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Ailbhe Kenny, "Music Refuge: Living Asylum through Music" (Oxford UP, Press 2025)
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- [00:01]
Alva Kenny
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Alva Kenny
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- [00:24]
Alva Kenny
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- [01:01]
Alva Kenny
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Dave (Interviewer)
Welcome to the New Books Network. On this episode, I'm joined by Alva Kenny, and she's gonna be talking about music. Refuge living asylum through music. Welcome to the podcast.
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Alva Kenny
Thank you, Dave. Delighted to do this.
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Dave (Interviewer)
And what a fantastic book that. I mean, it couldn't be more timely and more relevant and more sort of perfect for the age in which we find ourselves. And the kind of project, I guess, of thinking through the importance of music and also, you know, kind of the arts and culture, as well as having a much more kind of human and humanitarian understanding of refugee and asylum experiences, I think, is, you know, so important, and it's, you know, kind of brilliant you've written this. I'm interested, I guess, in what kind of inspired you to write the book. Both, I guess, to write about various countries, asylum systems, but also to think about why music and the arts are important, too.
- [02:11]
Alva Kenny
Well, I, like so many others, we're confronted daily with media images and discourses about people seeking asylum. And, you know, particularly when I first came to examining the field of music and migration in particular, it was at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015. And, you know, again, we just were both bombarded with these horrific images, particularly, you know, that very stereotyped image of people on boats, et cetera. And I just, you know, like so many, I just began being very affected by it. And the more I began digging into the. The more I wanted to get behind the images and engage more critically in this field. And I began thinking about, well, what happens, what happens when people land in a destination country, what then? Once the needs, those immediate needs of food and shelter are met, what then? And I began thinking about people's cultural needs, their artistic needs, their. Their identities that of course go way beyond just seeking asylum. And that's really where it began. I wanted to know more. I wanted to go behind those very confronting victim narratives that were often presented with about people seeking refuge in asylum. And I began thinking about the spaces that they end up entering once they reach a destination country. And that's really what the book is about. It's about these asylum seeking accommodation centers and how music is made and shared and experienced while living in these very unique spaces and very temporary spaces. So I thought that really creates a very distinct environment for where music happens.
- [04:10]
Dave (Interviewer)
It's grounded, as you mentioned, in a couple of case studies about destination countries, Ireland and Germany. And in some ways, you know, they're both part of the European Union, which has seemingly, you know, a kind of shared set of rules. But actually one of the things you do in the book is try and introduce why the two places, Ireland and Germany, might be different and have distinctive context. And I wonder if you could sort of introduce a little bit about them both in terms of like why you chose them, but also in terms of how they're similar and how they're different.
- [04:49]
Alva Kenny
Yeah. So obviously being Irish and working in Ireland, I began working in this area in Ireland. But as with a lot of research projects, you begin to look outwards as well. And again, I became interested in looking at borders and bordering and policies around bordering. And both Ireland and Germany are both obviously EU member states, so they come under, you know, typical overarching policies about migration and asylum. You know, for example, if I take one kind of recent example, you know, the Temporary Protection Directive for Ukrainians is something that all EU member states share, for example. So what of course makes Ireland and Germany interesting for the kind of in depth study I did that's documented in the book is of course, Germany has this very long established history with migration. You know, they've had this for a very, you know, high levels of diversity for a very long time. Whereas in Ireland it's a much more recent phenomenon. We were a very homogenous country up until the 1990s. And so I thought it's an interesting contrast in many ways in that we've only been dealing with inward migration for a relatively short period of time, whereas Germany is much more established, but also Germany is an interesting case because it's the top destination country for people seeking asylum in Europe, and that's remained the case now for decades. So I had an opportunity to go over and study in Germany at the Hansa Institute for Advanced Study for a whole year. And that just brought this amazing opportunity to immerse myself within a specific asylum seeking center, you know, in that longitudinal way that can be hard to guess sometimes, you know, in our job as academics. So having a whole year there was just brilliant. I was able to immerse myself in a very real way, in a very participatory way. And just, you know, that kind of giving that broad view and the stimulation that such fellowships, particularly international fellowships bring was just gold for the research.
- [07:15]
Dave (Interviewer)
And it also let you do a range of different projects, all of which had, you know, the kind of places and spaces in mind, but. And all of which had, like, a kind of participatory approach to music and artistic activity, but all of which were kind of unique and different in their own ways. And it'd be good to hear a bit about those four projects, maybe in terms of kind of, you know, what they were doing, what their content was, but also a bit like the two countries, how you ended up getting involved with those four projects too.
