Making an Impact on Immigration and Displacement through
Arts, Culture, and Storytelling
April 17-18, 2026
Friday, April 17
Panel 1: Arts, Storytelling, and Immigration Policy
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
“Art and Story as Bridges in Migration”
Chair: Ali Tarokh
I propose that arts-based storytelling functions not only as cultural expression but as participatory research and an emerging pathway to community-led policy engagement, and my presentation draws on my work creating Voices Through Art, founding the Rishe Institute, and producing the R-Stories podcast to examine how migrants use creative expression to cultivate belonging, shift public attitudes, and open pathways toward policy engagement. These initiatives form a community-driven model of “story work” grounded in lived experience and collaborative artmaking. Survey data from Voices Through Art illustrates the potential of such practices: 100% of attendees reported being emotionally moved, nearly all gained new understanding of migration experiences, and every respondent indicated they were likely to take action in support of refugees and immigrants. Participating artists and audience members represented a wide range of migration journeys, including refugees, SIV holders, undocumented individuals, first-generation immigrants, and U.S.-born community members, showing how creative environments allow diverse identities to coexist in shared emotional and civic space. Through visual art, story circles, and conversation-based formats, participants used creativity as a means of identity reconstruction, community building, and public education. This presentation involves the symposium’s central questions: 1. How migrants use arts and storytelling: Creative practice becomes a vehicle for expressing layered belonging, preserving cultural memory, and transforming personal narratives into public-facing knowledge. 2. How these practices can have greater impact: Findings point to opportunities to expand multilingual access, strengthen participant agency, and intentionally include broader audiences, including policymakers, so stories directly inform civic understanding. 3. How research centers can better support policy advocacy: Story-driven community data, when systematically gathered and ethically interpreted, can complement traditional research. Partnerships between community organizations and research institutions can translate lived-experience narratives into accessible insights for practitioners and policymakers.
“Creative Resistance, Collective Belonging: Migrant Storytelling as a Catalyst for Inclusive
Immigration Policy”
Mariamme Latif Estefan
This project examines how arts, culture, and migrant storytelling function as powerful forms of knowledge production within migration studies and immigration policymaking. It argues that creative expression is not only cultural practice but also political engagement, enabling migrants to articulate belonging, challenge exclusion, and build collective identity. Using a critical participatory arts-based research model, the study centers lived experience as an analytic tool to reveal gaps between immigration policy intent and its real-world consequences. By integrating community-generated narratives with rigorous policy analysis, the project demonstrates how storytelling strengthens advocacy, fosters solidarity across difference, and contributes to more inclusive, equitable, and less punitive immigration frameworks. Ultimately, the research positions scholarship and arts-based engagement as transformative practices that bridge community knowledge and institutional power to advance democratic participation and policy reform.
“Humanities on the Ground: Storytelling, Advocacy, and Migrant Justice”
Kavita Daiya & Ruth Campos
This presentation explores how the arts, cultural production, and storytelling can be mobilized to expand knowledge about immigrant experience in the public sphere and to advocate for more just immigration policies. Immigration policies are already structured by storytelling–for example, the good immigrant vs. the bad immigrant narratives. We share ideas as scholars and activists engaged with immigrant communities about how stories invite us to envision change toward human rights and migrant justice. Daiya's pedagogy focuses on creating visibility and expanding knowledge through immigrant and refugee narratives in literature and film in the university. Centering migrants’ voices across media, students learn how to write and publish letters to the editor and op-eds, thus participating in civic engagement and advocating for ideas on creating change on immigration policy. Campos’ experience working with Vilma Herrera, the Ministress of Cultural Affairs at the Embassy of El Salvador, also emphasized the importance of advocating through the arts. Through this role, she saw how cultural programming through the arts serves as a bridge between diaspora communities and their home countries. Inspired by this work, Campos has collaborated with local artists at the collegiate level and developed strong organizational ties with D.C. based initiatives such as the D.C. Kincare alliance, and the Amica Center for Immigration Rights. This is also related to her ongoing research on stories about diasporas and mobilities of Central Americans, in the context of U.S. imperialism. We believe that community-based arts and storytelling practices can support the creation of new civic infrastructures to build cross-community coalitions that integrate immigrants in ethical, responsible, and inclusive ways. Whether we do this through our local communities or by building new dialogues in local libraries, homes, schools, and rec centers, art and storytelling practices disclose our shared humanity and inspire new solidarities toward genuine change.
“US Immigration Policies and Obstacles to Migrant Arts”
Andi Floyd
I have over 20 years of experience working with US companies, foreign performance companies and foreign nations to facilitate the presentation of foreign artistic productions in the United States, as well as assisting foreign nationals secure the proper authorization to live and work in the US in the arts and entertainment fields. Over the course of the last 20 years, we have seen significant changes in the attitudes towards foreign artists and entertainers, which changes with each administration. Although the US has struggled for decades to devise an efficient and effective immigration system, the attitudes toward foreign nationals have become increasingly hostile since 2016. During the 10-minute presentation, I will briefly describe the changes in US immigration for foreign nationals in the arts and entertainment fields over the last four administrations, culminating in the current administration’s increasing hostility towards foreign nationals. I will also discuss the effect that the current administration’s policies have had on the US cultural sector and how the current immigration process adversely affects the US population by denying them access to a kaleidoscope of cultures, world experience and different perspectives. I will also discuss the extent to which foreign nationals have and continue to contribute to the arts and entertainment sectors and the practical implications limiting arts-related immigration has on the US economy.
Panel 2: Sound, Intimacy, and Belonging Across Borders
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
“Music, Belonging, and Relationships of Intimacy in the Patagonian Borderlands”
Chair: Gregory Robinson
For several decades, belonging has been a topic of central concern for studies of musical participation in transnational and borderland scenarios. While these works have typically framed these concerns in terms of identity (Austerlitz, Corona and Madrid 2008; Cepeda 2010; Pacini Hernandez 2010; Madrid 2008, 2011; Mendívil and Spencer Espinoza 2016; Chávez 2017), there is room to consider some of the alternative strategies by which people in these scenarios construct emplacement and belonging. Drawing from the literature on intimacy, publicity, and counter publicity (Warner 2005; Berlant 2000, 2008; Dueck 2013; Garcia-Mispireta 2023), this presentation considers the ways that people build abstract political geographies of belonging (regionalism, nationalism, and transnational connections) around the powerful experiences of home that emerge when longstanding relationships of intimacy come to the forefront of social experience through musically-mediated experiences of conviviality. Engaging with scholarship across disciplines, it cuts a line between the functionalism of anthropological studies on commensality (Jönsson et all 2021) and the radical empiricism of phenomenologically-engaged ethnomusicology (McGraw 2016; Abels 2017; Reidel and Torvinen 2020) to hold focus on the ways that musical participation brings relationships of longstanding to the forefront of social experience, and the ways that, in turn, these experiences facilitate the construction of more abstract concepts of belonging. In borderland scenarios like Chilean Patagonia, where cultural practice is shaped by both proximity to Argentina and distance from central Chile, hegemonic discourses of national identity hold little purchase, and face-to-face experiences of musically mediated intimacy become particularly important to the construction of belonging. Exploration of this scenario will serve to illustrate the ways that borders can coalesce at the outer edges of shared experiences of intimacy.
“Voicing Long-Term Cambodian American Refuge”
Brad DeMatteo
This paper considers vocality as a sonically and metaphorically resonant resource utilized throughout Cambodian American refuge. I explore the ways in which Cambodian American experience, now spanning fifty years, is articulated through voices in the diaspora, spanning speech, song, chant, recitation, and silence. Following the tumult of mid-20th century Cambodia foregrounded by the Khmer Rouge genocide from 1975 to 1979 and incited by the American bombing campaign during the late 1960s, two civil wars, and ensuing mass displacement, over 150,000 Cambodians arrived as refugees in the US. They carried with them the weight of trauma, fears and uncertainties, and hopes for life beyond violent rupture. They also carried with them voices, both sounding and silent, as immediate mediums through which to navigate old and new identities. Voices bearing Khmer language and song, stories, and religious practice helped to sustain Cambodian lifeworld's in diaspora. Informed by new turns in Critical Refugee Studies and over seven years of ethnographic research in Cambodian America, I posit that these voices have been actively resourceful throughout Cambodian American un- and resettlements in three primary areas: 1) vocalities of everyday life that actively resist the imposition of voicelessness as it stands for a lack of agency; 2) vocalities that sound beyond the traumatic past; and 3) the ways that vocality contributes to notions of permanency in a time when migrant emplacement is challenged by the isolationist policies of the Trump administration. I argue that centering resourcefulness embedded within uses of voice by refugees through and beyond the initial crises of displacement foregrounds an agentive solidarity often denied or ignored in state-centered frameworks of refuge.
“What Stories Do We Tell? Examining Contemporary and Emerging Approaches to Music and Migration Studies”
Ulrike Präger
Recent scholarship in music studies has examined how power, privilege, and positionality shape stories about migration in musical knowledge production, especially for minoritized individuals and communities, such as migrants and post-migrants, as well as the stories migrants tell about themselves through musical practice. This paper brings these debates together. While many scholars argue that researcher's reflexivity and positionality help dismantle oppressive research approaches and foster inclusive methodologies, recent critiques contend that such statements may be performative or counterproductive. They may unintentionally reinforce power imbalances and institutional authority rather than expose them. In response, this paper explores the latest divergent theoretical and methodological approaches to ethical questions of positionality and representational strategies within the power dynamics among all individuals involved in the research process. Drawing on my interactions with international scholars and my work on music and migration, this presentation compiles, analyzes, and discusses theories and methodologies of reflexive, dialogic, and co-creative research approaches to musical storytelling, as they have recently been used in music and migration studies. What is the potential for these theories and methodologies to transform how stories of migration are produced, circulated, and received? How might different forms of storytelling strengthen advocacy efforts or inform policymaking? Finally, considering current political shifts, particularly in the United States, how can our fields articulate these approaches in the immediate future? Ultimately, this paper seeks a deeper understanding of how arts, culture, and storytelling can be effectively used regarding their social relevance and potential for active political engagement.
