"Migration" - a lecture by Dr Rowan Bailey, Wednesday, 16 November 2016.

In thinking further and revisiting my notes regarding "Migration".

Within the context of "Migration," there are incredibly complex challenges of movement in time and space, with equally difficult challenges to infrastructure, population, food, culture, employment and welfare. Migration generates "Wicked Problems".

What seems to be changing currently, though, which is different from previous movements from history, is the expansion of global exchange. As a result, some 3.1% of the world's population are now considered as "migrants".

There are several "push and pull" factors.

• Lack of jobs/poverty
• civil strife, war and persecution
• refugees and "populations of concern" that is, displaced people who are now stateless and it is estimated to be somewhere around 35.4 million people worldwide with approximately 10.4 million of these displaced and stateless persons in the category of being refugees.
• Environmental issues, natural desire disasters.
•  See www.globalisation101.org/migration-introduction/
• desertification, the results of global climate change, etc.
• Illegal people trafficking. This represents the third largest global criminal activity after drugs and arms trades.

For further reading see the work by Doreen Massey "A Global Sense of Place" (1991). Within this book, she investigates

• "what is a place"? 
• -  'Local' versus 'global', (Micro versus Macro); 
• history of place; 
• movement of capital;, etc, etc.

Within this book, Massey also recognises a phenomenon known as "Space-Time Compression".

• What this means is that places don't have unique singular identities, but multiple ones.
• Places do not become frozen in time.
• Places are in constant flux, with multiple interchanges and exchanges of a variety of cultures, generations and new identities.

For further research see the three-part BBC documentary "Exodus" (2016). A documentary raising awareness of real life struggles of migration.
As creative practitioners, the real-world stories have to be told! It is our job as a social recorder and commentator to articulate them, therefore.

For further research look at the work of Sophie Henderson, director of the migration museum project in London.

"Call me by my name: stories from Calais and beyond."

Using graphic practice to explore and articulate the situation of migration and physical movement of displaced people. A new "Migrations Exhibition" is also happening in a small area of Huddersfield Gallery as part of the Migration Museum project. Part of this Migrations exhibition has been curated by Jessica Hemmings (See her book entitled cultural threads: transnational textiles today)

A worthwhile visit to Huddersfield Gallery proved very insightful, and I made the following observations;