In-between Belongings: Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the Lives of Syrian Refugees in Scotland
In collaboration with: Scottish Refugee Council, Edinburgh Napier University, Al-Maktoum College, Abertay University Dundee – 3rd October 2023
This event explores the co-existence of multiple and radically distinctive, yet rhythmic worlds, that Syrian refugees resettling in the Scotland found themselves within during the pandemic. The event is based on the findings of a research project that applies rhythm analysis as a critical phenomenological perspective within which ‘being a refugee’, during the pandemic is not just a legal status or a social condition, but a ‘mode of being in the world’ that is radically different from any of their past lived experiences.
The participants were asked (using iPods – supplied) to visually capture or audially reflect on their day-to-day, spatial and non-spatial, encounters to show the realities and complexities of everyday life. The data presents a state of being fractured by the broken rhythms of everyday life during the pandemic. The realities of lockdown and the social experiences post Covid have resulted in a continuous cycle of formation, deformation, reformation of everyday rhythms in lives of Syrian Refugees in Scotland. There is an overarching theme of ‘emptiness’, where the time and space has merged into a nostalgia of what once was and paralysis of what now is – a dire longing for belonging and notions of what is home?
Programme Structure:
| Welcome and Lunch | 12:30 – 14:00 | |
| Opening Ceremony | Dr A G Abubaker
Vice-Chancellor of Al-Maktoum College Dr Patrick Harte Head of PG – Edinburgh Napier University |
1400 – 14:30 |
| Overview of Research Project and Findings | Prof Alex Law, Dr Fawad Khaleel, Dr Alija Avdukic, Dr Ahmed Abdullah, Michelle Young | 14:30 – 15:30 |
| Keynote Speech | Sabir Zazai
Chief Executive of Scottish Refugee Council |
15:30 – 16:15 |
| Visual Art Exhibition and Coffee Break | 16:15 – 17:00 | |
To attend, please register via Eventbrite