“The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America Culture as Activism in Diaspora”
Iryna Voloshyna
The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America, based in Detroit, USA, is a folk music ensemble that stems from the Ukrainian tradition of epic singing. The musicians – bandurists – came to the United States as political refugees after WWII from the Displaced Persons camps in Germany. The ensemble dates back to 1918 when it was founded in Poltava. Many members did not survive the purges and arrests by the Soviets for being Ukrainian “bourgeois nationalists”; they were either executed or sent to die in the Gulags. In 1942, the Bandurist Chorus was arrested by the Nazis and taken to the concentration camps. There they were kept as prisoner workers, but also as musicians – the ensemble was “hired” to play for the fellow Ostarbeiters to “uplift their spirits”. After the war ended, the musicians were afraid to go back to the Soviet-occupied Ukraine: they knew they would be arrested and sent to Siberia. They found sponsorship and moved to the United States in 1949. Living in the diaspora, Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus’ main mission was to preserve the traditional Ukrainian music that had been oppressed for decades at home. Today, many members of the ensemble are the children and grandchildren of those 17 musicians who immigrated from Ukraine. The ensemble remains very active both artistically and politically. In my presentation, I will highlight moments of the ensemble’s vibrant history and make parallels with the current ongoing Russian war against Ukraine.
Workshops
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Workshop 1: “Expressive Arts Therapy, Storytelling, and Community Building with Forced Migrants”
Nouf Bazaz
This experiential workshop introduces participants to expressive arts counseling as a creative, multimodal and somatic mental health approach for working with forced migrants. When experiences of displacement, trauma, and identity disruption are difficult to express through words alone, creative practices (i.e. drawing, painting, collage, metaphor, movement, and sandtray) can support storytelling, emotional expression, and connection. Participants will gain a foundational understanding of what expressive arts counseling is, how it overlaps with community-based art practices, and what distinguishes it as a form of mental health counseling. The workshop will include brief experiential activities that invite participants to engage directly in creative expression. Examples from both individual and group formats with forced migrants will demonstrate how these approaches can be adapted across settings such as community organizations, healthcare environments, research initiatives, and advocacy spaces. Ethical considerations when facilitating arts-based interventions with displaced populations will also be addressed.
Workshop 2: “Ethical Concerns in Migrant Arts Scholarship and Activism”
Carol Silverman
Ethics are, and should be, a central concern in all scholarship and activism, as the rich literature in Anthropology and Folklore attests. Many disciplines have recently examined representational challenges, embracing collaboration, reflexivity, reciprocity, and Participatory Action Research (PAR), plus asking what constitutes activism/advocacy and when it is appropriate. Yet often ethical concerns and the power dimensions embedded in them are not recognized by institutions, funders, policy makers, and even scholars, activists, and members of communities that are studied. Research and policy work on migration should especially attune to ethics because of the precarity of our collaborators and the structural hierarchies involved in many aspects of their lives. Because migrants often face discrimination as well as institutional constraints and surveillance, what are the benefits and dangers of spotlighting them? How can we responsibly document migrants when disclosures of identity might endanger them? In addition, gender, sexuality, age, class, and status differences within migrant communities pose challenges regarding who we chose to document and why. A focus on the arts presents further ethical dimensions. Can the arts offer “safe spaces” to proclaim identity, foster pride, interpret history and negotiate memory? What are the risks and how can they be managed? What are the nuances of public vs. private presentation when documentation, housing, jobs, etc. are in flux. What forms of art do what kinds of work for, what kinds of audiences and performers? This participatory workshop will delve into decolonial methods of scholarship and presentation. How can we de-center western epistemologies to foreground the knowledge systems and artist processes/products of our collaborators? How can we foster the co-creation of knowledge and presentation strategies? How can we craft collaborative projects and write collaborative texts? How do we really listen to community members? Who represents whom in our work? Whose voices are foregrounded and what are the positionalities of each voice? What kinds of public-facing projects, for example, performances, festivals, archives, and exhibits actually serve migrant communities? What are the dangers of stereo typification?
Workshop 3: “Roots and Narratives: How Community Gardens Become Sites of Belonging for Displaced Older Adults”
Salimatou Diallo
Community gardens are more than shared plots of soil. For displaced individuals, these are quiet spaces where belonging gets built, one story at a time. Yet the narratives that take shape in gardens like these remain largely invisible to policymakers, advocates, and researchers trying to understand how migrants build lives and community in the United States. Narrative methods offer a way to surface the civic power, cultural memory, and resilience that older adults, including those who have experienced forced displacement, cultivate through gardening, and to make these stories count in broader conversations about advocacy and policy. This workshop draws on narrative interviews gathered across two community garden settings: a retirement community garden and a neighborhood garden serving diverse populations, including displaced individuals. The research organized around five themes that emerged from participants’ own words: identity and legacy, healing and resilience, social engagement, power and agency, and civic and cultural spaces. People shared how gardening shaped their civic participation, cultural preservation, and sense of purpose, often in ways that challenged what we assume about aging and displacement. The facilitated discussion will ask participants to sit with questions this research raised. How do shared physical spaces shape the stories people tell about belonging? What can narrative methods bring to light that traditional data collection misses? When older adults teach seed-saving traditions, organize collective action, or mentor across cultures, what does that tell us about immigrant contribution that policy conversations so often overlook? This workshop sits at the intersection of lived experience and emerging scholarships. The practitioner behind this research knows firsthand what it means to navigate displacement and rebuild, and that understanding shaped the methodology. Participants will leave with concrete ways to bring place-based storytelling into their own work and room to build connections around how narrative can better serve immigration advocacy.
Lunch Program
12:00 PM -1:00 PM
Participatory Art Making Workshop: “Creative Café” by Jenna Sears
Throughout this workshop, I focus on the Creative Cafe, a monthly participatory arts education workshop I co-founded with artists who resettled to Bloomington, Indiana (USA). Part of the collective strategy of the Cafe was to use performance and conversation around resettlement in order to help to shape a creative geography distinctive to Bloomington. Interlocutors expressed that they wanted to create a space that highlighted performances of new residents while also dispelling misunderstandings about refugee resettlement. Lastly, they wanted to have a space where artists across Bloomington could connect and strategize to help one another. The Creative Cafe has been running monthly since October 2024, and it consists of an open mic, a participatory arts workshop (from painting, poetry, dance, songwriting, and theatre), and a small discussion after the workshop. I help to lead and participate in the workshops alongside volunteer artists, and people donate snacks and arts supplies. By using creative workshops and incorporating my own artistic practice, I highlight the ways that performance, alongside ethnography, can shape sentiment of belonging, citizenship, and political strategizing. I am interested in conducting an abridged version of the Creative Cafe for the symposium, where participants could participate in a collaborative arts project while interacting with materials, stories, and policy reports on refugee resettlement. Afterwards, I wish to analyze, through a pre-circulated paper, how community arts projects can better invest and attune to people navigating refugee resettlement through education and collaboration. I am interested in asking how community arts practices can be used as a space to shift rhetoric on refugee resettlement and strategize towards migrant advocacy and local action. Throughout, I ask: How can participatory arts practices reshape community sentiment on refugee resettlement? How are the aesthetics of citizenship and belonging conformed/dissented through creative traditions such as music, visual art, spoken word, and theatre? What kinds of expectations do people have of arts programming in resettlement spaces? How can arts programming accommodate various geographies of artmaking?
Film screening: “It Is All About Palestine: A Documentary” (40 min.) by Dina AbouZeid
Set against the backdrop of recent student encampments and civic mobilizations across Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, this documentary examines the experiences of three university students whose engagement with global justice issues draws them into a period of heightened campus activism. Through in-depth interviews and observational footage, the film documents how student participation in collective action intersects with academic life, institutional governance, and public order. Rather than centering protest as spectacle, the film approaches this moment as a contemporary case study in higher education, freedom of expression, and civic participation. It explores how universities respond to dissent, how disciplinary frameworks are applied, and how students navigate the personal, academic, and legal consequences of public engagement. By relying on first-hand testimony and lived experience, the documentary adds additional perspectives to a highly debated historical moment—one often analyzed through policy, media narratives, or external commentary, but less frequently through direct participant accounts. These narratives introduce underrepresented viewpoints and illuminate dimensions of the case that remain largely unexamined in formal discourse. I present this work to an immigration symposium from the perspective of a filmmaker committed to ethical, human-centered inquiry. The United States is an immigration nation, with more than 48 million foreign-born residents; in Virginia alone, immigrants account for approximately 2% of the population. The students featured in this film embody layered social and cultural backgrounds shaped by migration, transnational identity, and inherited historical memory. Their experiences offer insight into how immigrant and first-generation communities engage with democratic institutions, particularly in moments of political tension. By foregrounding individual stories within a broader structural context, the film encourages a nuanced understanding of how migration, civic participation, and institutional power intersect. It invites scholars and policymakers to consider how first-hand narratives and diverse voices can inform more responsive, inclusive, and resilient democratic frameworks.
1:20 PM - 2:00 PM Institute for Immigration Research: Immigration Data on Demand, Marissa Kiss and Kellie S. Wilkerson
Immigration Data on Demand (iDod), one of the Institute for Immigration Research (IIR) signature projects, provides unbiased and non-partisan information about immigrants and immigration in the United States. Free to users, this service helps individuals, institutions, organizations, educators, service providers, and policymakers examine and understand the immigrant populations in their communities by furnishing accurate data on their foreign-born neighbors. Produced by a team of students and staff, iDod fact sheets include geospatial analysis and comprehensive data on demographic, economic, educational, employment, health, and housing characteristics, as well as additional indicators such as language proficiency, poverty status, nativity, and migration patterns. This presentation will not only feature the iDod project but also highlight other practical strategies for finding, using and evaluating other immigration related data.
Panel 3: Paved with Promise: Public Folklore, Immigration, and Belonging in New Jersey
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
“Paved with Promise: Public Folklore Telling the Story of Immigration in New Jersey”
Chair: Sally Van de Water
Immigration plays a powerful role in New Jersey: more than 24% of its residents were born outside the U.S., and NJ counties are some of the most culturally diverse in the nation. In service to all of the state’s residents, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts “believes that the arts are central to every element we value most in a modern society, including human understanding, cultural and civic pride, strong communities, excellent schools, lifelong learning, creative expression, and economic opportunity.” The Council enacts these values by funding a robust roster of organizations through general operating support, individual artist grants, and other special projects and initiatives. One of those special projects is the New Jersey Folklife Network, a network of nonprofit and municipal agencies that enact meaningful folk arts programming and services to artists in their local areas. As the first such folk arts infrastructure network in the nation, NJ’s Folklife Network showcases how locally- and regionally focused arts agencies can collaborate with the state government in broad and individually meaningful ways. In 2025, in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (aka Hart Celler Act), New Jersey’s regional Folklife Centers collaborated on a project called “Paved with Promise: Local and Global Perspectives on Immigration.” With funding support from the State Arts Council, these Centers conducted oral history interviews with artists whose families were able to immigrate to the US because of this new policy shift. The Centers also collaborated on a small traveling exhibit, debuting in April 2026, containing representative objects telling personal stories of immigration journeys. This presentation will include a general overview of the Paved with Promise project, contextualizing it within New Jersey’s statewide network of Folklife Centers, and will discuss the project’s component parts, including interviews, video profiles, and the exhibit.
