Book review: uncommon grounds: new media and critical practices in North Africa and the Middle East, edited by Anthony Downey

Uncommon Grounds is a stimulating exploration into art practices in North Africa and the Middle East, and also a thought-provoking look at the fluid relationship between art and society more generally, writes Arek Dakessian. Chapters cover media activism, social media and contemporary art, and critical analyses of aesthetics and politics in the digital age

Art, refugeedom and the aesthetic encounter

Refugeedom and its various politicisations, as a complex human experience of political alterity, poses unique challenges for the visual aesthetics of refugee subjecthoods and subjectivities. In contrast to media and humanitarian visualities, aesthetic engagement with what is contentiously referred to as ‘refugee art’ might have the potential to create more complex possibilities and open new subjective spaces by enabling a different epistemic access to the experiences of refugeedom's constituted subjects. We turn to Jacques Rancière's theoretical frame as we focus attention on the aesthetic encounter, or the affective and sensory experience of what an artwork does. Looking closely at six artworks focused on the recent Syrian ‘refugee crisis’, we ask: What might we perceive differently of forced displacement in the aesthetic encounter that we might not otherwise see in activist or politicised spaces, or in everyday visual representations of forced displacement? Whether by reinscribing real-world subject positions or transcending them, the aesthetic experience can open up a rift – even if momentary – in ordinary ways of seeing and perceiving refugeedom. In other words, the aesthetic experience expands our moral imagination by staging occasions for creating scenes of relationality with political alterity that do not exist or that have not been previously imagined

Theorizing refugeedom: Becoming young political subjects in Beirut

Arek Dakessian - ORCID 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Refugees can be formed as “subjects” as they navigate forced displacement in countries that are not their own. In particular, everyday life as the politicized Other, and as humanitarianism’s depoliticized beneficiary, can constitute them as political subjects. Understanding these produced subjects and subjectivities leads us to conceive of forced displacement – or “refugeedom” – as a human condition or experience of political (sub)alterity, within which inhere distinctive subjectivations and subjectivities. Drawing on fieldwork in Beirut, Lebanon, we use young Syrian and Iraqi refugees’ experiences with everyday racism, violent bullying and racialized discrimination as heuristic lenses with which to see displacement’s political subjects and subjectivities. We argue that the young refugees emerge as both political and moral subjects through core and defining struggles within – and against – these politicizing constraints. We interpret their struggles as ambivalently and dynamically situated within humanitarianism’s and racism’s subjections and subjectivities. Yet we also found that occasionally the young refugees could eclipse these produced subjectivities to claim repoliticized subjecthoods distinct from those of humanitarianism and outside displacement’s normal politics. We interpret these in Rancièrian terms as “political subjectivation.” Abstracting our findings, we offer a simple theoretical architecture of refugeedom’s subjectivations, subjects, and subjectivities as comprising humanitarianism’s rights-bearing or juridical subject; the vulnerable and resilient, innocent and suffering subject; and the Othered or racialized subject, formed through the exclusions of displacement’s politicized spaces. But we also conceive refugeedom as a space of values, and so the ground on which moral meaning and significance attach to agency and subjectivity.Fieldwork was funded by The British Academy (Academic Grant Number SG152525).https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09393-249pubpu

Art, refugeedom and the aesthetic encounter

Arek Dakessian - ORCID: 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Refugeedom and its various politicisations, as a complex human experience of political alterity, poses unique challenges for the visual aesthetics of refugee subjecthoods and subjectivities. In contrast to media and humanitarian visualities, aesthetic engagement with what is contentiously referred to as ‘refugee art’ might have the potential to create more complex possibilities and open new subjective spaces by enabling a different epistemic access to the experiences of refugeedom's constituted subjects. We turn to Jacques Rancière's theoretical frame as we focus attention on the aesthetic encounter, or the affective and sensory experience of what an artwork does. Looking closely at six artworks focused on the recent Syrian ‘refugee crisis’, we ask: What might we perceive differently of forced displacement in the aesthetic encounter that we might not otherwise see in activist or politicised spaces, or in everyday visual representations of forced displacement? Whether by reinscribing real-world subject positions or transcending them, the aesthetic experience can open up a rift – even if momentary – in ordinary ways of seeing and perceiving refugeedom. In other words, the aesthetic experience expands our moral imagination by staging occasions for creating scenes of relationality with political alterity that do not exist or that have not been previously imagined.https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2023.2290990aheadofprintaheadofprin

