is overly simplified when defined as a pursuit of resistance to integrate and conform into established creative industries. The stories of two refugees living in Amsterdam showcase how resiliency is future-oriented, processual (Pink & Seale 2017), and connected to the preservation of one’s ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai 2013). ‘Future-making’ is embedded into their creative pursuits and weaved into their ongoing journeys of personal and professional development. Ethnographic inquiry into the perspective of refugees pursuing work in the creative economy sheds light on the complexities and nuances of rehearsing alternative imagined futures. Keywords: imagined futures; uncertainty; refugees; creative performance; aspiration.
Article citation: 2022 EPIC Proceedings pp 101–116, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic
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INTRODUCTION
In 2022, the future of refugees has once again become an urgent topic of global concern. Ongoing danger due to either war, violence, or risk of persecution threatens the lives of millions forcing them to seek shelter and safety across international borders. The Russian invasion of Ukraine led to 2.5 million residents fleeing the country to neighbouring European states and other parts of the world within a span of two weeks. The situation in Ukraine was described as “the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II” (@FilippoGrandi, UN Refugee Agency Commissioner, Twitter, March 16, 2022), heightening the significance and visibility of forcibly displaced people around the world. The plight of (non-Ukrainian) refugees’ migratory experiences has been a longstanding topic of academic research, while often positioning these displaced populations as the subject of case studies regarding severe mental health concerns, medicalized trauma, economic development, and the reverberations of crisis. Yet, in a conceivably ‘post-covid-19 pandemic’ world, where corporations, organizations, and governments worldwide are aiming to relieve strategic indecision and illuminate paths forward, ethnographic inquiry into forced migrants’ perspectives sheds light on the complexities and nuances of imagining unknown futures. Those living with deep uncertainty in their daily lives, such as refugees, offer a route for ethnographers to view resilience as a mindset to anticipate and speculate the future.
In the Netherlands, asylum-seekers (those awaiting legal-status decisions) often endure an unpredictable amount of time to receive their residence permits and complete the asylum-seeking procedure. For many readers, this trying procedure alone might qualify asylum-seekers as suitable candidates to teach on the topic of resilience based on their ostensible ability to sustain and recover from unprecedented change (Balfour et al 2015). Even after receiving asylum and the right to work (referred to as ‘refugees’ in the Netherlands once legal status is obtained), refugees are urged to adapt or evolve in hopes of successfully integrating into the Dutch economy; either by means of heavily marketing their previous experience or upgrading their skills. Those who intend to integrate into specific industries, like the creative industries, are often met with resistance, financial pressure, and a lack of encouragement from government services aimed at assisting employment seekers. Due to these circumstances, the vocational aspirations of refugees are often given minor consideration relative to their legal status, safety, and general social welfare. Vocational aspirations can, however, offer an entry point to examine where and how refugees realize and actualize their desires for previously unimaginable (or possibly unattainable) futures prior to their forced migration.
Across the community of practicing ethnographers and social scientists in industry, policy, and academia, there are multiple definitions of resilience. In one extreme, resilience has been defined as one’s ability to “experience severe trauma or neglect without a collapse of psychologic functioning or evidence of post traumatic stress disorder” (Alayarian 2007, 1). The word ‘without’ in this definition is interpreted to emphasize the ability to endure and withstand. Within the EPIC community, resilience has been referred to as “the ability to learn, adapt and evolve in the face of adversity or changing conditions”1 – interpreted as a form of recovery, or even resistance. Resilience is often projected onto refugees, as a category of people who have typically undergone trauma, violence, and intense disruption in their lives. This viewpoint can be extended further to describe how their vocational aspirations and employment pursuits are typically seen from an etic (or “outsider’s”) perspective. Meaning that, because refugees in the Netherlands face discrimination, racism, and xenophobia – which positions them in economically disadvantaged positions and detracts them from finding employment opportunities (Van Tubergen 2006) – they are also likely to being viewed as “resilient”. However, what if resilience was thought of as something beyond one’s endurance, recovery, or pursuit of resistance? In this paper, I present the resiliency of forced migrants as a process of performance and experimentation, rather than a method of resistance against pre-defined integration processes and societal conformity.