“From Refuge to Ritual: Women, Cultural Memory and the Arts of Belonging in New Jersey’s Immigrant Communities”
Marion Jacobson
This presentation draws on “Paved with Promise: Immigrants Who Shaped New Jersey’s Past and Present,” a statewide folklife initiative marking the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act. A collaboration between the Folklife Centers of New Jersey and supported by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Paved with Promise is a multimedia project that brings us inside the lived experiences of New Jersey residents who immigrated after 1965. The project includes a series of video documentaries—New Jersey Immigrant Stories—based on long-form interviews, a collaborative traveling exhibition (Immigration and Cultural Heritage), community conversations on immigration, and a culminating public celebration in October 2026. Centering on recent folklife fieldwork and documentation, this presentation highlights the story of Thary Hua, a Cambodian refugee who resettled in New Jersey after surviving the Khmer Rouge regime, and her daughter, Jenny Hua Mears, founder of a Khmer classical dance troupe based at the Samaki Dhararam Buddhist Temple in Camden. Through their intergenerational narratives, the presentation foregrounds the gendered labor of cultural continuity, examining how women sustain religious practice, cultural performance traditions, and community institutions amid displacement and resettlement. Excerpts from fieldwork and examples from a documentary about the Huas illustrates how dance, ritual, and community arts function as sites of healing, belonging, and public visibility, while also revealing the broader sociocultural and policy contexts shaping immigrant lives in New Jersey. This presentation argues that arts-based folklife documentation offers a powerful, publicly engaged approach to understanding immigration—not only as a policy outcome, but as an ongoing cultural and community-making process.
“Tending the Fire: Andean Music, Migration, and Cultural Memory in New Jersey”
Juan “Pepe” Santana
As part of Paved with Promise: Local and Global Perspectives on Immigration, this presentation features Ecuadorian-born musician, instrument maker, and cultural advocate Juan “Pepe” Santana in conversation with folklorists Marion Jacobson and Sally Van de Water. Conceived to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Immigration and Nationality (Hart–Celler) Act, Paved with Promise centers oral histories and personal objects to illuminate how immigration shapes lives, communities, and creative practices across generations. Santana’s life story—documented as part of this statewide initiative—reveals how one artist’s migration has generated decades of work in performance, education, festival production, and instrument making. Through conversation, this presentation will introduce Santana’s narrative as both testimony and cultural archive, inviting him to discuss his early development as a musician, the decision to emigrate in the 1960s, and his commitments as founder and director of the ensemble INKHAY (Quechua: “to tend the fire”). The dialogue will explore how an immigrant artist has navigated belonging, authenticity, and stewardship of tradition within academic and community settings, from local schools, community festivals, and correctional facilities to major venues like Lincoln Center. If time and technology permit, we will share the 5-minute video profile of Santana produced as part of Paved with Promise. Anchoring this conversation in sound and material culture, Santana will demonstrate a brief selection of traditional Andean instruments from his collection of hundreds of instruments—objects that function as portable homes, much like the suitcase and artifacts featured in the Paved with Promise traveling exhibit. Through music and storytelling, this session will invite audiences to encounter migration not only as policy history but as embodied practice: a rhythm of movement, memory, and creative resilience. By modeling a “narrative stage” interview-performance format, this presentation illustrates how scholarship and creative practice can co-produce knowledge about immigration, cultural heritage, and community engagement.
Panel 4: After Displacement: Faith, Memory, and Rebuilding Community
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
“Ukrainian Traditional Folk Festivals, Celebrations and Concerts in the USA as the Way to Preserve Identity, to Keep in Touch, and to Protest the War”
Chair: Inna Golovakha
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, more than 280,000 Ukrainians have come to the United States through the U4U humanitarian parole program. They brought with them their kids, pets, and their folk traditions. As Alan Dundes pointed out, there are societies oriented toward the future and societies that are strongly attached to their ancient traditions and rituals. Ukrainians place great importance on their cultural and religious traditions and carry them across the world, building a “miniature Ukraine” wherever they settle—not primarily through formal institutions, but through folklife. Ukrainian refugees of 2022–2025 are no exception. They actively maintain cultural continuity and collective identity through their folk and church life. As a Ukrainian folklorist and a resident of Virginia, I have had the opportunity to observe how Ukrainian refugees in the United States use folklore as a means of cultural preservation, emotional resilience, and connection to Ukraine during wartime. Seasonal rituals such as Easter (Velykden) and Christmas (Rizdvo) reinforce continuity with homeland traditions, while Malanka theater and folk concerts adapt performative folklore to new diasporic contexts. Church life plays a central role as both a spiritual and cultural hub, integrating ritual calendar observances with community organizing and humanitarian aid efforts. Folk crafts—such as pysanka egg decorating, embroidery (vyshyvanka), and traditional ornamentation—function as tactile forms of memory and resistance, often mobilized through workshops, exhibitions, and fundraising initiatives. Public festivals and performances simultaneously assert Ukrainian visibility within the multicultural landscape of the United States and generate material and symbolic support for Ukraine.
In my presentation, I will demonstrate that folklore among the Ukrainian refugee community functions as a living, dynamic process. Ukrainian refugees reaffirm their national identity, sustain emotional ties to Ukraine, and transform cultural heritage into an active response to war and displacement. At the same time, this folkloric expression becomes a national cry—a desire to be heard, recognized, and supported.
“From Survival to Belonging: Stories of Afghan Women and the Power of Support”
Anita Omary
This presentation shares my personal journey from Afghanistan to the United States and reflects on how the support of kind-hearted people, friends, colleagues, and my husband profoundly transformed my life. Their guidance helped me navigate the challenges of being an immigrant woman and enabled me to feel safety, stability, and a deep sense of belonging in the United States. Through their support, I came to see the U.S. not only as a place of refuge, but as a home and a country where I belong. This experience also inspired me to continue supporting others, carrying forward the care and solidarity that were extended to me. I will compare my story with the experiences of Afghan women who worked with the U.S. military and allied institutions but were unable to relocate to the United States after the Taliban regained control, following shifts in U.S. policies and administration. Many of these women are now stranded in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran, facing deportation, detention, or imprisonment, and living under constant threat from the Taliban. Their stories reveal the life-or-death circumstances that force individuals to flee their countries not by choice, but by necessity. Through reflection and comparison, this presentation highlights how empathy, community support, and individual action can profoundly change the lives of immigrants and refugees. Storytelling serves as a powerful tool to humanize displacement, challenge dominant narratives about migration, and illuminate the long-term consequences of policy decisions on real lives.By sharing both personal and collective stories, this presentation demonstrates how supporting immigrants not only transforms individual lives but also strengthens communities and fosters cross-cultural understanding. It is a call to action for compassion, advocacy, and sustained support for those who have been forced to leave their homes in search of safety and dignity.
“Kitchen Tables as Altars: Cooking, Memory, and Sustaining Kinship Across Deportation”
Jenni Martínez
This presentation explores cooking as a creative, relational practice through which deported family members and their U.S.-based children sustain connection, memory, and care across borders. Drawing from my dissertation research with mixed-status Mexican families separated by deportation, I examine how kitchens and kitchen tables become everyday altars, sites where food mediates loss, displacement, and ongoing kinship. Centered on collaborative cooking sessions with deported parents in Mexico and their U.S.-based children, this work approaches cooking not only as survival labor but as an art form, a ritual practice, and a method of storytelling. Recipes are remembered, remade, and gifted across borders, carrying embodied knowledge, sensory memory, and familial presence. In these moments, food becomes a material language through which deported parents continue to parent, care, and accompany their children despite forced separation. The presentation blends ethnographic reflection, creative practice, and visual documentation to trace how altar-making emerges within the kitchen. Family photographs, handwritten recipes, everyday utensils, and specific dishes are arranged and activated through cooking, transforming domestic space into a living archive of migration, grief, and resilience. Rather than monumental or ceremonial altars, these kitchen altars are mobile, intimate, and continually remade through practice. By foregrounding cooking as an artistic and relational intervention, this work challenges narratives that frame deportation solely through absence or rupture. Instead, it highlights how families actively re-materialize connection through food, even under conditions of legal exclusion and forced separation. The presentation invites dialogue about how creative domestic practices can function as cultural expression, counter-archives, and tools for sustaining belonging within and beyond migration contexts
“Sound and Belonging After Hurricane Katrina”
Keyania Campbell
This presentation examines how displaced Black New Orleans residents used sound and music to rebuild community and belonging in Dallas, Texas, after Hurricane Katrina. Focusing on musical responses to the storm alongside community-based cultural practices that emerged among evacuees in Dallas, the project explores how arts and storytelling functioned as tools for recovery following large-scale internal migration within the United States. Songs created in response to Katrina documented loss, resilience, and political critique, serving as forms of public testimony when institutional narratives failed to communicate lived experience. In the years that followed, evacuees engaged in collective sonic rebuilding efforts that transformed unfamiliar environments into spaces of belonging. These included organizing bounce music gatherings such as “504 Nights,” reestablishing brass band traditions, expanding cultural and economic networks through the hospitality industry, and creating virtual and physical spaces that reunited dispersed communities. These activities helped displaced residents preserve cultural memory and reestablish social ties across distance. Although this migration occurred within national borders, it represents one of the most significant cases of disaster-driven displacement in U.S. history, despite a relative lack of data exploring demographics on who was exiled, where, and why. As climate change intensifies environmental risk, particularly in the Gulf Coast, internal displacement within the United States is likely to become more common and warrants greater attention alongside international migration. Participants will listen to excerpts from songs responding to Hurricane Katrina while considering how displaced communities used arts and culture not only to express loss, but to actively rebuild social worlds in new locations. By centering sonic storytelling as a community practice, this presentation demonstrates how arts and culture can sustain identity, foster belonging, and inform more inclusive understandings of migration and recovery. These insights are critical for climate policy, disaster response, and migration studies.
Film screening: “The End/ Beginning: Cambodia” (47 min.)
Sophal Ear
This session offers a viewing and discussion of The End/Beginning: Cambodia, a 47-minute award-winning documentary recounting my family’s escape from the Khmer Rouge. The film tells the story of a Cambodian family’s survival amid mass violence and forced displacement, tracing a path from genocide to refugee resettlement. It centers lived experience while exploring how memory, narrative, and identity evolve across borders and generations. Following the screening, I will facilitate an extended dialogue on the intersections of storytelling, immigration, trauma, and public policy. The conversation will invite participants to consider how personal narratives can challenge erasure, build communities of belonging, and inform more humane approaches to immigration and refugee issues. Questions will focus on how creative works travel beyond artistic spaces, shaping classroom discussions, influencing public attitudes, and offering policymakers a deeper understanding of displacement as a human experience rather than an abstraction.