Exploring refugees' experience of accessing dental health services in host countries: a scoping review

From Frontiers via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2023-10-27, collection 2024, accepted 2024-02-29, epub 2024-03-12Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: The study team thanks Mr Scott McGregor, Librarian at the University of Dundee, for his help and expertise.Publication status: PublishedArek Dakessian - ORCID: 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Introduction: Refugees often face worse oral health outcomes, such as periodontal diseases and dental caries in host countries due to barriers including language and cultural differences, institutional discrimination, and restricted use of dental health services. This scoping review aims to map and summarise the available studies on refugees’ experience of accessing dental health services in the host countries, to identify the main characteristics of the dental health services that refugees access and to explore the barriers and enablers to navigate the dental health service system in their host countries. Methods: The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) framework was adopted. PubMed, Scopus, Assia, CINAHL and Social Services Abstract were searched. A search strategy was developed using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and a combination of search operators and syntax used in MEDLINE were adopted for the remaining databases. Data were synthesised using thematic analysis. Results: Fourteen articles were included. Most studies used qualitative methods and Australia seemed to be the country with the highest number of publications surrounding this topic. The included studies showed that refugees frequently encountered substantial obstacles when attempting to access dental services in host countries. Numerous barriers such as language barriers, cultural differences, and lack of health insurance or financial support hindered refugees' ability to access these services. Additionally, many refugees possessed limited knowledge of the dental care system in their new country. As a result of untreated dental problems, refugees suffered from pain and other health complications. Discussion: This scoping review explored the challenges refugees have experienced in accessing dental health services in host countries, which included the key barriers such as affordability, accessibility, accommodation, availability, awareness, and acceptability. The scarcity of relevant research highlighted the need for a more comprehensive understanding of refugees’ experiences accessing dental health services in host countries. Limited data were identified regarding evidence focusing on the characteristics of dental services accessed by refugees in host countries.pubpu

Pathways and Potentialities: the role of social connections in the integration of reunited refugee families

Helen Baillot - ORCID: 0000-0003-2848-023X https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2848-023XLeyla Kerlaff - ORCID: 0000-0003-0191-1511 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0191-1511Arek Dakessian - ORCID: 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Alison Strang - ORCID: 0000-0003-3064-5283 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3064-5283https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63038e5312cb51595226799c/t/631b033028eb6a5a0fbce10d/1662714676747/fris+final+summary.pdfpubpu

Feminized cultural capital at work in the moral economy: Home credit and working‐class women

From Wiley via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2021-05-10, rev-recd 2022-05-25, accepted 2022-07-08, pub-electronic 2022-08-11Article version: VoRPublication status: PublishedFunder: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This research was funded by an industry partner wishing to remain anonymous within published outputs. There are no conflicts of interest to report in relation to this funding.Abstract: One of the defining features of the home credit sector is the role played by its agents—workers who act as intermediaries between lending companies and borrowers to facilitate lending and collect repayments. There is a prevailing and pervasive narrative in the sector that women make superior agents, largely based on the belief that female agents can manage relationships with borrowers more successfully than their male counterparts. This article analyzes data from 349,078 home credit accounts (loans), as well as 71 interviews with home credit agents and lending company managers, to evaluate both the myths and realities of women's roles in home credit. The data is also used to explore the opportunities for—and potential constraints on—women's career progression in home credit work, based on an understanding of the moral economy in which they operate. By exploring the moral economy of low‐income communities, the article highlights the role of working‐class women's cultural capital within the labor market. Despite women forming the majority of the agent workforce in home credit, women's capital is undervalued in comparison with their male counterparts' capital. The analysis within this article allows a greater understanding of the highly classed and gendered nature of the moral economy of low‐income communities and the exchange value of women's capital within the labor market

