Unsettling Solidarity through Co-Creative Practices with Forced Migrants

In this presentation, we explore the role of emotions in fostering and reshaping co-creative collaborations with forced migrants. Drawing on decolonial and feminist perspectives that recognize emotions as fundamental to (re)configuring power, we engage in a dialogue between our two PhD projects, focused on forced migrants in South Africa and the USA, respectively. Aware of our position as outsiders to the communities we aim to engage with, we examine the challenging emotions that emerged and fluctuated as we sought to cultivate critical and caring co-creative research projects grounded in practices of solidarity. We begin by situating emotions as contextual sensations, entangled in social grammars of race, class, and gender. This perspective is crucial as we locate emotions in contexts such as South Africa and the USA, where deep-rooted inequalities continue to marginalize communities outside the university. In the face of pervasive structures of oppression and violence, where forced migrants are disproportionately disadvantaged, we acknowledge the complexities of difficult relationships, recognizing that negative emotions like disappointment and suspicion are as important as positive ones such as trust and empathy to enable solidarity. By embracing friction and unresolved conflicts, scholars can avoid one-dimensional portrayals of collaboration and produce more nuanced, ethical research. This requires a relational approach that prioritizes humility and remains open to navigating discomfort and difference.