Panel 5: Museums, Exhibitions, and Curatorial Practices
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
“Carnegie Museum of Art’s Neighborhood Museum”
Chair: Blaine Siegel
In my role as Public Programs Manager, I will speak to the philosophy and implementation of Carnegie Museum of Art’s Neighborhood Museum. Neighborhood Museum is a program of radical belonging, working with recently arrived refugee and immigrant families, and partnering with local support agencies. Artwork and artmaking center a multiplicity of cultural practices. At Carnegie Museum of Art, artwork is a way to learn about the place you live while sharing where you have come from. We provide a free family membership to Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and introduce families to the museum with resources in their home language. Neighborhood Museum has worked with over 2,000 refugees and immigrants across 11 languages. Every session offers dialogue-based art tours assisted by interpreters and an arts workshop. Children from the families that participate in NM, qualify for summer camp scholarships, and all in house staff who participate in the program, docents, educators, etc., partake in a cultural sensitivity training and a “how to work with an interpreter 101”. I will focus on discussing best practices in collaborating with community support agencies and the notion of belonging as a deeper, more meaningful method of engagement than welcoming. When a person feels a sense of belonging, the opportunities for engagement grow with and within the community and community organizations.
“Leveraging the Local: The Cleveland Cultural Gardens and the Immigrant Experience as a Framework for General Education World Music Study”
Eve McPherson
This presentation offers an overview of a course that frames world music study largely through the northeast Ohio immigration experience. Communities studied examine both voluntary and involuntary immigration. The presentation’s aim is to foster discussion and share materials that leverage local resources and history to connect students with global traditions and immigration stories. Using the Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a framework, the course was developed as an accessible, low-cost Open Educational Resource for non-musician students who attend a regional open-enrollment campus of a larger university system. The Cleveland Cultural Gardens are a unique community asset. The only known cultural gardens in the world, through landscape design, each garden represents and is maintained by local ethnic-support community organizations. Established in the early 20th century, the Gardens were ahead of their time conceptually: founders envisioned mosaic rather than melting pot. There are over 40 dedicated cultural gardens, and new ones are regularly added. Recent additions include Palestine and Columbia. In my course, I introduce students to select gardens and the stories of their associated communities, then I broaden the scope to cultural homelands and music practices. As part of each case study, I include materials on local musicians and community actors who maintainand develop these traditions in northeast Ohio. Students also undertake projects that examine their own family’s immigration stories or research Cleveland Cultural Garden communities not taught in the class. As an outcome of this framework, students are exposed to the history of American immigration through the stories of individual northeast Ohio communities and are more thoroughly invested in the content by seeing themselves as belonging to these communities and their stories.
“Immigrant Hall of Honor’s Immigration Storytelling Guide: Encouraging Americans to connect with their roots and building shared experience with immigrants”
Jennifer Ring
The Immigrant Hall of Honor (IHH) is a nonprofit museum initiative dedicated to highlighting immigration in the United States through storytelling, cultural history, and public engagement. In recent years, political rhetoric framing immigrants—particularly undocumented immigrants—as criminals has contributed to an increasingly anti-immigrant climate in which immigrants are often portrayed as economic and cultural threats rather than contributors. This narrative persists despite extensive research demonstrating immigrants’ positive impact on job creation and cultural life in the United States. Recent research by IHH Board Member Dr. James Witte and colleagues, published in Population, Space and Place, shows that U.S. metropolitan areas with higher proportions of immigrants experience increased self-employment rates. Specifically, a 1% increase in the foreign-born population was associated with a 0.1% increase in self-employment. These findings align with broader data from the American Immigration Council, indicating that more than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Together, these data suggest that immigration often expands—rather than displaces—economic opportunity. Building on this and other research, IHH seeks to translate quantitative evidence into accessible, human-centered narratives by collecting and sharing family immigration stories in a broader social context. IHH is currently developing an online submission portal and a three-part Immigration Storytelling Guide designed to support ethical, accurate, and emotionally resonant storytelling. The guide addresses three audiences: immigrants telling their own stories; descendants documenting the experiences of living relatives; and individuals reconstructing ancestral immigration narratives in the absence of firsthand accounts. This guide is informed by best practices in oral history, remote interviewing, and contemporary immigration research. This 10-minute multimedia presentation will introduce the first edition of IHH’s Immigration Storytelling Guide and situate it as a tool in bridge-building through narrative practice. Drawing on pilot interviews with first-generation immigrants working in the arts and culture sector, this presentation will include a brief screening to demonstrate how structured storytelling can foster empathy, contextual understanding, and a sense of shared belonging. The session invites feedback from scholars and practitioners on how these tools might be strengthened to build community and shift public attitudes towards immigrants in the United States.
“Art, Memory, and Belonging: A Community Art Exhibition as Immigrant Storytelling in Action”
Anastasiia Chystiukhina
In 2024, I organized an art exhibition in Wisconsin featuring black-and-white drawings created by my friend - a Ukrainian artist, who documented the emotional reality of war, displacement, and memory. The exhibition, Shadows of War: Ukraine in Monochrome, became more than a cultural event — it became a space for connection between immigrants and the local American community. The exhibition was hosted in the Ukrainian bakery, which I co-founded after immigrating to the United States. This informal setting transformed the event into a shared community experience rather than a traditional gallery presentation. Visitors engaged not only with the artwork but with personal stories of migration, loss, resilience, and rebuilding life in a new country. Alongside the exhibition, we organized a community-based fundraising initiative supporting orphaned children and defenders in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Through storytelling, art, and food culture, the event created emotional understanding across cultural differences and strengthened relationships between immigrant and local communities. This reflects on how small, immigrant-led cultural initiatives can function as powerful tools of storytelling, healing, and belonging. It explores how art-based community events can: (1) build trust between immigrants and host communities, (2) create spaces for dialogue about migration and identity, (3) support humanitarian causes through cultural engagement, (4) preserve language, memory, and cultural identity. This talk is based on real experience organizing a community art exhibition after immigrating to the United States. It focuses on how small cultural initiatives can bring people together, build understanding, and support immigrant communities.
Panel 6: Performance, Spoken Word, and Oral Testimony
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
“From Leaving to Belonging: Spoken Word as Living Archive, Advocacy, and Policy Intervention”
Chair: Bertha Nibigira
I propose to participate in the symposium as an individual presenter and spoken word poet with lived experience of forced displacement. My presentation will feature original spoken word poetry addressing war, displacement, belonging, and U.S. immigration policy. Drawing from my experience as a former refugee and my practice within academic, international development, and policy-adjacent spaces, I examine spoken words as testimony, a community-building practice, and a form of public knowledge production. Spoken words are often dismissed as purely expressive; however, within migrant and refugee communities it functions as a living archive, preserving memory, naming structural violence, and articulating belonging across borders. Through curated performances and critical reflection, this presentation demonstrates how poetry translates complex migration histories and root causes of displacement into accessible narratives that counter deficit-based portrayals of immigrants and challenge exclusionary policy frameworks. The presentation engages three central questions of the symposium: how migrants use storytelling to claim belonging; how arts and culture can be mobilized for greater social and policy impact; and how creative practice can meaningfully inform advocacy and policymaking. I argue that spoken word, when intentionally situated, is not supplementary to research or policy, but a methodological intervention that shapes public imagination and creates dialogic entry points between directly impacted communities, scholars, and decision-makers. Poetry, in this context, is not ornamental; it is essential to human dignity, collective memory, and democratic participation.
“A Method for Communicating Across Languages and Cultures”
Hanna Salmon
Discussions of storytelling frequently center on the ways in which sharing stories can create or strengthen connections between people. However, those connections depend on mutual intelligibility: how does a storyteller communicate a narrative in a way that their listeners can hear? This question becomes even more complex when communicating in different languages, as the process of translation introduces new layers of meaning. Existing research on translation emphasizes that there is always a gap between the original language and the translated communication, raising the question of how to minimize or acknowledge that gap. Artistic translation challenges linguistic categories even further, requiring a critical examination of the nature and purpose of translation. These debates prompt us to consider the role of translation when communicating about immigration and displacement. How can we translate clearly, ethically, and impactfully in order to enable meaningful communication across languages and cultures? Professional storytellers frequently perform in translation. Analyzing storytellers’ artistic translations of their stories and performances can provide new insight into what makes translation effective and in which contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at international storytelling festivals, in conversation with studies in translation, voice, sound, and performance, this presentation considers what storytellers’ approaches to translation can teach us about impactful communication about and within contexts of immigration and displacement. By analyzing performances by a multilingual immigrant storyteller based in Canada and a storytelling duo who have pioneered an improvised live-translation technique in international settings, I demonstrate that successful storytelling-in-translation emerges from intimate connection and requires a distinct rhythm of engagement. I then discuss how these principles can guide the pace, preparation, environment, and goals of community gatherings and advocacy discussions focused on issues of immigration and displacement.
“Resisting Discrimination and Rebuilding Community through Stories”
Milbre Burch
I’ve spent nearly fifty years performing folk and fairy tales and original character monologues in service to social justice. My project, Tales from Beyond the Ban: Folktales from Libya, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen aptly embodies the symposium theme: “Leaving and Belonging: Making an Impact on Immigration and Displacement through Arts, Culture, and Storytelling.” Tales from Beyond the Ban interlaced traditional stories about displacement, hospitality and home with snippets of oral histories from my international graduate students at the University of Missouri. The project was inspired when their lives were upended by an executive order banning citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US. Most of my students held single-entry visas, meaning they could not go home – even to mark a parent’s death or celebrate a child’s birth – and expect to return to finish their doctoral studies. Spotlighting storytelling and story-listening as acts of resistance and support for marginalized communities, Tales from Beyond the Ban was presented in festivals, theatres and conferences, online and in person, across the US and in Canada. I’ve referenced it in workshops on performance for social change and in virtual post-show talkbacks featuring international graduate students and storytelling studies scholars. I’ve performed it as a fund-raising event for the Boston Immigration Accompaniment Network. In a time of great turmoil, the project remains a model for using verbal expressive arts as peaceful resistance and for community-building, pushing back against divisive policy making.
