Zoekresultaten

Understanding Hybrid Space: How Media Change Experiences of Being There

Migration and human displacement: Global dialogue on the contribution of occupational science

Global issues, including the current pandemic and ongoing climate change, shape voluntary and forced international migration flows in inequitable ways. Anti-immigrant discourses in the Global North seek to capitalize on public concerns about border control. Meanwhile, the greatest immigration challenges are borne by countries in the Global South. The majority of refugees who are forcibly displaced by war, political violence, poverty, and environmental disasters seek refuge in neighbouring regions where many states lack the capacity to adequately support them. Given these challenges, it is imperative for occupational scientists to work collaboratively to support equitable occupational possibilities for immigrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons. During this dialogic session we will 1) outline useful theoretical approaches for understanding how migration shapes engagement in occupations; 2) discuss specific ethical considerations and methods for studying migration and its occupational implications; and 3) share promising practices for working with people from migration backgrounds. Each topic will be introduced through a brief presentation from one of the co-authors sharing vignettes from their own research and professional experiences to ignite discussions. Following each of the three presentations, participants will be grouped strategically to build networks among those with similar interests. This may include grouping participants who share a language.>What are the gaps in occupation-based research on global migration, and how can these be collaboratively addressed?>How can occupational science contribute to discussions within migration studies?>What occupational concepts are most useful for studying different migrant populations?

‘Doing’ integration: Occupational perspective on discursive power of citizen initiative’s with refugees

Citizens have responded to newcomers in the Netherlands with acts of solidarity and programmes to support integration, often in response to increasingly restrictive government policies. In a previously published study by the primary author, a critical discourse analysis was conducted of texts used in mandatory government integration programmes. Findings showed that texts discursively construct the “modern Us” the “unmodern Other” and a hierarchical relationship between the two, recreating in practice racialized categories reminiscent of colonial times. Considering the role citizen initiatives play in integration, it is important to also understand their discourse on integration. A critical discourse analysis using Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? approach was conducted on texts used in citizen initiatives for integration in the Netherlands. Additionally, as part of a larger institutional ethnography, ethnographic data was gathered on their day-to-day work. These data were analyzed through a theoretical lens inspired by occupational science, governmentality and post/decolonial studies. Initial findings show dominant discourses found in formal integration programmes being actively reproduced in citizen initiatives. Additionally, findings display concepts of ‘successful’ integration, the “Us”, and the “Other” being discursively shaped by promoting ‘modern’ occupations as part of ‘successful’ everyday life. Occupational science is a field with particular interest in social transformation projects, projects often based in the informal sector. Understanding how dominant discourses are reproduced in informal programmes provides important perspectives on their impact on everyday life, demonstrating the importance of remaining critical of discourses in projects operating in the peripheries.

Unsettling the Cloud: On Data Centers and Counter-Narratives

As I gaze out of my window, I am met with a totem. This totem is gray and windowless, nestled in between offices and academic buildings. Behind it is a park, and the longer I stare, the deeper it becomes embedded in the natural landscape, after a bit I forget it’s there. But in the corner of my eye I can see another one; another totem. This one intimidates me with its red glow. These buildings came to serve as mystical pillars of data flows to me, they became sites of reification, sites where the cloud finally condensed and data rained down. They assumed a posthuman status; high-tech facilities where humans are only needed to keep other humans out. I always imagined data as something abstract, as a floating entity, but as my encounters with these pillars started a process of materialization, it simultaneously sparked a desire to interrogate and to demystify.

Communities at a Crossroads

How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialisation of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture’s utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today.Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the ‘golden age’ of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries.Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises.

Mapping imaginaries of Amsterdam Southeast

The potential impact of urban (re)development on the well-being of residents has been recognized in literature (Butcher & Dickens, 2016; Brummet and Reed, 2019), underscoring the need to critically examine one’s approach to studying the so called ‘urban peripheries’. This paper proposes the practice of mapping alternative city imaginaries, together with local partners, to promote inclusive and 'a more diverse and sustainable perspective on [city] prosperity' (Arbonés Aran, Petkova and Moodey, 2023).We present a case study of the living lab ‘Cities and Visitors’ (Amsterdam School of International Business) based in Amsterdam Southeast (Zuidoost). The study employs a mixed methods to capture and map 'alternative imaginaries' of 'urban peripheries' together with local partners, students, and inter-city collaborators. As urban developments continue to comply with technocratic systems and strategies (Pries, 2022), it becomes important to deepen our understanding, engagement, exploration, and preservation of city spaces, particularly in the so called urban ‘peripheries’ that are often subjected to the dynamics of de/reconstruction and rejuvenation brought by external actors.The paper also advocates for a reflective and ethical research methodology, as the participants engage in thoughtful and (self) reflective research practices. We see this as an intervention in the business curriculum, often criticized for producing 'neoliberal agents' (Orta, 2019), whereas students must also cultivate competences in 'sustainability' (UNESCO 2014, 2017). Embracing the perspectives of affect (Thrift, 2008) and standpoint theory (Harding, 2008), as well as critical counter-mapping with digital methods (Rogers, 2013), we intend to nurture the emotional intelligence and literacy in students, facilitating transformative pedagogies (Mezirov 1990; Maiese 2017).