Based on original ethnographic research conducted alongside predominantly Western Asian/Middle Eastern displaced migrants, this paper showcases how resiliency is future-oriented, processual (Pink & Seale 2017), and connected to the strengthening of one’s ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai 2013). Two selected refugees’ stories highlight how creative performances are foundational forms of self-expression that allow experimentation with alternative futures that can be rehearsed and practiced. I argue that processual acts of ‘future-making’ are embedded into refugees’ creative pursuits and weaved into their ongoing personal and professional development oriented towards employment in the Dutch creative industries. This paper offers a partial answer to a larger ethnographic question, asking: how do forced migrants use creativity to intertwine self-expression and employment as a means of ‘future making’ while navigating uncertainty brought on by their precarious legal status in the Netherlands? In other words, how do forced migrants who pursue work in creative enterprises help us rethink the relationship between forging new lives and uncertain futures? Ethnographic inquiry into the economic integration journey of refugees pursuing work in the creative economy in the Netherlands offers a unique lens to understand the intricacies of navigating uncertainty and explore the process of imagining alternative and unknown futures once asylum has been granted.
Furthermore, this paper is a direct response to Panthea Lee’s EPIC2021 Conference keynote presentation which challenged how ethnographers engage with their respective corporate stakeholders to speculate and imagine the future. In her talk titled “Exiting the Road to Hell: How We Reclaim Agency & Responsibility in Our Fights for Justice”, Lee suggested that ethnographers must include the perspective of artists, makers, and creators into the folds of ethnographic research “to amplify the voices of those who possess moral clarity and courage” and “radical imaginations” to ensure that the next version of reality – our collective future – is indeed different than the version in which we are living in now (Lee 2021). While it is debatable who is in possession of “moral clarity”, Lee’s categorical description of who these creative practitioners are is clear and was intentionally considered during the design of this research. Through the analysis of creative practices, this paper argues that pockets of refugees in the Netherlands are indeed finding their “voice” to express their radical imaginations of the future (Hirschman 1970, in Appadurai 2013). An ethnography of forced migrants’ visions and plans for the future of creative work offers insight into how we might learn, adapt, and grow roots of resilience amidst periods of unpredictable change.
METHODS
The contents of this paper are based on original ethnographic data collected between January and April 2022 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This research was conducted in partnership with Makers Unite, a Dutch social enterprise that formerly ran the Makers Unite Creative Lab (MUCL), a six-week professional development course aimed at self-identifying “creative newcomers”. “Newcomers” is intended to be an all-encompassing term used in the Netherlands to capture migrants such as asylum-seekers, refugees, expatriates, or immigrants. By being self-identifying “creatives”, research participants either obtained previous work experience in a creative industry prior to seeking asylum in the Netherlands, were developing a portfolio in a desirable creative field, and/or demonstrated aspirations to work in the Dutch creative industries. Interlocutors were primarily past MUCL participants, or “alumni”, whom I contacted directly to receive informed consent for their research participation with the assistance of Makers Unite staff. I met many interlocutors online for semi-structured Zoom interviews, which, for some, eventually turned into recurring, unstructured, and casual in-person meetings.
I would connect with my interlocutors primarily via WhatsApp or Instagram before meeting them in-person, again either at their home or accommodation. My analysis heavily explores the discussion and observations made during these in-person meetings; however, Instagram allowed me to keep casual weekly tabs on the whereabouts of my interlocutors and respond to their Instagram stories in real time to get to know them outside of a formal interview setting. Online social media served as an appealing platform to connect with interlocutors because I could witness their daily lives, observe creative practices exhibited online, and access otherwise unobtainable visual content.
In total, I interviewed sixteen research participants and engaged with several more MUCL participants in a casual nature through the Makers Unite Mighty Networks online platform, in-person community events, or during my participant-observation of the 20th iteration of the MUCL program – all of whom informed my findings. The two individual’s stories featured in this paper have been selected for their ethnographic and contextual richness and similarities in showcasing creative performance as a method of processual future-making. The themes presented in this paper are reflected in other examples emerging from this body of research, which are only unable to be included here due to length.
THE CAPACITY TO ASPIRE AND ‘ROOTS’ OF RESILIENCE
Conversations related to envisioning and conceptualizing ‘the future’ tend to lead into dialogues around hopes and aspirations. Renowned anthropologist Arjun Appadurai introduced the idea of a ‘capacity to aspire’ as a navigational, social, and collective capacity that captures the ability to engage with individual wishes and wants (Appadurai 2004; 2013, 188). By arguing that there is a need to examine how the poor or other marginalized groups seek to express their aspirations, Appadurai calls for the further development of an anthropology of the future (Appadurai 2013). In a former EPIC paper inspired by Appadurai’s writing, Mohanty and Saksena argued that the ‘capacity to aspire’ and ‘future-making’ are both culturally dependent and that to investigate and design for possible futures, ethnographers and designers must foreground emic perspectives in hopes of drawing attention to the ‘cultural map of aspirations’ of their research participants (Appadurai 2004, 59-84, cited in Mohanty & Saksena 2021). This paper continues to build upon Appadurai’s ‘capacity to aspire’ but centres his application of Hirschman’s theory of “voice” (1970), which calls for greater opportunities for the poor – along with other marginalized groups – to debate, contest, and oppose as a method of democratic participation in the design of new social systems in established society (Appadurai 2013). This opens a discussion ripe for further commentary on how the ‘capacity to aspire’ is practically observed (and strengthened) among a vulnerable population to access dialogues entrenched in various conceptualizations of the future. As ethnographers, how do we listen to the “voice” of historically marginalized groups to understand not just the aspects where change is sought, but areas where (underrepresented) internalized desires can take root to flourish and grow? In this research context, Hirschman’s concept of “voice” is operationalized and observed among research participants as vocalizations via oral communication, body language, and written texts (Hirschman 1970, in Appadurai 2013).