“Bridging Two Worlds: Verbal and Visual Narratives of Identity among Asian American Immigrant Women”
Haeyoon Chung
Immigrant-origin youth—defined as those born abroad or having at least one foreign-born parent—constitute a significant portion of the U.S. population and comprise nearly one third of all college-age individuals between 18 and 34 years old (Batalova & Fix, 2023). Identity development among these emerging adults is uniquely complex, as they occupy multiple cultural and social spaces while maintaining transnational connections to their countries of origin (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008). This study specifically examines identity development among Asian American emerging adult women as they navigate the oppressive intersection of gendered racism and systemic misogyny. Utilizing a pluralistic qualitative methodology (Frost, 2009), I integrate visual Identity Map drawings (Figure 1) with in-depth interviews to explore how participants use storytelling to dismantle dehumanizing caricatures that frame Asian women as submissive or fragile. Through these creative narratives, participants center family and heritage as anchors of an indomitable spirit, bridging their ethnic roots and American identities with radical agency. Findings demonstrate that participants deliberately subvert intersectional scripts of passivity and instead project themselves as formidable agents of cultural passage. This mapping methodology serves as a potent vehicle for self-advocacy and resistance, revealing the defiant resilience inherent in the development of immigrant origin emerging adult women. By highlighting these voices and creative self-expressions, the study contributes to contemporary scholarship on immigrant youth identity and offers culturally grounded insights for community building and policy development.
Keynote Performance and Conversation:
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
This panel presented by the Middle East Institute Arts and Culture Center and
George Mason University’s Institute for Immigration Research with support from the
AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies.
Stories of Belonging: Immigration, Art and Community
This panel brings together artists, cultural producers, community builders, and media specialists whose work centers the lived experiences of immigrants and refugees. Through storytelling, performance, and advocacy, the conversation explores how creative expression can reshape narratives of migration, cultivate a sense of belonging, and challenge dominant portrayals of displacement. Moderated by MEI’s Senior Director for Arts and Culture, Lyne Sneige, the panel features performances and interactive elements, offering participants the opportunity to engage with spoken word, music, comedy, and personal storytelling. More than a discussion, this program invites audiences into an immersive experience—one that highlights the power of artistic practice to amplify underrepresented voices and influence public understanding. Panelists will also examine how cross-sector collaboration among artists, researchers, advocates, and media specialists can translate creative work into meaningful social impact. Panelists include: Yasmin Elhady, Egyptian-Libyan American Comedian, attorney, and host of Hulu’s Muslim Matchmaker; Monna Kashfi, VP of Content and Communications at Welcome US. Senior media professional and seasoned creative producer with nearly two decades of experience in broadcast, documentary, and digital media production; Cara Mertes, Founder andDirector for International Resource for Impact & Storytelling and former director of JustFilms, the Ford Foundation’s creative visual storytelling initiative, and of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund, previously executive producer of the PBS documentary series, POV; Omar Offendum, Syrian-American rapper, spoken word poet, and theatrical storyteller known for his signature blend of Hip-Hop and Arabic poetry.
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Saturday, April 18
Panel 7: Digital, Visual, and Emerging Media Storytelling
9:30 AM -10:45 AM
“Belonging Is a Practice”
Chair: Teddy Almuktady
This presentation examines digital storytelling as a practice of belonging within immigrant and displaced communities, rather than solely a tool for visibility. In digital spaces, immigrant narratives are often shaped by pressures of legibility, virality, and audience expectation, which can reproduce extractive dynamics and narrow representations of lived experience. Drawing from community based digital storytelling work with immigrant, refugee, and queer diasporic communities, the presentation explores how stories circulate across platforms and audiences, and how meaning shifts as narratives travel, are reposted, and are detached from their original contexts. Rather than centering individual moments of recognition or exposure, the presentation focuses on the everyday narrative decisions that shape digital storytelling, including choices around consent, privacy, and audience. The talk interrogates the tension between advocacy-driven storytelling and the need for care, safety, and sustainability for storytellers, particularly those navigating intersecting forms of marginalization. It considers how digital storytelling practices can move beyond trauma-based narratives that treat pain as proof, toward approaches that support dignity, agency, and long-term belonging. By framing storytelling as a relational and ethical practice, the presentation argues that digital narratives can function as forms of bridge building that connect communities, shape public understanding, and inform advocacy conversations without erasing complexity. The presentation contributes to broader discussions on arts, culture, and narrative as sites of knowledge production within contexts of migration and displacement and invites reflection on how digital storytelling practices can support belonging rather than visibility alone.
“Ethnic Memes and Immigrant Belonging: Collective Narrative Generation on Instagram”
Karla Segovia
This paper examines ethnic memes on Instagram as contemporary cultural artifacts that document and reinterpret immigrant life in the United States. Far from being trivial or purely comedic, these memes operate as collective narrative–generating forms through which immigrants—particularly members of the second generation—articulate shared experiences of cultural negotiation, family dynamics, language brokering, and belonging. In doing so, they transform dispersed and often private tensions into recognizable patterns of immigrant life. This process fosters belonging through shared recognition of hardship and contributes to a digitally mediated form of social capital. Drawing on qualitative analysis of publicly available Instagram meme posts and their comment sections, the paper shows how users engage memes not only as consumers but as participants in collective narrative generation. Comment sections function as spaces where individuals contribute personal stories, reinterpret past experiences, and reframe moments of confusion, frustration, or intergenerational conflict as shared features of immigrant life rather than isolated personal struggles. Memes are tagged, reshared, and circulated within intimate networks, allowing them to operate simultaneously as public expressions of identity and as tools of relational communication. Building on Chamlee-Wright and Storr (2011)’s understanding of social capital as constituted in part by collective narratives that sustain community, this paper argues that ethnic memes extend narrative-based social capital into digitally networked spaces. Unlike traditional word-of-mouth transmission within bounded communities, these narratives circulate through algorithmically curated platforms that aggregate resonant experiences across dispersed populations. Because circulation is driven by engagement rather than formal membership, ethnic memes enable recognition across ethnic lines while grounding belonging in shared interpretation rather than stable ties. Digital humor, in this sense, becomes a significant and understudied site of immigrant sense-making and belonging.
“Sketching Haitian Transnational Information Experiences: The Role, Reach, and Risk of AI-Enhanced Photovoice”
Ana Ndumu
Can emerging research methods capture the breadth and capacity but also the liminality that encompasses the Haitian American experience? The presenter will share lessons and inspiration gained from a study driven by the question: How do Haitian American millennials portray and assign meaning to their transnational information worlds? U.S.-residing Haitian millennials took part in focus groups and photovoice sessions to depict their information worlds or, as posited by Burnett & Jaeger (2011) their social norms, social roles, information values, information behaviors, and boundaries. The researcher dials in on the facet of ‘boundary’ to argue that Haitian Americans transcend cultural, linguistic, and technological demarcations. The photovoice technique was modified such that participants described and depicted their realities using an AI drawing tool that recognizes Haitian Kreyol, English, and French. Medical, social science, and humanities scholarship substantiate that many Haitians are oral or audiovisual information actors (Finnegan, 2023) for whom trust and cultural context (Puttkamer et. al, 2022) situate information value (Lubetkin et. al, 2015). In the information sciences, however, Haitians are seldom considered in immigrant information behavior research, though a few information scientists are shedding light on technology and information in the lives of the Haitian diaspora, a long-standing and growing segment of the U.S. population. This study uncovered Haitian Americans’ multimodal, meaningful, and defiant information tactics. By positioning AI-generated art as a form of "visual storytelling," this presentation demonstrates how creative practice can be galvanized to articulate a deeper sense of belonging and bridge-building for migrants. These multimodal narratives offer a blueprint for translating ethnographicresearch into compelling visual data for advocacy and policymaking. However, this work also calls for reflections on the promise, problems, and ethics surrounding the use of generative AI with and for subjugated communities. The session will utilize a multimedia format to showcase these visual artifacts, inviting a dialogue on how arts-based research can better contribute to the visibility of multilingual immigrant vantage points. How best, then, can we apply information science epistemologies and techniques to represent Haitian Americans’ information abilities?
“Building Community on Campus: Leaving and Belonging Digital Storytelling Project”
Aditi Goel and Chris Vitello
Leaving & Belonging is a digital storytelling project that centers the lived experiences of George Mason University students as they navigate transitions and movement. The project asks a fundamental question: what does it mean to leave one “home,” and how does belonging take shape? By focusing on personal narratives, the project emphasizes shared human experiences of movement, change, and connection, while challenging rigid categories such as “immigrants” and “non-immigrants.” Through a multi-stage, collaborative process, the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research team partnered with campus offices and student organizations to recruit participants and expand storytelling across communities. We designed semi-structured interview questions that allowed individuals to share what felt most meaningful to them—whether a memory, person, place, food, or activity that shaped their sense of belonging during moments of transition. Interviews were conducted in multiple formats, including video, audio, and phone, to accommodate participants’ preferences and accessibility needs. These stories were then edited into short, under-three-minute digital narratives and disseminated through mainstream social media platforms, including Instagram, making them accessible and engaging for a wider audience. By amplifying these narratives, the project aims to (1) humanize migration and mobility through first-hand student experiences, (2) foster empathy and compassion across communities, and and (3) highlight both the joy and complexity of movement, including the realities that make leaving necessary.
Panel 8: Art under constraint/structural Violence
9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
“The Arts of Immigration Detention: A Case Study from Indonesia”
Chair: William Westerman
The Afghan community in Indonesia comprises around 7,500 individuals, about half of the peak number since 2000. Almost all were stopped in their attempt to reach Australia and held, at the behest of the Australian government, by Indonesian authorities for more than ten years. Almost all were from Afghanistan’s Hazara minority. In the beginning, many were held in immigration detention centers for several years, under deplorable conditions, only to be released to halfway houses and refugee camps under the auspices of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). These refugee centers were spread out among multiple islands on the archipelago, with minimal contact across communities. The emotional trauma suffered by these detainees and refugees has been widespread. There have been twenty known suicides, a relatively high proportion for a refugee population, and many more unsuccessful attempts, hospitalization for depression, and deaths from preventable medical conditions, some exacerbated by the terrible living and psychological conditions. Nonetheless, as people will do in captive situations, a small number have turned to the arts to make their condition bearable. While a few have participated in traditional arts such as music, sewing, and quilt making, others have turned to less traditional art forms. Though not allowed to work under Indonesian law, there have been two filmmakers (one of whom has since become a professional movie director), and a third in production, painters, photographers, and visual artists, and at least one writer who, despite having no formal education, taught himself enough English while a captive, through YouTube, that he was able to publish articles and complete a memoir in English before he was finally sponsored to settle in New Zealand, where he now writes a Substack. Several of the artists have become associated with art and photography societies in Indonesia, and at least one met his wife that way. Based on interviews with these artists, and ongoing relationships over the past six years, and in preparation for a planned exhibition of their work, this presentation will focus on the question of the arts in situations of refugee detention and warehousing, as nations roll back refugee protections, resettlement, and protracted temporary status.
