Picturing translocal youth: Self‐portraits of young Syrian refugees and young people of diverse African heritages in South‐East England

Abstract

Abstract Young refugees and diasporic youth often have multiply located senses of self. Using a creative visual methodology, recently arrived young Syrian refugees and young people of diverse African heritages born in the United Kingdom (aged 16–20) produced digital self‐portraits to express their translocal subjectivities. Young Syrians represented themselves as “bilingual becomings”; learning English occupied their minds and was key to their imagined futures, but their hearts were often associated with the homeland they had lost. In contrast, speaking English was sometimes taken for granted in the art work produced by young people of African heritages, which portrayed hybrid, multilingual selves and translocal relationality. Both groups embraced signifiers of national, religious, and cultural identity but through their silences and omissions, dis‐identified with exclusionary notions of “Britishness,” nationhood, and citizenship. Their self‐representations provide hopeful counter‐narratives to hegemonic sociopolitical discourses that position “Black African” youth and Muslim young men as a “threat” and “illegitimate” citizens.

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