Fragile, handle with care: Refining a key concept for global health and development

Karin Diaconu - ORCID: 0000-0002-5810-9725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5810-9725Sophie Witter - ORCID: 0000-0002-7656-6188 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7656-6188Arek Dakessian - ORCID: 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Giulia Loffreda - ORCID: 0000-0003-4895-1051 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4895-1051Alastair Ager - ORCID: 0000-0002-9474-3563 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-3563inpressinpres

The role of social connections in refugees’ pathways towards socio-economic integration

Marcia Vera Espinoza - ORCID: 0000-0001-6238-7683 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6238-7683Helen Baillot - ORCID: 0000-0003-2848-023X https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2848-023XEmmaleena Käkelä - ORCID: 0000-0001-9658-1548 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9658-1548Arek Dakessian - ORCID: 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Leyla Kerlaff - ORCID: 0000-0003-0191-1511 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0191-1511Social connections are well recognised as contributing to integration. Research undertaken in Scotland offers useful, sometimes counter-intuitive insights into their role over time, plus learnings that could be explored in other contexts.https://www.fmreview.org/issue71/veraespinoza-baillot-kakela-dakessian-kerlaffpubpub1

The role of trust in health-seeking for non-communicable disease services in fragile contexts: A cross-country comparative study

Stella Arakelyan - ORCID: 0000-0003-0326-707X https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-707XArek Dakessian - ORCID: 0000-0001-7792-6862 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7792-6862Karin Diaconu - ORCID: 0000-0002-5810-9725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5810-9725Lizzie Caperon - ORCID: 0000-0001-5204-170X https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5204-170XAlison Strang - ORCID: 0000-0003-3064-5283 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3064-5283Sophie Witter - ORCID: 0000-0002-7656-6188 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7656-6188Alastair Ager - ORCID: 0000-0002-9474-3563 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-3563Replaced AM with VoR 2021-10-21Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) disproportionately affect people living in fragile contexts marked by poor governance and health systems struggling to deliver quality services for the benefit of all. This combination can lead to the erosion of trust in the health system, affecting health-seeking behaviours and the ability of individuals to sustain their health. In this cross-country multiple-case study, we analyse the role of trust in health-seeking for NCD services in fragile contexts. Our analysis triangulates multiple data sources, including semi-structured interviews (n=102) and Group Model Building workshops (n=8) with individuals affected by NCDs and health providers delivering NCD services. Data were collected in Freetown and Makeni (Sierra Leone), Beirut and Beqaa (Lebanon), and Morazán, Chalatenango and Bajo Lempa (El Salvador) between April 2018 and April 2019. We present a conceptual model depicting key dynamics and feedback loops between contextual factors, institutional, interpersonal and social trust and health-seeking pathways. Our findings signal that firstly, the way health services are delivered and experienced shapes institutional trust in health systems, interpersonal trust in health providers and future health-seeking pathways. Secondly, historical narratives about public institutions and state authorities’ responses to contextual fragility drivers impact institutional trust and utilisation of services from public health institutions. Thirdly, social trust mediates health-seeking behaviour through social bonds and links between health systems and individuals affected by NCDs. Given the repeated and sustained utilisation of health services required with these chronic diseases, (re)building and maintaining trust in public health institutions and providers is a crucial task in fragile contexts. This requires interventions at community, district and national levels, with a key focus on promoting links and mutual accountability between health systems and communities affected by NCDs.This research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Global Health Research programme 16/136/100.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114473291pubpu