Traces of Mobility

TRACES Project is delighted to extend its warm invitation to the opening night of "Sounds of Migration," an exhibition that explores the intersection of visuals, sounds, and movement within the context of migration. The opening will feature a panel discussion and a concert, along with honoring Sharhabil Ahmed, a distinguished Sudanese musician.

The exhibition opening will take place on May 12th at 5:00 PM in the Falaki Gallery at AUC Tahrir and will run until May 15th. The concert will start at 7pm and musicians from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen will perform.

Please join us live for the Music and Migration Ceremony! TRACES Project, in collaboration with Orchestra Lamatna, cordially invites you to a ceremony honoring five founding members of the Sudan Radio and Television Orchestra. The ceremony will take place today from 6pm to 9pm at the Falaki Gallery in Cairo and livestreamed on Facebook at this link https://business.facebook.com/events/774909080701809/. Hope to see you all soon!

Save the date!

This Thursday, February 29th, the Traces of Mobility project, in collaboration with Orchestra Lamatna, is holding a Music and Migration Ceremony at AUC Falaki Gallery to honor the five founding members of the Sudan Radio and Television Orchestra.

All welcome, don't miss it!

Due seminari copromossi da Escapes. Laboratorio di studi critici sulle migrazioni forzate e da Traces of Mobility
Non mancate!

📌16 febbraio, ore 10:30
Tracce d’archivio. Tra migrazioni e frontiere
con Martina Tazzioli e Sandro Rinauro
modera Barbara Pinelli

📌29 febbraio, ore 14:00
Tracce di solidarietà. Tra migrazioni e pratiche della relazione sociale
con Elia Vetturini e Stefano Allovio
modera Luca Ciabarri

One of our postdocs, Peter Rees, has a new article out now in Contemporary Political Theory, titled, 'The Nomos of Citizenship: Migrant rights, law and the possibility of justice'.

You can find an open access pdf here:

The nomos of citizenship: migrant rights, law and the possibility of justice - Contemporary Political Theory Superficially, citizenship appears relatively simple: a legal status denoting political membership. However, critical citizenship studies scholars suggest that citizenship is first and foremost a political practice. When non-citizens, such as irregularised migrants, constitute themselves as citizens...

The Traces of Mobility team at the American University in Cairo: Amira Ahmed, Nada El-Kony, Elena Habersky, and Gerda Heck had one of the ten most-read articles for Dis:orient Magazine for 2023. Their article discusses how newly-arrived Sudanese are being welcomed to Egypt, especially by community and grassroots groups.

Read here:

How Egypt is taking on its Sudanese Neighbours in the Time of War On April 15th, following the sudden outbreak of fighting in Sudan, social media was abuzz with calls from families. Many fled in a hurry, some of them reaching Egypt. A Cairo-based initiative reports on their attempt to help out.

Concluding two simultaneous three-day workshops at the American University in Cairo under the Traces of Mobility Project, around 30 Sudanese artists and activists continued using their creative skills to portray their country, memories of migration, and cultural heritage. Their beautiful work will be displayed at a public exhibition on Monday, January 8th at AUC Tahrir campus.

The Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is the main supporter of this initiative.

The Traces of Mobility team led by Amira Ahmed and based at the American University in Cairo is conducting two workshops at AUC Tahrir with the Sudanese community and Khalid Ibrahim Kodi, artist and professor at Boston University (US). After an introduction by Khalid Kodi, the participants started on their art projects which are attempting to 're-draw a map of Sudan' in their own unique and artistic ways.

The Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is the main supporter of this initiative.

The Traces of Mobility project conference hosted by the University of Jendouba has started today. The morning session opened with the round-table “Migration Policies and the Unity of the Mediterranean”. The discussion was animated by Fatma Raach, Hassan Boubakri, Riadh Ben Khalifa, Antonio Morone and Edouard Conte.

The Compagnia di San Paolo is the main supporter of this initiative.

🚨Book Launch🚨

Join us tomorrow for the book launch of "Border Abolitionism: Migration Containment and the Genealogies of Struggles and Rescue" (MUP, 2023) written by the our project co-investigator Martina Tazzioli.

