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Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand Dr Murdoch Stephens & Professor Mohan Dutta

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Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand Dr Murdoch Stephens & Professor Mohan Dutta ISSUE 3 CARE WHITE PAPER SERIES December 2018 Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand Dr Murdoch Stephens & Professor Mohan Dutta CENTRE FOR CULTURE-CENTRED APPROACH TO RESEARCH AND EVALUATION CARE WHITE PAPER SERIES The Care White Paper Series is a publication of the Centre for Culture-Centred Ap- proach to Research and Evaluation (CARE). 2 CARE WHITE PAPER SERIES Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand Dr Murdoch Stephens and Professor Mohan Dutta ABSTRACT The attached white paper – The state helps the refugee speak: dialogue, ventriloquism or something else? – on the funding of refugee voice organisations was prepared between November 2018 and April 2019. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on two Mosques in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 the need to address the issue of refugee support organisations becomes acute as they a significant role in the representation of many Muslim citizens in New Zealand. Specifically, the lack of funding for organisations that are tasked with connecting with refugee communities and representing those voices to government, media and the public undermined the ability of these organisations to respond after the attacks. We particularly note the absence of “democratic communication infrastructures” owned by refugees for representing their voices in New Zealand. In particular the authors of this white paper see the need for • The creation of communication processes, pathways these organisation to be resourced for: and channels for refugee voices to be presented to • The establishment of democratic communication government, media, and other key stakeholders, with resources owned and run by refugees the control of the communication in the hands of • The establishment of a dedicated communications role refugees for the largest of these organisations Adequately representing refugee voices to the • An increase in baseline funding that takes into account • the actual and expected everyday work government to improve the National Refugee Resettlement Strategy • The recognition of media and communication expertise among refugee communities We see MBIE’s Strengthening Refugee Voices programme as • The establishment of paid governance and expertise the best way to resource these organisations to properly roles that assist with upskilling of former refugees to carry out the work identified above and justified in the longer lead these organisations white paper. As noted in the longer version of the paper, we • The establishment of a mentoring scheme where the see these refugee voice organisations at a crossroad: long largest organisations establish and oversee similar and term strains on funding have led to a situation where the independent refugee voice organisations in new authors see an emerging likelihood of a split between these resettlement locations as needed organisations and government as in Australia. Dr Murdoch Stephens & Professor Mohan Dutta Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand The state helps the refugee speak: dialogue, The state plays a uniquely proactive role in accepting ventriloquism or something else? refugee in countries where an United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) refugee quota is the On 7 February, 2019 Immigration Minister Iain Lees- primary form of entrance. In contrast to the reactiveness Galloway, Whanganui Mayor Hamish McDougall and of refugee determination in Europe, the majority of Green Member of Parliament Golriz Ghahraman refugees who come to New Zealand have already been announced five of six new refugee resettlement locations. determined. In line with our understanding of the state as The coalition government deemed these new locations facilitating the entrance of refugees through the UNHCR necessary for a refugee quota that will have doubled from quota, we consider the possibilities and pitfalls 750 to 1500 over twenty-four months. One prominent associated with government funding of refugee-led refugee resettlement organisation criticised the organisations in New Zealand. Is there something unique announcement and decision for having gone forward about New Zealand that makes government funding more without discussion or consultation with them or other benign than elsewhere? Or do these funding models similar organisations. In this paper we consider the undermine the very voices that they are ostensibly set up organisations created by resettled refugees to represent to amplify? their needs in negotiation with the government, United Nations and civil society groups. In particular, we focus Voice, refugees, and communicative structures on the concept of voice and the complexities of government funding, or lack thereof, in assisting refugee One of the key tenets of the culture-centered approach voices. (CCA) is the recognition of voice as the anchor to The question of voice is a central question in the transformative social change (Dutta, 2011, 2013). Voice, expulsion, displacement and (im)mobility of refugees located at the intersections of culture, structure, and across global spaces. The displacement from claims to agency serves as the foundation to processes of social citizenship, constituted in erasures, violence, and state- change. Culture, as a dynamic site of meaning making, sponsored are anchored in the structural displacement reflects the contested space where social change is from spaces and infrastructures for voice (Dutta, 2011, understood, theorized, and acted upon. Culture offers the 2013, 2018; Dutta & Shome, 2018). How then do script for the work of social change; meanings voiced by refugees go about seeking spaces and infrastructures of hitherto erased communities at the same time disrupt the recognition and representation where their voices can be dominant cultural formations in society, creating entry heard? What are the challenges to the voices of refugees points for cultural transformations. Voice is rooted in through the different parts of the movement, from the cultural scripts, stories, and symbols, and at the same spaces of expulsion to the spaces into which they seek time offers opportunities for transforming these cultural refuge? The mobility of voice as a construct that flows scripts and stories. Structure reflects the framework of through different spaces and across different time-frames organizing of resources, depicting the patterns in society poses important questions for refugee representation and that constitute who does and who does not have access recognition. The culture-centered approach (CCA) to resources. Structures are embedded in the economy, proposed by one of us, Dutta (2011), offers a framework and at the same time shape the access to a wide range for voice by noting the voice infrastructures for the of economic resources and pathways of mobility. subaltern margins are critical to developing just societies. Structures constitute the resources for voice that are These voice infrastructures, when owned by the available to communities at the margins, shaping the subaltern margins, strengthen democratic processes and economics of voice. Agency, reflecting the cognitive simultaneously anchor them in critical questions of capacity of communities at the margins to make sense of human rights (Dutta, 2014). Drawing on the culture- the structures that shape their lives, to negotiate these centered approach, this white paper delves into the structures, and to participate in transformative processes question of refugee voice, interrogating the challenges to of change seeking to transform the structures, serves as and opportunities for refugee voice. Locating itself within a fulcrum for conceptualizing social change the context of refugee articulations of voice in New communication from the bottom up. Agency enables the Zealand, the white paper seeks to offer some conceptual reworking of cultural tropes to create entry points for 4 anchors for co-creating infrastructures for voice. transforming structures. CARE WHITE PAPER SERIES Strengthening Refugee Voices in New Zealand It is the recognition of the refugee agency that is central The capacity of subaltern communities (such as to the conceptualization of voice. Rooted in and as an refugees, who are often erased from pathways of expression of agency, voice narrates community- mobility) to be recognized as a collective and to grounded stories. These community grounded stories re- participate in various processes of representing circulate scripts of structural transformation by bringing themselves is integral to transforming structures that about transformations in cultural processes. For instance, often reproduce conditions of marginalization. That stories of refugee communities voiced in key discursive communicative inequalities are intertwined with spaces, mobilize the processes of social change. socioeconomic inequalities offers the basis for Through the narratives that are voiced by refugee conceptualizing the role of voice in bringing forth anchors communities at the margins of social systems, the to transforming structures that perpetuate inequalities. In hegemonic ideas are challenged. The ownership of voice the realm of experiences of displacement, expulsion, and infrastructures by communities that have been forced movement, the erasure of refugee voices from systematically erased introduced new meanings into the sites of articulation is then tied to the experiences of discursive space, forming the basis for re-organizing violence and material disenfranchisement. Not having a structures. In other words, voice anchors the say in the structures of the state
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