“Storytelling as Policy Reimagining: Everyday Peace in Refugee Shelters”
Fabricio Carrijo
Forced displacement continues to rise globally, and, in this context, the provision of humanized refugee accommodation has become a pressing humanitarian and policy imperative. While shelters and camps are supposed to offer protection from aspects such as the weather and violence, they frequently become spaces marked by tension, precariousness, and layered forms of violence. Within these settings, displaced people’s voices and lived experiences are often silenced or reduced to stereotyped narratives of victimhood that obscure their agency. This presentation explores the ways in which storytelling within ethnographic research with displaced populations can be mobilized as epistemic interventions with the potentiality of reshaping humanitarian practice and policymaking. It examines how refugees’ narratives and visual accounts can inform more context-sensitive approaches to shelter provision and peacebuilding within these spaces, challenging dominant humanitarian governance and policymaking, while positioning refugees lived experiences as a source of policy insight. Informed by a decolonial approach, the session centers refugees’ experiences, images, stories, and situated knowledges, foregrounding how displaced people exercise agency through the development of everyday peace strategies that offer grounded alternatives to top-down peacebuilding and humanitarian governance models. The presentation also critically reflects on the methodological and ethical challenges involved in translating storytelling into policy and possible avenues to address them without reinforcing hierarchical or extractive dynamics. The discussion draws on Dr. Fabricio Carrijo’s extensive multi-sited, participatory ethnographic research conducted with Venezuelan displaced individuals living in shelters in Boa Vista, in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as with Ukrainian refugees residing in shelters in Poland. The research employed a mixed-methods design combining participant observation, interviews, photography, and surveys. While grounded in Brazil and Poland, the insights generated through these experiences resonate across displacement contexts globally, including the United States, offering critical perspectives for rethinking shelter provision and peacebuilding in humanitarian settings.
“The Right to Pleasure: A Case Study of Refugee DJs on the Greek Island of Lesvos”
Jeniffer Sherill
This presentation and working dissertation chapter explores Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to participate in cultural life and enjoy the arts, through the experiences of refugee DJs on the Greek Island of Lesvos. While refugees are generally portrayed in media as helpless victims or grateful recipients of aid, and though as creators of art, they are often expected to focus on topics of trauma and displacement, this research presents a narrative in which making music simply for pleasure is a political act. Through participatory observation and interviews with DJs, bar owners, and patrons, this case study examines how young refugees are claiming their right to cultural participation and agency by creating and consuming music focused on pleasure. Rather than conforming to the idea that their art must serve as a performance of their past trauma, refugee DJs create weekly sonic experiences that center celebration, community, and the pleasures of dancing. With setlists highlighting Afrobeats, reggaeton and hip-hop, these DJs focus on musical themes of aspirational wealth, sex, and love. Their pleasure-based musical choices challenge frameworks that constrain displaced people to only being able to share expressions of the circumstances of their displacement. Instead, these DJs demonstrate that the right to cultural participation includes the right to an artistic expression of pleasure.
“Storytelling in Refugee Camps: Cultivating Community, Building Identity, and Preserving Culture”
Sara Green
Stories carry our history, our culture, and our traditions from generation to generation. Storytelling preserves and perpetuates this intangible cultural heritage while creating an emotional connection between the storyteller and the listener. By April 2025, more than 122 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. When displacement shatters the familiar rhythms of life, what remains? In 2003, I established Art for Refugees in Transition (A.R.T.) to illuminate and address the complex challenges refugees face beyond immediate survival needs. The questions that drive our work are deeply human: What does it mean to start over in an unfamiliar place, far from the comfort of home? Where do people find the strength and hope to rebuild? How do they create community? How do they reconnect with the threads of identity, heritage, and culture that define who they are? For the symposium, Leaving and Belonging: Making an Impact on Immigration and Displacement through Arts, Culture, and Storytelling, hosted by the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University, I propose to discuss the role of storytelling in three of A.R.T.’s programs: storytelling in a Burmese refugee camp, where the community has no written language, only an oral tradition to preserve their stories, their history, and their identity; and two programs in a Palestinian refugee camp, where elders teach the younger generation traditional Palestinian embroidery and the stories and meaning behind the patterns, and a lullaby program where the stories and songs of the community brought a sense of calm, safety, and comfort in the midst of war. Our sense of self emerges from the communities that raise us—parents, grandparents, neighbors, and cultural traditions passed down through generations. These same sources become our refuge during our darkest moments, when fear, loneliness, and confusion threaten to overwhelm us. They form the bedrock of identity, built upon culture, heritage, and belonging. “These are the details that tell the world that we are not invisible, that our heritage, our traditions, our history, our stories matter,” said one of the elders A.R. T. worked with in Palestine.
Panel 9: Musical Storytelling with Refugee Families
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Presented by staff members from Solutions in Hometown Connections and Clarice Presents at University of Maryland, and artists from Sound Impact
This is a workshop for community based artists and practitioners to learn about working with displaced communities, gaining insights into community-building, and how this work is a learning exchange that impacts everyone involved.Solutions in Hometown Connections (SHC) helps refugees and newcomers overcome the challenges of settling in a new community. They primarily serve women with young children who face isolation and lack basic literacy and education, and are therefore unable to participate in workforce entry or career transition programs. SHC helps these women and children overcome these barriers through inclusive programs that build confidence, and are tailored to help each participant achieve their own personal goals. Through its Voices of Prince George’s County (VoPGC) program, Clarice Presents engages Sound Impact to help the women and children improve their English skills and combat isolation through musical storytelling. This session will be a combination of hands-on workshop, a deep dive into the program design, and discussion about triumphs and challenges as we continue into the third year of working together. In Part One, SHC staff will give the background and current context of participants - mostly women and children from Afghanistan who arrived in the U.S. within the last 5 or so years. The staff will explain the significance and importance of the space created by these workshops: they provide the opportunity for some of the most vulnerable and often sidelined members of their community - women and young children - to both tell their stories and memories of displacement and exile, and also create shared experiences of culture and belonging in their new home. Next, Sound Impact members will show images from workshops at Parkview Gardens (the apartment complex where the families live) and describe the process of co-creating new music and stories. In Part Two, The Sound Impact team will lead symposium participants in a musical storytelling workshop, followed by a discussion for everyone about the work and its impact.
Panel 10: Visual Arts and Material Culture
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
“Claiming Space, Claiming Identity: Mural-Making as Visual Advocacy in
Immigrant Communities”
Chair: Galih Sakti
Across contexts of migration and displacement, artistic practices have long served as sites of memory, survival, and political expression. Yet within U.S. immigration research and policy, arts-based practices are still frequently treated as supplementary or symbolic, rather than as forms of knowledge production and advocacy. Drawing on my work as a mural educator in New York City public schools and my broader engagement with immigrant and refugee communities, this presentation examines mural-making as a visual arts practice through which immigrant youth articulate belonging, assert identity, and advocate for recognition within institutional and public spaces. The presentation focuses on case studies from collaborative mural projects conducted in public schools in the Bronx, where immigrant students engage visual storytelling to connect personal migration narratives with broader histories of colonialism, displacement, and racialized exclusion. Through collective design, image-making, and discussion, murals operate as accessible and public-facing texts, translating lived experience into visual narratives that circulate beyond classrooms into school communities, neighborhoods, and civic contexts. In this way, mural-making enables forms of advocacy that do not rely on fluency in dominant policy or academic language, making visible immigrant knowledge that is often marginalized or silenced. Grounded in postcolonial theory and arts-based research methodologies, this work positions murals not only as creative expression but as pedagogical and epistemic interventions uniquely afforded by visual arts. Unlike other art forms, murals occupy shared, highly visible spaces, allowing immigrant youth to claim presence, narrate identity, and challenge dominant representations within everyday environments. At the same time, these projects reveal tensions around visibility, representation, and power, highlighting how visual advocacy can both disrupt and be constrained by institutional frameworks. By centering murals as tools of identity advocacy and knowledge production, this presentation contributes to conversations on how visual arts, culture, and storytelling can more effectively inform immigration advocacy and policy. It invites scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to recognize visual arts not as illustrative supplements, but as critical methods through which immigrant communities assert identity, build belonging, and engage public discourse. Note: This presentation will include visual material from collaborative mural projects in NYC public schools.
“Immigration, Art, Narrative and Libraries”
Peter Klubek
This working presentation explores an in-progress body of portrait-based research at the intersection of immigration, art, and narrative. The project is not a completed exhibition, but an evolving inquiry into how portraiture can function as visual storytelling and arts-based research. The paintings center on faces that do not rely on literal likeness. Instead of reproducing physical features, the portraits approach the face as narrative: an accumulation of memory, culture, displacement, resilience, and knowledge. Gesture, color, texture, and fragmentation are used to surface interior life, inviting viewers to read the image rather than simply recognize it. Embedded within the painted surfaces are fragments from discarded library books, archival materials, and policy language. These textual layers operate both structurally and conceptually, reflecting how migrant experiences are shaped by documentation systems, institutional language, and shifting political frameworks. The layering of image and text mirrors nonlinear histories and the realities of living within structures that often reduce individuals to statistics or rhetoric. As a working symposium contribution, this session will invite dialogue around process, ethics, and application. How can arts-based methods complement traditional immigration research? Where are the gaps between policy discourse and lived experience? What best practices can ensure dignity, agency, and collaboration when working with migration-centered narratives? Rather than presenting finished conclusions, this session offers the project as a developing model for integrating humanities-based research into advocacy and institutional spaces. Participants will be invited to reflect collectively on strategies for using visual art to humanize discourse, preserve complexity, and build more responsive approaches at the intersection of immigration and the arts.
“Images of the Dispossessed”
Forough Sehat
Images of the Dispossessed is a curatorial and research-based project that explores displacement, media representation, and belonging through local histories in Monroe County, Indiana. Developed in collaboration with community archives and oral histories, the project centers narratives of families and communities who were forcibly displaced due to the creation of Lake Monroe and other state-led development projects. By bringing together archival news, maps, personal stories, and contemporary visual interventions, the exhibition reflects on how displacement is not only a global phenomenon tied to migration and borders but also a deeply local and ongoing experience shaped by policy and uneven power relations. The project focuses on the displacement of rural communities in Monroe County in the 1950s and 1960s, when families were forced to leave their homes and land to make way for reservoir construction as part of an environmental control project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Entire towns, farmlands, churches, and cemeteries were demolished and submerged or erased from the map, fundamentally reshaping both the physical landscape and the social fabric of the region. Through archival records and community memory, Images of the Dispossessed traces how these policies of “development” produced long-term loss, grief, and rupture, while also shaping contemporary relationships to land and community in southern Indiana. By situating local displacement histories alongside broader conversations around immigration and forced movement, this work challenges narrow definitions of who is considered “displaced” and what displacement looks like in the United States. The project foregrounds the emotional and intergenerational impacts of loss of land, home, and community, while also considering the ethical responsibilities of working with community histories and trauma. This presentation will share key curatorial strategies, challenges, and reflections from the project, and will invite discussion around how arts-based, community-centered storytelling can contribute to broader conversations about advocacy and policy in migration-related contexts.