Over the past decade, creativity and art-based practices have been linked to the migratory experiences of refugees to foreground themes of political status, recognition, and belonging (see Rotas 2004; Hajdukowsk-Ahmed 2012; McRobbie 2016; Damery & Mescoli 2019). In hopes of building off of this literature further, I present a case that refugees in the Netherlands use opportunities of creative expression to build individual and collective resilience through theatrical performance and art exhibition. Refugees are observed to exercise their ‘capacity to aspire’ in the Netherlands by utilizing both new and familiar forms of creative self-expression as a means of experimenting – or rather playing – with imagined alternative future scenarios and their own vocational identities. By engaging with live performance in local drama troupes and theatre companies, these refugees involved:
Seek to strengthen their voices as a cultural capacity, [where] they will need to find those levers of metaphor, rhetoric, organization, and public performance that will work best in their cultural worlds. And when they do…they change the terms of recognition, indeed the cultural framework itself. (Appadurai 2013, 187)
As Appadurai explains, the ‘capacity to aspire’ has much to do with finding a localized method to negotiate the ‘terms of recognition’ that are applied to their social status. Refugees in the Dutch context demonstrate a willingness to engage with performance that will grab the attention of public audiences to debate and contest their (lower) status as perceived unwanted migrants seeking legal permits to permanently reside within the Netherlands.
By approaching this research from a bottom-up perspective of refugees, I intentionally reframe and centre uncertainty as a departure point to imagine and intervene with other possible futures. This is inspired by the work of Akama, Pink and Sumartojo (2018) who explore uncertainty as a process of disruption that enables new foundational knowledge to be gleaned from future-making possibilities. Therefore, uncertainty is not seen as a by-product or symptom of dealing with precarious circumstances. Instead, it is repositioned as a starting point to accept and normalize the very fact that immediate expectations for near and distant futures and anticipatory events are and will proceed to be subject to change.
If aspirations involve a change of state, linking resilience to change challenges its connection to a pursuit of resistance. I borrow Pink and Seale’s (2017) description of resilience, originally applied to the analysis of the Slow City movement in Australia. According to Pink and Seale, “we can understand being resilient as part of a process of weaving one’s way through the world, and thus as pertaining to alternative ways of living that are adaptive and relational rather than resistant to others” (2017, 191). In this manner, resilience is shown to be a future-oriented mindset, adopted in and for scenarios where the objective is to generate change. Thus, I argue that refugees engaging with creative practices are ‘growing roots’ as a form of resilience in their new environment. Resiliency is viewed not as resistance towards a confronting barrier, but as a form of exploration to grow “roots” (Pink & Seale 2017) and continue processes, or act on desires, that are already in existence. This method of resiliency affirms the belief that creative pursuits and aspirations need not end in the face of being forcibly relocated. Rather, like a plant being re-potted into new soil, refugees’ creative practices can take hold in new environment, a new country, and delve into new digressions linked to the future.
FINDING ONE’S VOICE
Next, I present two ethnographic examples of refugees living in Amsterdam involved in creative performance engagements. These examples are drawn from a group of refugees loosely connected to each other by association with Makers Unite, and their past participation in the Makers Unite Creative Lab. Both refugees were involved with two distinct creative production companies in Amsterdam. Note that names have been changed to protect the privacy and safety of the research participants.
