Beskrivning
Just when you think you’ve reached home, safety and justice you understand that these are not destinations to be reached, but directions to keep reaching out for. I trace how people mobilize and change faith ideals and identification in the navigation for belonging, connection and more just politics. In this talk, I will present and reflect on my research on geographic and conceptual journeys of asylum. I focus on the shifts in the sensibility to politics and the sense of belonging in the lives of queer exiles/asylum seekers, people whose main project has been to settle in Finland/Europe. Europe/Finland here means a place of safety and a promise/project of freedom and social and personal prosperity. Queer means a realm of struggle with norms of belonging, recognition, and admission. Like any journey to a destination, the destination is never found but created in the long encounter. The journey and the destination are always queer, they go sideways, deviant to plans and expectations, because they involve the inevitable encounter with the violent traditions, norms, and terms of arrival and fitting in. Promises and expectation of safety, settlement and home making are not fulfilled by merely crossing state borders. Instead, these promises and the endless pursuit of these make Europe, or any place, worthy of being designated as a destination: a place of ongoing struggle with bordering and injustices. The personal and collective journeys I will speak about in this talk are part of this struggle.| Period | 14 okt. 2024 |
|---|---|
| Vid | Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki |
| Omfattning | Nationell |