Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

governs everyday reality. Kathi Weeks (2011) employs the term “antiwork politics” to describe a type of
utopic imagining which encourages people to question why paid work monopolises so much time, and the
necessity of critiquing policies and ideologies that render it normative and private. I propose opening up a
dialogue between queer theory and antiwork politics to interrogate the antinormative inclinations of both
frameworks, and shed new light on interviews of queer workers. I believe this project will ensure we remain
open to critiques of paid work, whilst also staying attuned to the possibility of queer moments of subversion
in daily working life.
PARALLEL SESSIONS 6
6A
Media, Migration and (Precarious) Mobile Belonging (Chair, Shanthi Robertson)
While migration and media have attracted scholarly attention for years, the recent surge of ethnic tensions in
multicultural cities, or the globalizing refugee crisis in Europe, have refreshed the need to revisit the terrain, in the
call for newer perspectives towards the increasingly contentious area. This panel focuses on the how current migrant
discourses have informed new ways of thinking about “mobility”: how the mobility of migration over time and space
interplays with that of the media. It brings together papers which aim at addressing the new themes that spawn new
contexts and situations: from media representations of migration mobility to prosumptive use of (mobile) media for
the asylum seekers, which interrogate how media serves as a site of domination as well as resistance to the migrant
everyday.
Lisa Leung
Unwanted Mobile Belonging: use of cell phones among asylum seekers in Hong Kong
To many asylum seekers in Hong Kong, the territory was never their intended destination. Trapped
territorially for an indefinite period of up to 10 years, these asylum seekers had to resort to aimless travelling
and illegal work to kill time and to find some meaning of existence during their stay. Mobile phones became
their source of communication, entertainment or (para- legal) business transactions, as they maintain an
“elsewhere” existence. This paper crystallizes some findings of a research which examines the use of mobile
phones as an epitome of the precarious belonging of these accidental residents. The research will delve into
the relationship between (mobile) media, mobility and belonging of this group of self-select but unwilling
migrants.
Sukhmani Khorana
Where Everyone is a Host: Mobility and Belonging in the “Welcome Dinner” Project
The “Welcome Dinner” initiative, begun by a not-for-profit agency called “Joining the Dots” in Sydney in
2015 aims to facilitate conviviality between old and new Australians. According to Amanda Wise speaking of
informal “bring a plate” events where migrant women are invited to join Anglo-Australians, “there is nothing
necessarily wrong with presenting the “complete feast” of one’s culture, but something slightly different
emerges out of a convivial situation involving diverse individuals “bringing a plate”. Food brought to such
events is typically “scented”, in the sense that they are often crafted to represent the identity of the cook
and their culture” (2011: 101). The “Welcome Dinner” project will thereby be analysed by examining a
random sample of online testimonies of hosts and participants, as well as Australian media coverage of
events to ascertain whether feelings of belonging are facilitated in that environment.
Rob Cover
“Population”
Mobility, Belonging and Temporality: Migration, Identity and the Media/Cultural Concept of
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