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Lunch Program
Participatory Art Making Workshop: “Creative Café”
Jenna Sears
Throughout this workshop, I focus on the Creative Cafe, a monthly participatory arts education workshop I co-founded with artists who resettled to Bloomington, Indiana (USA). Part of the collective strategy of the Cafe was to use performance and conversation around resettlement in order to help to shape a creative geography distinctive to Bloomington. Interlocutors expressed that they wanted to create a space that highlighted performances of new residents while also dispelling misunderstandings about refugee resettlement. Lastly, they wanted to have a space where artists across Bloomington could connect and strategize to help one another. The Creative Cafe has been running monthly since October 2024, and it consists of an open mic, a participatory arts workshop (from painting, poetry, dance, songwriting, and theatre), and a small discussion after the workshop. I help to lead and participate in the workshops alongside volunteer artists, and people donate snacks and arts supplies. By using creative workshops and incorporating my own artistic practice, I highlight the ways that performance, alongside ethnography, can shape sentiment of belonging, citizenship, and political strategizing. I am interested in conducting an abridged version of the Creative Cafe for the symposium, where participants could participate in a collaborative arts project while interacting with materials, stories, and policy reports on refugee resettlement. Afterwards, I wish to analyze, through a precirculated paper, how community arts projects can better invest and attune to people navigating refugee resettlement through education and collaboration. I am interested in asking how community arts practices can be used as a space to shift rhetoric on refugee resettlement and strategize towards migrant advocacy and local action. Throughout, I ask: How can participatory arts practices reshape community sentiment on refugee resettlement? How are the aesthetics of citizenship and belonging conformed/dissented through creative traditions such as music, visual art, spoken word, and theatre? What kinds of expectations do people have of arts programming in resettlement spaces? How can arts programming accommodate various geographies of artmaking?
Film screening: “The End/ Beginning: Cambodia” (47 min.)
Sophal Ear
This session offers a viewing and discussion of The End/Beginning: Cambodia, a 47-minute award-winning documentary recounting my family’s escape from the Khmer Rouge. The film tells the story of a Cambodian family’s survival amid mass violence and forced displacement, tracing a path from genocide to refugee resettlement. It centers lived experience while exploring how memory, narrative, and identity evolve across borders and generations. Following the screening, I will facilitate an extended dialogue on the intersections of storytelling, immigration, trauma, and public policy. The conversation will invite participants to consider how personal narratives can challenge erasure, build communities of belonging, and inform more humane approaches to immigration and refugee issues. Questions will focus on how creative works travel beyond artistic spaces, shaping classroom discussions, influencing public attitudes, and offering policymakers a deeper understanding of displacement as a human experience rather than an abstraction.
Workshops
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Workshop 4: “Ethical Storytelling and Arts in Community-Based Protection”
Nino Kvirkvelia
This interactive workshop will draw on my lived experience as an internally displaced person (IDP) in Georgia and my professional work as a Community-Based Protection Associate with UNHCR to provide hands-on, ethically grounded methods for integrating storytelling and visual arts into community-based protection, advocacy, and policy engagement. Participants will gain practical tools for listening to, documenting, and amplifying the voices of displaced communities. The workshop will emphasize human-centered and trauma-informed approaches. Refugee narratives are often misrepresented: they are either objectified for pity or portrayed as threats, obscuring the truth that displaced people are “one of us” with shared human stories. Social media and mainstream media amplify these dynamics, making ethical storytelling both challenging and essential. Participants will explore strategies to create narratives that are authentic, empowering, and responsibly shared, while remaining compelling to audiences. The workshop will focus on two complementary approaches to ethical storytelling. First, participants will engage with narrative interviews and community storytelling, learning how to design safe, trauma-informed interviews that build trust and allow participants to share their experiences in their own terms. Drawing on examples from IDP communities in Georgia and participatory the US, we will explore how storytelling practices, community networks, and online groups can support identity, foster belonging, and ethically surface protection needs. Second, participants will explore visual storytelling for memory and advocacy. I will also present videos and other visual materials from past projects, illustrating how ethical storytelling can be practiced, the types of messages it conveys, and the ways it shapes public perception and policy engagement. Through these methods, participants will gain practical experience in designing human-centered storytelling protocols, ethically collecting and sharing narratives, and translating personal stories into actionable advocacy or policy outputs. Discussions will include the importance of symbolic recognition, such as IDP status in Georgia, and its role in reinforcing both individual identity and collective belonging. The workshop emphasizes that storytelling is not just about representation; it is about empowerment, ethical engagement, and creating narratives that are both compelling and honest. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain tools, and strategies for ethically sharing stories, preserving human dignity, and using arts-based storytelling to strengthen protection, foster social cohesion, and influence policy responsibly.
Workshop 5: “Planning for People: Cultural Strategies for Environmental Adaptation and Migration”
Maida Owens & Shana Walton
Increasing population shifts are predicted in the future resulting in communities throughout the United States receiving newcomers. This workshop provides an introduction to climate adaptation and migration in addition to strategies and resources to help prepare communities to welcome newcomers, whether they are climate migrants, refugees, or immigrants. Because environmental and cultural changes disproportionately impact marginalized communities, planners should avoid "color-blind" policies, which often replicate past injustices. Discussions include folklorists’ roles, players and issues in your location, assessing your situation, and taking action. Part One - An Introduction to Environmental Adaptation, Migration and Relocation Planning: Part one of this workshop introduces key environmental planning concerns, specifically adaptation, migration, and relocation planning, with a focus on understanding how cultural strategies can help communities address disruption and adapt whether they are staying, migrating, or receiving newcomers. The overview includes a discussion of why people migrate and migration variables. This workshop is particularly useful for individuals new to this work and offers tools planners can use to help a group delve deeper into understanding the realities of local risks and the complexities of migration and relocation. Modules include: Environmental Change Overview/Assessing Risk; Migration Overview: Adapting in Place; Why Migrate? and Migration Variables; Including Culture in Migration Planning; and Using Stories as Tools. Part Two - Planning for People: Cultural Strategies for Environmental Adaptation and Migration: The second part of the workshop explores how culture and tradition are resources planners can use to help their communities adapt in times of transition and disruption. The workshop includes an overview of what culture and tradition mean for planners and offers examples of uses of culture that build community cohesion. In this interactive workshop, participants use tools provided to evaluate their own community’s risk of migration or possibility of receiving migrants and then identify possible partners and cultural resources. Finally, the workshop offers strategies to activate their community culture as a resource during periods of transition and disruption – including tools such as storytelling, public art, celebrations of heritage, community projects, and more. These strategies are equally valuable for those staying in place and those migrating, both newcomers and long-term residents.
Workshop 6: "Illegible Economies: Policy Lessons from Immigrant Communal Savings”
Sonya Squires-Caesar
What happens when a time-honored financial system serving immigrant communities remains invisible to policy? This 90-minute experiential workshop shares insights drawn from dissertation research, Money Tales: Tangled Financial Socialization of U.S. Immigrants’ Use of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs). ROSCAs are communal savings groups in which members pool money and take turns receiving the collective pot. Operating within close-knit networks rarely captured by conventional surveys, these community economies remain overlooked despite their effectiveness, adaptability, and longevity. ROSCAs function as community economies—collective financial practices prioritizing mutual aid over individual accumulation. Although research on U.S. immigrant ROSCAs remains limited, existing literature and this dissertation show that some immigrants employ dual approaches: use of formal financial services alongside communal savings. ROSCAs provide zero-interest capital, emergency funds, and trust-based accountability—features formal banks are not designed to replicate. Yet financial inclusion policy often frames immigrant practices as deficits rather than as enduring systems worthy of institutional support. Grounded in non-extractive research that positions immigrant communities as expert storytellers, this workshop demonstrates how recognizing community economies can expand policy approaches to financial diversity and immigrant integration. The session begins with a curated exhibit of handmade illegible artist books exploring what disappears when policy requires written documentation and how knowledge transmits in visual forms. Attendees then engage in two activities: (1) Memoryscaping and Illegible Page Creation, mapping formative money messages; and (2) a ROSCA simulation based on oral agreements and trust. Through participation, practitioners experience how financial knowledge moves beyond readable text, grounding the Build Your Own Economy (BYOE) dissertation framework. Participants leave equipped with policy principles—Recognition Over Replacement, Support Over Regulation, Learning Over Teaching, and Anti-Deficit Framing—alongside recommendations that acknowledge non-textual knowledge, support complementary financial systems, invest in community-led mutual aid, and position immigrant communities as expert co-collaborators rather than passive subjects.
Panel 11: Changing Attitudes through storytelling, Festival, and Film
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
“Festivals as Governance Infrastructure: Storytelling, Culture, and Immigrant
Belonging in Roanoke”
Chair: Vincent Maluwa
U.S. cities remain underexamined within migration and displacement scholarship, particularly in relation to how these practices function within broader systems of urban governance. While recent studies point to the civic potential of cultural initiatives, few have theorized them as active infrastructures through which refugee and immigrant inclusion, public perception, and policy climates are produced and negotiated. This paper proposes to conceptualize arts-based public festivals as governance assemblages in which municipal actors, civil society organizations, migrant communities, and private supporters collaboratively though unevenly co-produce narratives of visibility, belonging, and civic recognition. Using The Local Colors Festival in Roanoke, Virginia as an empirical site, the project will examine how cultural performance and storytelling operate as connective mechanisms linking municipal inclusion frameworks, community experience, and public imagination. Roanoke is home to more than forty migrant and refugee communities and has been recognized for its immigrant inclusion efforts making it a strategic location to explore how culture becomes embedded within local approaches to immigrant reception. Drawing on theories of governmentality, cultural citizenship, narrative power, and the politics of belonging, the study will analyze how artistic expression both enables recognition and channels inclusion into symbolic forms. 2. The research will employ ethnographic observation of festival spaces and planning processes, semi-structured interviews with organizers, city actors, performers, and migrant participants, and analysis of institutional materials and media narratives. This approach will explore how migrants negotiate visibility within curated cultural spaces, how empathy and civic openness are publicly staged, and where tensions emerge between symbolic belonging and persistent structural inequalities related to housing, labor, and legal precarity. By mapping power relations across this multi-actor assemblage, the project argues that immigrant incorporation is actively governed through cultural collaboration rather than formal policy alone. The findings aim to contribute to arts-based intervention scholarship and immigration research by theorizing culture and storytelling as central infrastructures of contemporary immigrant governance and belonging.