Rehearsing alternative futures: Alek
I met Alek at the closing “Pitch Night” event of MUCL 18 in October 2021 when participants are recognized as graduates and welcomed into the MUCL alumni community. As we sat down during the program intermission to eat and chat, Alek told me that he dropped out of the program because he was too busy volunteering and rehearsing for the play that he was in. After moving from Russia and relocating a couple of times, Alek came to the Netherlands in 2019 to live safely with his boyfriend in a country where they could easily marry. He had worked as a fashion designer in Russia, then a fashion design teacher in China and the Philippines, and now Alek found himself working in an Italian home furnishing retail show room as the store manager. Albeit a change from his well-established professional experience in the fashion world, Alek was happy to have a stable and steady job as he dabbled with new experiences while setting up his life in Amsterdam.
Between January and March 2022, I met Alek on and off at the store where we would share a coffee and sit among the stylish home décor as if it were a proper living room to lounge. Alek and I easily discussed the reasons for wanting to get out of the fashion industry: him citing poor mental health, environmental degradation, and sustainability as driving factors. Above all, he maintained an attitude of wanting to try everything – particularly new hobbies that might lead to a career change. He joined a theatre group specifically seeking refugees to be part of the cast ensemble. Alek was one of the many refugees cast in the ensemble of Wat We Doen’s performance of “Hoe Ik Talent Voor Het Leven”, a Dutch stage play based on the eponymous novel by Iraqi author Rodaan Al Galidi. The play tells the story of an asylum-seeker who lived for nine years in a Dutch asylum-seeking camp (in Dutch known as an “AZC”). Alek joined the cast in fall 2021 when the theatre production was resuming after months on pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. He admitted that working at the store was enough for now, but the theatre production had “injected him” and now he was addicted. He adored it all: the exposure, the spotlight, the feeling of freedom on stage. Even though he was an unnamed character up until the very end of the play. Even though he was a member of the ensemble cast that mostly operated as a singular fluid body. On stage, he transformed into a different version of himself.
Figure 1. Stage of Wat We Doen’s performance of “Hoe Ik Talent Voor Het Leven” at Stadsschouwburg Utrecht (Municipal Theatre Utrecht) on 18 March 2022. Photograph by author.
I attended the play in mid-March with a friend to witness Alek perform live. What became clear to me during the production was the way that the performance simultaneously explored and exploited the emotions in the original timespace of living in an AZC on stage to access visions of a redesigned asylum-seeking process. The play’s plot confronts the audience with the presumed realities of the dehumanizing hardships and challenges that asylum-seekers face in the Netherlands. Characters legal residence papers are denied, a child born in the AZC celebrates multiple birthdays to signal the passage of time, racist and xenophobic remarks are made by fictitious Dutch government workers. Although the performance was by no means improvised and the actors were following a pre-destined script, the nature of each performance was that no two nights were ever the same. During a meeting, Alek described the experience being particularly emotional due to the nature of rehearsing, and therefore reliving, parts of his trauma:
Of course, our emotions is [sic] important. What we’re doing on stage. The concentration – it’s everything. And you – you’re reliving it together, again, and again. This is also… Because before you don’t understand how the actor can cry, again and again, on the same thing. But it’s possible… Every time it’s different. Because it very depends on the group. (Field notes)
The act of rehearsing and performing multiple times suggested that Alek, along with his fellow castmates, were in a mode of constant tweaking and practice with the intention of performing in a certain way in the future. I argue that rehearsal divides this creative engagement into a series of steps, where each practice is part of the journey, or process, of preparing for the play. Being part of the play is processual. One cannot jump to the final show without rehearsing the movements, actions, hand gestures, dance sequences, even if certain segments will be improvised in the moment.
Despite the intense emotion delivered with each performance, in our chats together, Alek described how enjoyable this experience was for him. He embodied, really taking to heart, the uncertainty that comes with his migratory experience to empower himself to continue discovering what he wants to do in terms of work and where he wants to spend his energy. While critics might claim that it was chance that Alek found a production troupe looking for refugees to provide a genuine and authentic experience to the play’s topical subject matter, Alek persisted that this valuable opportunity opened up a new avenue for him to explore a vocational aspiration as an actor. Alek affirmed that this performance group allowed him to try a new creative practice and strengthen his bonds with the refugee community in the Netherlands. He was inspired by being on stage and the attention he has received from performing. He was even featured in the media as a ‘poster boy’ for what the refugee experience “could” be like.
Alek posted this photograph on his Instagram page after one of his performances. Part of his caption reads “dreams come true and we create them with our own hands, our efforts, our tears and sweat” (Instagram post, February 1, 2022). Alek acknowledges his own involvement in ‘future-making’: temporarily practicing what it would be like to explore a career as an actor, and the ideal imaginaries of a redesigned asylum-seeking process. To quote Morten Nielsen, for Alek his involvement with the play illustrated the ways that “the future exists as an unstable transformative potentiality” (Nielsen 2014: 17). The caption also emphasizes Alek’s own agency and self-accountability he sees in this transformative process of being involved in the play. By saying “we have the power to change our lives, but it costs us everyday efforts, everyday overcomings and hardwork”, Alek acknowledges that he is a future-maker, actively participating in the rehearsals of his future career.
