At once subject to political persecution in their countries and to various forms of othering in and through the Dutch asylum system, these communities seek ways to process their grief, remain culturally or politically active, and build transformative futures. With this roundtable, we aim to explore connections along the lines of care practices, art, memory, solidarity, communal organization, and future imaginaries with other exile communities and researchers in the Netherlands/Europe. It is a space to think together about memories of exile, while also holding space for the present and for imagining other possible futures in and beyond exile.
This space intends to open discussions on:

• Methodological and theoretical ways to think about the political, social, and creative dimensions of refugee community and solidarity organizing
• Textual and non-textual narratives of exile that decenter the past as the only exile narrative
• The multiple ways of care among human and more-than-human bodies amid the political tensions in Europe around asylum seeking

Share a short presentation

We invite scholars at any career stage, as well as anyone outside academia with direct experience, artistic practice, or reflection on these themes, to share a short presentation at this roundtable, which is envisioned for a broad public and will take place with exile participants. Presentations may take the form of a brief talk, a reading, or the sharing of a creative or community-based project. Below are some of the themes we hope to explore in conversation, along with guiding questions for those who wish to present:

• Art in exile. What role does art play in processing and expressing the experience of exile? How do these creative practices intertwine with political denunciation and memory preservation? What possibilities, and what limits, does communal art hold for building solidarity and dialogue across different exile communities?
• Exilic memory. How is the memory of exile transmitted within exile communities living in the Netherlands/Europe? What justice-seeking and memory-preserving initiatives do exile communities build, and toward what ends?
• Care practices in exile. How is care, individual and collective, sustained and practiced among exile communities? What forms of mutual support emerge in the face of the emotional toll of persecution, displacement, and the asylum system? How is this work of care recognized, or not, by institutions, academia, or the ‘host society’?
• Other possible futures. What futures do exile communities already imagine and practice, in the present? How do restorative and future-making imaginaries take shape within communal and creative exile initiatives?

Organised by

This roundtable is organised by the Nicaraguan and Colombian communities in exile, together with dr. Julienne Weegels, Adrián Ortega Lobo and Mick Sarria, with the support of the University of Amsterdam Centre for Migration studies (ARC-M) and the ARTES Violence & Justice cluster.