CONNECTING SOLIDARITIES – An exploration of refugee-led solidarity through community archiving, social mapping and public exhibition

Challenge and context: Following the summer 2024 UK riots, the reframing of media and policy debates on refugees is an urgent issue. Contrary to political rhetoric that depicts refugees mainly as sources of societal divisions and a drain of resources (Goodfellow, 2020; Montgomery et al. 2023), the UK presents many cases where refugee community organisations (Zetter et al. 2005) established to support one group have become catalysts of strengthened community cohesion with wider societal benefits. Aims and Objectives: This community-based project aims to explore how one such organisation, the Derby Bosnia-Herzegovina Community Association (DBHCA), has been working to maintain its community identity whilst acting as a node for wider refugee solidarity networks. Marking DBHCA’s 30th anniversary, the project will investigate its history and practises using a combination of community archival research, social mapping and participatory creative methods, feeding into a public exhibition and engagement programme. This will develop innovative approaches to community research and public engagement with the potential to be applied to other communities across the UK and beyond. The long-term aims are to establish new networks of practice and to inform a research agenda exploring networks of solidarity to shift the narratives on the role of refugees and their community organisations. The project’s objectives are to: Collaboratively develop a narrative history and community mapping of DBHCA, exploring continuity and change, specifically and originally through the study of the generational differences of individual and community refugee experiences of displacement and settlement in the UK following the 1990s Bosnian war. 2. Drawing on DBHCA’s example, provide insights on the role of refugee organisations in local networks of refugee solidarity (including community, charity, NGO and local government partners), and share these insights with academic networks, practitioners and policymakers. Derby’s New Arrivals Alliance and charity Remembering Srebrenica will benefit from new knowledge regarding the drivers of and approaches to refugee solidarity activism, its wider cross-generational community impacts and its diverse translation locally, nationally and internationally. 3. Examine the potential of combining new, co-produced community mapping and public exhibition models to explore, tell and visualise the history of refugee associations, reaching diverse audiences through innovative public engagement. Applications and benefits: Our study will offer an original contribution to refugee studies, revisiting the question of Bosnian settlement in the UK thirty years since the 1990s conflict, drawing on DBHCA’s case to illuminate the cross-generational lived experiences of refugee settlement: from first generation adults and children who fled war, to second generation young people, socially integrated in Britain, well-educated and engaged in DBHCA’s work. These different generational perspectives have the potential to powerfully challenge negative refugee stereotypes of welfare dependence and social fragmentation. Our narrative-making and exhibition activities will support DBHCA to understand and communicate its history and evidence the social and geographical reach of its current community support. This will provide DBHCA and other refugee community practitioners/ policymakers with lived experience examples of how the successful integration of one refugee group can increase social cohesion and reduce the isolation felt by new arrivals.