“The National Folk Festival: Building Bridges of Belonging in the Public Square”
Kayt Novak
This presentation will detail the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) long history, since 1934 of honoring the finest traditional artists from cultural communities from across the nation. These public programs celebrate the artistic traditions of all Americans, including immigrant, refugee, minority, and underrepresented communities. It is the NCTA’s mission to showcase the culture and traditions of Americans from every corner of the country and to highlight the artistic contributions of groups that have been in the US for millennia, along with the newest communities that make their home here. The NCTA has continued to do this work in many different local and national political climates and eras. While not explicitly political, the NCTA’s public programs build support and appreciation for these communities over time, creating stronger bonds within their neighborhoods. In each host city or region, the NCTA presents artists that resonate with the communities where they perform. This intentional programming can bring out new audiences, expose new cultures and sounds to returning audiences, and create better social understanding and appreciation between groups. Also notable is the NCTA’s work with immigrant and refugee communities and programs. For example, in 2025 we highlighted the Lowell, MA, Cambodian community to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge. This is just one example of how the NCTA looks at a region's native and immigrant populations to program its festivals, ensuring that everyone is represented.
“P’alante: Storytelling, Belonging, and Narrative Power in a Municipal Immigrant Community P’alante"
Jake Savage
P’alante: Stories Moving Somerville Forward is a community-based visual storytelling project that centers immigrant resilience, belonging, and forward movement through photography and film. Developed by local photographer Mario Quiroz in collaboration with the City of Somerville’s Public Library, Office of Immigrant Affairs, Somerville Media Center, and community partners, P’alante documents the everyday lives of immigrants—small business owners, long-term renters, new homeowners, recent graduates, and young families—who continue to move their communities forward despite structural and personal challenges. Rooted in the Spanish expression “p’alante” (forward), the project frames migration not solely through trauma or deficit, but through endurance, agency, and collective strength. By pairing portrait photography with narrative film, P’alante creates accessible, human centered stories that invite broader audiences to engage with immigration beyond policy abstractions. The exhibition has been displayed in public libraries across Somerville, intentionally situating immigrant stories within civic and cultural spaces that are open to all. This presentation will explore P’alante as a model for arts-based municipal storytelling that bridges community narrative, public engagement, and local policy environments. We will discuss the collaborative process behind the project, including partnerships between artists, city government, media producers, and immigrant residents, as well as the intentional choices made to ensure dignity, trust, and shared ownership of stories. The session will conclude with facilitated discussion on how arts and storytelling can be leveraged by local governments and community institutions to foster belonging, shift narratives, and inform more inclusive immigration related practices.
Panel 12: Learning Belonging: Literacy, Storytelling, and Community Practices
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
“Beyond the Classroom Walls: Field Trips for Real Life ESOL Learning”
Chair: Ahoo Salem
Community-Based Literacy Organizations (CBLOs) are uniquely positioned to support refugee and migrant education by leveraging partnerships and providing cross-sectoral literacy services, including arts and culture activities that foster belonging, civic engagement, and social inclusion. This submission highlights one such program at Blue Ridge Literacy, a CBLO in Roanoke, Virginia, that extends functional literacy beyond the classroom by integrating language learning with practical, everyday skills. The “Beyond the Classroom Walls” project enhances adult immigrant and refugee learners’ English proficiency through immersive, real-life experiences while fostering connections to the broader community. Supported by Roanoke City’s Arts and Culture Department, the initiative incorporates structured field trips to local museums and performing arts venues into each semester of ESOL instruction. Over the past four years, learners have visited museums, attended opera and ballet performances, and participated in singing and theater workshops. These experiences enable learners to practice English in authentic contexts, engage with cultural institutions, share stories from their home
countries, and build friendships. This presentation will showcase the project’s design and execution through images, highlighting benefits, challenges, and partnership strategies. Through case studies and reflective discussion, symposium participants will gain insights into how arts-integrated learning helps host communities engage with the cultural and linguistic diversity of immigrant and refugee populations, fostering trust, mutual respect, and belonging. By integrating arts and culture into language learning, “Beyond the Classroom Walls” demonstrates an innovative approach to advancing English proficiency, enriching educational experiences, and promoting social inclusion. The presentation will also explore how CBLO-led arts engagement can inform research and programming that support adult immigrants and refugees as they navigate identity, build community, and share experiences across a range of lived realities.
“Q’aa, Puentes, Bridges: Storytelling in Three Languages to Connect Communities”
Sherrel Rieger and María Luz García
Our presentation will invite dialogue about the use of printed materials in Indigenous immigrant languages and the possibilities of new and strengthened community connections. We have been working with Maya communities for over 25 years. Rieger has worked with Maya immigrants from Guatemala who are now living in Ohio as a high school teacher and as a member of a community-based organization called Puentes that seeks to build bridges among different communities in rural northeast Ohio. García has worked as a linguistic anthropologist with speakers of the Ixil Mayan language first in Guatemala and now in the United States, both in Ohio and Virginia. Working together with a team of Ixiles in Guatemala, we produced a series of trilingual Ixil-Spanish-English books for use in both the United States and Guatemala. We have been working with schools, libraries, and non-profit organizations to explore the ways that these materials can serve as a resource to different kinds of community members (those who are primarily English speaking, Ixil speakers, second-generation Ixiles who feel most comfortable in Spanish, or speakers of other Mayan languages, among others). We are aware of the connections between Ixil communities in Ohio and those in Virginia, and we are excited to explore how the experiences of different immigrant communities and their relationships to language, storytelling, and belonging can inform our own work.
“Using Performing Arts to Lift Immigrant Stories”
Sally Nobinger
For years, The Immigrant Learning Center has used performing arts as a tool to help our students share their stories, connect with others, and continue improving their English in a creative context. From the early 2000s to shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic, The ILC had a theater class in which students would write original plays about their experiences as newcomers to the United States. These plays were performed both inside the school and in public spaces. From 2021 to 2023, The ILC had a partnership with American Repertory Theater in which students signed up to participate in a theater workshop series that culminated in a devised performance at Harvard University. Both programs allowed students to tell their stories and connect with their classmates, and importantly, they allowed the broader non-immigrant community to hear and reflect on immigrant voices. Currently, The ILC has a partnership with a local discovery-based filmmaking company called Film Building. Film building’s mission is to “[transform] communities by creating collaborative visual storytelling experiences that bridge cultural divides.” The partnership involves a series of workshops in which Film building founder/artist, Tom Flint, comes and leads ILC students in co-creating short films around a chosen theme. Students work in small groups to produce the films, fostering teamwork, technology, and visual storytelling skills. The series concludes with a screening event in which the students’ films are screened and discussed with a live audience. All of these creative efforts have made one thing very clear to the ILC: performative storytelling is powerful and empowering in the adult immigrant community. From an ESOL program perspective, it’s a wonderfully unique way to have students grow their English and gain confidence speaking in front of people. It allows them to express themselves, build bonds within their community, and quite simply: to have fun. Furthermore, it is an excellent way to build a bridge between immigrant communities and the broader public. Few things get to the heart faster than an emotional or inspiring story. In this presentation, I’ll talk about these performing arts programs that The Immigrant Learning Center has supported over the years – what it took and takes to make them happen, the outcomes, and why this type of work is transformational.
“Beyond Visibility: Art, Storytelling, and the Everyday Practice of Belonging”
Lola Okunola
Belonging is often described as an aspiration or emotional outcome, yet for immigrants and displaced communities it is an ongoing, negotiated practice shaped by visibility, narrative, and participation in civic life. Arts, culture, and storytelling play a powerful role in this process, influencing not only how communities see themselves but also how they are perceived, welcomed, and supported within the broader social fabric. This presentation explores creative practice as essential infrastructure for belonging rather than a complementary or symbolic addition to community-building efforts. Lola Okunola draws from her role at Welcoming America, a national organization dedicated to helping communities become more inclusive and welcoming to newcomers. Through her work advancing regional initiatives across the southern United States, she has witnessed how narrative strategies and cultural expression can shift public attitudes, strengthen cross-cultural relationships, and create the conditions necessary for more responsive local policies. Her perspective is further informed by her parallel career as an internationally exhibited mixed media visual artist whose work explores identity, heritage, and cultural continuity. This presentation highlights examples from community-based initiatives where storytelling and creative engagement have helped humanize complex policy conversations, interrupt deficit-based narratives about immigrants, and foster spaces where long-time residents and newcomers can see themselves as part of a shared future. It also examines the tension between symbolic representation and structural change, inviting participants to consider how arts-based approaches can move beyond awareness toward measurable community impact. Rather than presenting a finished model, this session encourages collective reflection on how practitioners, researchers, artists, and policymakers can more intentionally integrate cultural strategies into immigration work. At a time when questions of migration and belonging continue to shape the national landscape, creative practice offers a vital pathway toward building communities where everyone has the opportunity to feel seen, valued, and at home.
Film screening: “It Is All About Palestine: A Documentary” (40 min.)
Dina AbouZeid
Set against the backdrop of recent student encampments and civic mobilizations across Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, this documentary examines the experiences of three university students whose engagement with global justice issues draws them into a period of heightened campus activism. Through in-depth interviews and observational footage, the film documents how student participation in collective action intersects with academic life, institutional governance, and public order. Rather than centering protest as spectacle, the film approaches this moment as a contemporary case study in higher education, freedom of expression, and civic participation. It explores how universities respond to dissent, how disciplinary frameworks are applied, and how students navigate the personal, academic, and legal consequences of public engagement. By relying on first-hand testimony and lived experience, the documentary adds additional perspectives to a highly debated historical moment—one often analyzed through policy, media narratives, or external commentary, but less frequently through direct participant accounts. These narratives introduce underrepresented viewpoints and illuminate dimensions of the case that remain largely unexamined in formal discourse. I present this work to an immigration symposium from the perspective of a filmmaker committed to ethical, human-centered inquiry. The United States is an immigration nation, with more than 48 million foreign-born residents; in Virginia alone, immigrants account for approximately 2% of the population. The students featured in this film embody layered social and cultural backgrounds shaped by migration, transnational identity, and inherited historical memory. Their experiences offer insight into how immigrant and first-generation communities engage with democratic institutions, particularly in moments of political tension. By foregrounding individual stories within a broader structural context, the film encourages a nuanced understanding of how migration, civic participation, and institutional power intersect. It invites scholars and policymakers to consider how first-hand narratives and diverse voices can inform more responsive, inclusive, and resilient democratic frameworks.