Introduction

This chapter suggests that art, and participatory art in particular, can be used as an important perspective in social work education and practice to reach social work students and social workers in the context of the increasing invisibilisation and ghettoisation of migrant people.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we are confronted with a paradox: the issue of refugees has been marginalised, while wars and environmental disasters continue and millions of people who have migrated are held back on the Southeastern European periphery. Some countries have institutionalised push-back at their national borders. At the same time, a number of artists, critical conceptual architects and cartoonists are addressing the issue of migration and depicting the lives of people who would otherwise remain unheard and dehumanised. They show how migration has become part of everyday life; many art projects involve in their performances and art work real migrants as the non-actors, aimed at demonstrating the increased degree of the conflicts related to migration and to bring the issue as close as possible to the viewers as a counter response to the increased anti-refugee sentiment.

The transdisciplinary approach aims to move beyond the discourse of ‘humanitarian crises’ towards the humanisation of people on the move.

Methodology

In the first part of the chapter, my autobiographical notes will alternate with interpretive guidelines to reflect on my own interest in writing about migration. A growing number of researchers studying migration have begun to use autobiography and autoethnography to ‘stay in the text’ and document the degrading conditions of people who migrate (Run, 2012; Holman et al, 2013). Their self-reflections highlight that researchers often experienced similar traumatic conditions to activists and people on the move themselves (Zorn, 2021). A social work educator told me, “I do not like going to fieldwork with the students, it's like being in a war zone” (personal communication, 2021). Refugees also said that crossing the border was similar to experiencing another war (Zaviršek, 2017). The language of war was repeated in the narratives of people situated in different places for monitoring and administration. Migrants referred to the resettlement centres as ‘concentration camps’, and the Italian reception centre on Lampedusa, where hundreds were housed in small rooms, was described as ‘Italian Guantanamo’ (Videmšek, 2016).