Figure 2. Screenshot of Alek’s Instagram post shows him standing on stage during the production run of “Hoe Ik Talent Voor Het Leven”. Photo taken by unknown. Caption written by Alek. Both used with permission.
Writing unknowable futures: Kaif
Originally from Kuwait, Kaif is a member of the LGBTQIA2+ community. We met at a community-organized clothes swap hosted at the Makers Unite studio. Within a matter of minutes of talking, Kaif sprung to show me his Instagram account where he published some of his poems and written musings. For him, creative expression takes the form of writing, whether it is through poetry and monologues; performing stories that explore his repressed sexuality and dabble with alternative realities and unknowable futures. It allows him to express his thoughts and experiment with new ideas that he would have had to hide away out of fear of persecution as a gay man, prior to seeking asylum. After several meetings and walks together, he shared with me a story he was working on from the perspective of a straight married woman who wants to test her ego by asking her husband to sleep with a sex worker. His writing allows him to share and tell stories of his own sexuality that he has never expressed publicly before and imagine possible futures in this perceived sexually liberated country of the Netherlands.
Kaif often came back to philosophical and stereotypically “heavy” topics in our lengthy walks around Amsterdam’s Centrum area. I often felt like he was hungry to explore topics that perhaps he did not have a chance to engage with in his youth while still residing in Kuwait. Once on a walk, he explained his writing process and inspiration for his most recent monologue about the Dam Square monument performed during a collaboration with a local production company that habitually engages with international performers. Kaif explains:
And then, the last part was the monologue that I read about ‘we’ in the future. Because then, that part I am talking about Amsterdam drowning, but because of climate change. Like, I imagine that I am the only one swimming there. And I can just pull the tip of it, and everyone is just floating around me…At the end of the monologue, I saw that I, I am angry or I’m mad about the people who used to look at the Dam Square from below. Which is now, like me and you, [we] are looking at the Dam Square from below because the drownings have not happened yet. So, in this sense, I was talking about the future. (Field notes)
Figure 3. Panorama of Amsterdam’s Dam Square and pedestrians walking by on the street. The Dam Monument is seen in the background. Photo taken by author.
Kaif prepared and performed a monologue about what the famous Dam Square monument might look like in 300 years for a one-weekend play. His vision of the future is grim as he wrestled with the effects climate change, rising sea levels, population growth, and lack of human intervention might cause.
Kaif rehearsed his monologue over and over multiple times. Despite the repetitive nature of rehearsals – similar to Alek’s stage play – no two takes were the same and Kaif was re-energized to express the same words with new conviction and emotion. Each time, he resuscitated a call for help, sharing his desperation that climate change will flood our cities and leave our ancestors wondering what happened. Unlike Alek’s performance though, Kaif depicted a future much further ahead in time, a century when he most certainly would not be alive to witness. In this way, his monologue explored how “people engage in potential futures that they know will never follow the present, and through the recognition of impossibility the future invades the present and itself is liberated. That which will never be is already there” (Bryant & Knight 2019, 129). For Kaif, the “that which will never be” refers to his own presence at the Dam Square’s monument in the 200 to 300 years when he imagines this flooding to occur and when his monologue is set. He is projecting out into the future hundreds of years from now to say that if we (the collective ‘we’) do not act against the imminent climate crisis, we can likely expect sea levels to rise and the most recognizable pieces of our city will be distorted, submerged, and effectively gone. Therefore, Kaif writes about an unknowable future. He says:
But my dream then is now, as though it’s happening now. So, I just wanted that chance to, like, look at…try to change, to try and avoid what would have happened. But in this monologue, I’m already drowned and I’m already touching the tip of the monument. (Field notes)
This is yet another example of how creative newcomers like Kaif find ways to write and rehearse their own creative practices as a method to engage with unknown futures. The poetic rhetoric of Kaif’s monologue is bleak and somber, especially since he intended for it to be a warning for audiences listening today. However, a warning can be interpreted as a statement of something that may – hopefully – never be a reality. Bryant and Knight explore this idea that, when practitioners think about the future, there is an admission that a potentiality may also never come to pass (2019, 108). Of course, Kaif’s monologue is a piece of fiction, a poetic narrative that paints the Dam Square completely submerged underwater. However, it allows him to delve into a future, seeing it as a potential experience he does not wish to see come to fruition.