{"id":89833,"date":"2023-12-13T11:05:57","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T16:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=89833"},"modified":"2023-12-14T10:36:10","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T15:36:10","slug":"students-explore-migration-themes-through-international-collaboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/12\/students-explore-migration-themes-through-international-collaboration\/","title":{"rendered":"Students explore migration themes through international collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"

While learning about human migration, Brock Sociology and Critical Criminology students recently participated in a collaborative project that saw them connecting with peers across the U.S. border.<\/p>\n

The semester-long initiative culminated in a hybrid screening last week, where students in Brock Assistant Professor Julie Ham\u2019s course on Human Migration in a Globalized World shared participatory media projects with students in Assistant Professor Vivian Wenli Lin\u2019s Women\u2019s Migration in Media course at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Calif.<\/p>\n

Ham and Lin, who previously worked together on a video project giving voice to migrant domestic workers, asylum seekers and members of ethnic minority communities in Hong Kong, decided to try what Ham describes as a \u201ctransnational pedagogical innovation\u201d by co-teaching their respective classes, with Ham lecturing on asylum seekers, refugees and human trafficking while Lin covered the ethics of storytelling, narratives of migration and visual methodologies.<\/p>\n

Students worked on creative media projects within their classes while also participating in interdisciplinary working groups where peers from both classes could share and discuss raw footage, course material and feedback.<\/p>\n

The final screening was held simultaneously in St. Catharines and L.A. on Wednesday, Dec. 6, and featured short films as well as excerpts from longer films on topics ranging from deeply personal family stories to explorations of how migration relates to community, intersectionality and labour.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the underlying themes of migration, memory and family \u2014 and how stories about migration are shared within families \u2014 was very moving to see,\u201d says Ham. \u201cWe also had videos that looked at experiences and perspectives of international students, and oftentimes what was shared were fair, valid and quite astute critiques of how international students are positioned in Canadian academia \u2014 how the discourse situates international students compared to the reality of being an international student.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third-year Sociology student Harishan Jeyaseelan says it was exciting to work with peers at Occidental College and to provide a platform for those who have felt the impacts of migration first-hand.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait

Third-year Sociology student Harishan Jeyaseelan worked independently on a documentary featuring his mother\u2019s story.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMy video was a collaboration with my mother discussing the traumatic experiences she faced in the Sri Lankan massacres of the 1980s,\u201d he says. \u201cWorking on the project really demonstrated how mass media narratives manufactured by a documentarian may vastly differ from\u00a0true\u00a0immigrant narratives where we actually collaborate with the migrants we interview in selecting what info they feel would be best to represent themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third-year Sociology co-op student Sadie Boon and third-year Critical Criminology major Karlie Kennedy were part of a group that produced a film exploring the experiences of international students at Brock.<\/p>\n

Kennedy says the project provided a practical application of course concepts and a lot of insight on personal experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our project, our main intention was to showcase the way that international students face marginalization in various aspects of everyday life, which may include things such as academic challenges, language barriers, financial struggles or challenges related to \u201cCanadianization,\u201d as well as the difficulty of finding oneself in an unfamiliar environment,\u201d she says. \u201cThe project provided a nuanced, real-world perspective that complemented and enriched our theoretical knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Jeyaseelan, Boon was struck by the importance of storytelling in understanding the complexity of issues related to migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe participatory video project illuminated the empowering essence of storytelling, creating a safe space for migrants to share their narratives, dismantle societal stereotypes and highlight the importance of diversity,\u201d she says. \u201cDelving into these narratives allowed me to appreciate the richness of perspectives and also offered a unique opportunity to tap into the creative expressions of my classmates and peers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While learning about human migration, Brock Sociology and Critical Criminology students recently participated in a collaborative project that saw them connecting with peers across the U.S. border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":89836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,38],"tags":[2524,1153,522,13147,12101,13148,2433,13149],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89833"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89843,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89833\/revisions\/89843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}