Register at: https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-border-abolitionism-martina-tazzioli-tickets-712464980937

📆 Wednesday 27th September
⏰17:30 19:30
🏦 Goldsmiths College, RHB 137

Traces Egypt team members, Amira Ahmed and Nada El-Kouny contributed to this article on Egypt’s response to the Sudan war. Article written with Elena Habersky and Gerda Heck.

https://www.disorient.de/magazin/how-egypt-taking-its-sudanese-neighbours-time-war?fbclid=IwAR3rfpQEn_CR32TxKwHSQhwMjxmtsdr0pZeN5LoB34gSrKf5-uYT6-forGg_aem_Ab6FzwPJbHm5KEbzWyRaHTfgMZd1SecuSsAB7V7piqyY8PIUZqYmEz2-PyE1OgO7XcU&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

How Egypt is taking on its Sudanese Neighbours in the Time of War On April 15th, following the sudden outbreak of fighting in Sudan, social media was abuzz with calls from families. Many fled in a hurry, some of them reaching Egypt. A Cairo-based initiative reports on their attempt to help out.

Members of our team, Rachel Ibreck, Fatma Raach, Peter Rees and Souhayel Weslety wrote for opendemocracy examining solidarity in Tunisia in the face of anti-migrant rhetoric

For migrants in Tunisia, life is just getting worse Migrants and refugees in Tunisia were attacked after the president gave a racist speech. Grassroots movements upped their support in response

Second day of Traces of Mobility Cairo workshop “Cultural Heritage of Migration Solidarities and Struggles”

Center for Migration and Refugee Studies & School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) at AUC
Project funded by
Compagnia di San Paolo

First day of Traces of Mobility Cairo Workshop, ”Cultural Heritage of Migration Solidarities and Struggles”
Center for Migration and Refugee Studies & School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) at AUC
Project funded by Compagnia di San Paolo

The panel "Vulnerability, Asylum and Taxonomies of Vulnerability" is closing the workshop "Traces of Mobility, Violence and Solidarity". After this morning panel "Counter-Mapping Refugees and Asylum's Borders" and this afternoon panel "Archives, Documenting Narratives and Collective Memories", the team goes back to work with new and rich elements of inspiration and analysis.

The team is extremely thankful to all those who joined us and contributed to the debate with their presentations and comments.

The Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is the main donor of this initiative. www.facebook.com/CompagniaDiSanPaolo

The first workshop "Traces of Mobility, Violence and Solidarity" of the project Traces of Mobility is about to start here at Università Roma Tre. Looking forward to an interesting day on counter-mapping, archives and vulnerability!

The Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is the main donor of this initiative. www.facebook.com/CompagniaDiSanPaolo

Traces of Mobility updated their address.

Traces of Mobility, Violence and Solidarity: Reconceptualizing Cultural Heritage through the Lens of Migration

Traces of Mobility is an international research project funded by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. In the current European political discourse, the historical imaginary of migrants and refugees as a threat to cultural traditions and values resounds. New nationalist narratives are emerging to defend memory and cultural heritage, legitimizing social exclusion, abuse, and the dispossession of rights of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe. Within such a context, the traces of refugee and migrant experiences, the violence committed against them, and the solidarities they share and receive, are subject to erasure; while their memory practices, innovations, sociality, and transformative political agency are typically neglected. Migrants share experiences of oppression, violence, and struggle with each other and with the people who assist them, but they do not constitute a recognized group with a shared culture, and their memories exceed the conventional boundaries of nations and the public heritage associated with them. Through a comparative perspective connecting migrants’ trajectories between Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Italy, in the context of war, and political and structural violence, this project offers a distinctive contribution to debates about threats to heritage and conceptualizations of cultural heritage. Undertaking ethnographies of heterogeneous memory-making practices and sites along migration routes from Africa to Europe and exploring the significance of migrant cultural heritage for political theory and action towards justice, the project focuses on migration and human mobility as analytical lenses for conceptualizing cultural heritage beyond sedentarist and nationalist frameworks. Exploring the nexus between mobility and cultural heritage, project follows threefold direction. It investigates the political and social heritage generated by migrants’ presence and by contemporary mobile experiences of struggle and solidarity, exploring how these are remembered or forgotten through intangible, private, local, and digital forms of cultural heritage produced by migrants, as well as in forms of public heritage on migration routes. It draws on these processes to reconceptualize cultural heritage and theorize its relationship to migration. It considers whether and how the cultural heritage of mobility, violence and solidarity traced along migrant routes might serve as political resource for justice-claims.

Research team:
PI Luca Ciabarri (University of Milan); Barbara Pinelli (University Rome Tre); Martina Tazzioli and Rachel Ibreck (Goldsmiths College, University of London); Amira Ahmed (American University in Cairo); Fatma Raach (University of Jendouba, Tunisia).
Postdoctoral researchers:
Elia Vitturini (University of Milan); Peter Rees (Goldsmiths College, University of London); Nada El-Kouny (American University in Cairo).

The Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo is the main donor of this initiative. www.facebook.com/CompagniaDiSanPaolo

Photo by Giovanni Diffidenti (project “Dopo l’Approdo”).

Traces of Mobility updated their website address.