Sub-theme 5. Modelling and multi-methods approaches in polycentric commons systems
Panel 5.6.
Combi-Panel: Migration and Education
Migration and education are two intertwined phenomena. In this panel, through the lens of the power-knowledge framework and other theoretical frameworks, we seek to highlight the ways in which knowledge and power are mutually reinforcing, with power structures shaping what counts as knowledge and knowledge reinforcing power structures. From this perspective, migration is not only a demographic phenomenon but also a social, economic and political process that involves the movement of people across territories and borders, and the creation of transcultural networks and identities. Education, on the other hand, is not a neutral domain but a site of power that reflects and reinforces social hierarchies as well as inequalities. Education being a means to empowerment can also be a means of resistance, allowing individuals and groups to challenge dominant discourses and practices, and to create alternative ways of knowing and being.
While acknowledging the role of local institutions, such as community-based organizations, neighborhood associations, and governance councils in providing opportunities for the underprivileged to engage with their communities and become active participants in decision-making processes, we establish that through these institutions, such individuals can share their experiences, voice their concerns, and contribute to the development of policies and programs that address their needs by challenging the traditional power dynamics.
As a panel, we shall be seeking to point out that, by including their voices and perspectives in decision-making processes, and by acquiring new knowledge and skills, individuals in migration-based livelihoods can challenge existing power structures and create new ones in a powerful bid to redefine governance. Secondly, since learning, social performance, and pedagogy are important factors in the educational success of underprivileged groups, education can provide a platform for marginalized groups to articulate their experiences and perspectives and to become.
1. Exploring African Futures on Precarious Migrant Labour Relations through Nanrrative and Cinematic Strategies in Desktop Documentaries
East Africa University Rwanda in Kigali, Rwanda
Audio-visual narratives do bear a filmmaker’s freedom in exploring emotional and cognitive
experiences that communicate their future’s ambitions, ideas and prognoses. In a new digital trend, desktop documentary films have introduced new post-media aesthetics in the Kenyan film scene by drifting from traditional media. Being entirely created in the digital environment, they make use of existing footage in new contexts, while taking advantage of the internet, software and apps, with the digital gadgets being both the lens and the canvas.
This digital practice has brought about ‘un-cinematic’ aesthetics that imbibe narrative
strategies that evoke emotional and intellectual engagement. Such works have of late
become vital tools for civil mobilisation and activism in the hands of avant-gardist new media creators such as Catherine of Ivano TV and Nelson Mithamo of Voo TV on YouTube. Their approach to precarious treatment and migrant labour practices meted on Kenyan domestic workers in the Middle East has begun informing regulatory frameworks and policy discourses on Kenya’s migrant labour industry. Premising on these, this paper shall seek to answer two questions: What narrative and cinematic strategies can desktop documentaries integrate in communicating the power-knowledge dynamics of Kenya’s migrant workers policy? And, how do local actors pull together to incorporate labour activism in entertainment approaches for a desirable outcome in influencing Kenya’s labour export policy formulation and implementation? In establishing how this phenomenon plays into the debate on power imbalances in the global south portrays the possibilities of Africa’s Future making through films.
2. Promoting outdoor learning through commons
Lille University, France
The first months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have highlighted the limits and flaws of our centralized society, based on market and competitive relationships. Moreover, in the education field.
If outdoor learning is practiced since the 50s or 60s in some countries, the crisis put forward its social and pedagogical. The reflection is even integrated into primary and secondary classes as well as into university courses, while integrating the issue of the child in the public space.
The link between outdoor learning and commons can be viewed at various levels:
– The link between children and the environment in which they do outdoor learning. So it’s a way to create a deeper link between common-pool resources (Ostrom, 1990) and children during the educational process. Indeed, the “territory” of outdoor learning is understood in the light of increasingly important ecological and civic issues. It’s possible to rely on digital commons, like OpenStreetMap, to facilitate the reappropriation of the territory by teachers and children.
– The sharing of resources between teachers in order to do outdoor learning, far from a market logic. Thinking of the school ‘as a common’ means admitting the idea that pedagogical processes do not emanate from a single instance, but that learning is the fruit of a community integrating all the actors at different territorial scales.
This communication will then explore a way to promote another educating through outdoor learning and commons.
3. Rethinking inclusive education and autonomy as a relationship, promoting digital agentivity in students with special needs
Réseau de recherche en santé des populations du Québec – TIC & santé, Canada
Based on our community experience with young people with reduced mobility and visibility, our ethical reflection will focus on the risk for certain schools to adopt a discourse that is likely to renew and increase the pressure of academic and social performance on the students concerned: the autonomist discourse. But to what extent can the generalized adoption of the autonomist model (the Capacitatist paradigm) be sufficient to define specific needs? Tokenism? Based on work on emancipatory education (Demers, Bachand and Leblanc, 2016) and UN work on inclusive education (Cornu, 2021), we will contribute to updating the knowledge of school personnel and enriching their ongoing training by favouring an approach adapted to the realities co-defined by the students themselves. By combining the principles of participatory health and continuous consent to an educational accompaniment, we will lead to reflect on the updating of intervention practices with these students beyond the strategies of academic emancipation and success, on the role of digital in inclusive and popular education, on its potential effects on their academic and social agentivity, on the impacts of their systematic inclusion in the development of inclusive educational policies that concern them. What place can inclusive education of students with special needs give to relational autonomy (Garrau, 2021) and what role do digital technologies play in creating emancipatory opportunities for these young people?