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Alva Kenny
Yeah. So as I said, I began this work in Ireland. I think the book is actually quite a nice example. You know, I especially end up talking to early career researchers about this because the book is a nice example of starting small, particularly when dealing with a new field of research. So I started with a very small grant from Research Ireland to investigate music amongst asylum seeking communities within a center that was just 6 kilometers from my office. So for me, that was a really good way to begin to understand what were the issues in this area, in this field, and what should I be looking at. And I started with a community that, you know, I know best. I started with children. You know, I've been working with children ever since I qualified as a primary teacher many, many years ago, where I first began my career. So I started with just a young group of children in this particular center that was very close to where I worked, but yet was so hidden, was so marginalized. So few people even knew about this center where I worked. So I began there. I began making music with the children. And in that short project, I learned a lot. And it went from there. It grew and it grew and grew so onto bigger projects. And so then, you know, I was awarded the fellowship in Germany that launched me into a whole other space, a Whole new country, different sets of populations. Also, you know, I began working in a more intergenerational way. So not just with the children, I began working with families in these centers. What's also interesting about that is again, the learning that happens on the way. So while I began with children, I realized very quickly that within these centers, people are not so segregated by age because of course these are living spaces. So it's not like going into a classroom or a community setting where you say, oh, this project is only for seven year olds. You can't be so limited in your thinking because of course people are living here, it's like their home, even if on a temporary basis. And so I learned quickly that as soon as you begin making music in a room, in a space, what actually people flowed in and out of that space, no matter what age they were in these centers. So, you know, I learned quickly, okay, these music communities need to be intergenerational. So when I arrived back from Germany again, I had another opportunity to expand through grant through Creative Ireland. I brought on partners through the Cultural organization Singh Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council, and we worked together. So suddenly I was able to grow the work by actually employing people to work in the centers in these participatory ways through music workshops. And it meant then I was able to just wear a researcher hat on that project, which again, just brought a whole new dimension to the work. It also was able to expand the amount of centres that were involved and then leading on from that to get onto the Ford project and where this work, the various side roads this work went down. I then got involved in a European project through the Humanities in Europe research area, the HERA grant with five other countries. And in that particular project I was able to look at particularly African diaspora within Ireland. And that was called the Knight Project, that particular fund and partnership with other countries. And so I began thinking about, well, actually once people are established, these new communities are established within cities, in particular in Ireland, how is that changing the sound of our cities? You know, how are these musicians shaping the music of our Irish cities and how are they being shaped by the music in those cities? So, you know, that expanded the work in whole new ways too.
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Dave (Interviewer)
I mean, you mentioned these big questions about music there. And part of really the entire kind of story the book is telling is why music is important. And so just kind of asking why music is probably too big a question. But quite early on in the book you say that music, both as kind of an art form, has the sort of potential to really kind of Recognize people and recognize people's humanities. But there are also particular things music does in the context of asylum places. And I'm intrigued to hear a bit about both, really both, I guess, the kind of power of music as a form of recognition, but also, I suppose, the kind of unique things that people get from music participation too, depends in the book.
- [12:59]
Alva Kenny
But why music is a particularly interesting question for me in the book. Because it's something that people continually have asked me over the last decade when I speak about the work, because they say, well, surely language is more important. People. People tend to, you know, begin. Or surely, well, the accommodation is more important. You know, why are you concentrating on this? And I always found it fascinating, actually, that there's this kind of hierarchy of needs and wants that people assume people seeking refuge in asylum need. And that's not to dismiss the language and the accommodation needs, of course, they're very, very relevant. But again, it's a very, very narrow definition of what people require and indeed what they want. And I think it's about trying to shift our thinking, again, getting away from those victim narratives about people seeking asylum and thinking of them as active agents of their own lives. People, no matter what their situation, seek out various ways of being. Their identities are intersectional. They're not just one thing. They're not just seeking asylum. You know, in this work, I've come across so many absolutely brilliant musicians. I've also come across people that. And that's obviously a massive part of their identity is being a musician. But I've also come across people who use music in a different way. They use music as a form of relaxation. You know, something that was very prevalent in all centers I've visited to date is that people listen to music. You know, so people listen to music for all sorts of reasons. They do it sometimes to connect to the music of their homeland. Sometimes they do it purely as a means of relaxation, to de. Stress. And then you have others that, again, it's an identity marker. And particularly that was found with young people in particular, that are really marked their identity, depending on who they're listening to and sharing tracks with their friends, and of course, making music. Then within the workshops themselves, where you have very direct interventions in the center with music, where you actually provide music workshops, people use that as a means of community. In every center I've visited, whether it's in Ireland or Germany, these can be very segregated spaces. They're very segregated because you've got this really odd mix of race, of religion, of ages, again, different kinds of identities, backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds can be very, very different in these centers. And so you can end up with very, very segregated space spaces and very few opportunities to come together just to be with people, to feel a sense of home. Everything in these centers goes against that feeling of home. Everything about them marks these spaces as spaces of non belonging. And so by creating music workshops, there's something quite special about people who just come to sing or just come to play instruments. And it takes people beyond that designation of asylum seeker. It takes them beyond that, gives them an alternative way of being. Even if it's only for an hour, even if it's only once a week, it offers an alternative. And that became so important to the people that are documented in this book.
- [16:39]
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- [17:06]
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- [17:29]
Dave (Interviewer)
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- [17:59]
Dave (Interviewer)
I mean, really bringing the people to life is something that can be quite difficult in an academic book. Often we sort of struggle thinking through talking about participants, for example, and various kind of ethical questions about how people are represented and how they find voice. But all the things you've been saying there around the different uses of music, people's connection with music, whether it's musicians or people listening on their Phones or whatever kind of comes through in the way the book uses these kind of interludes or moments in, you know, the kind of spaces between chapters. And I'm interested to know why you kind of put those in, you know, maybe outside of the traditional academic book structure and how you've, you know, really kind of fought to bring to life the musical stories of the people you were working with.
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Alva Kenny
So the interludes. It's an interesting question because the interludes, would you believe, were an afterthought? So I actually had written the book, and once it was written and I had my first draft, you know, you read and you reread, and I came to the end of, you know, I think the second or third reading of that first draft, and I thought, there's something missing. There's something missing here. I think I could do more and more. And I just decided that, you know, because the chapters themselves, you know, there's a lot of data analysis, data interpretation that goes on across all the various projects. And I just thought, you know, what I want to put in verbatim narrative. I want there to be, you know, stories from actual musicians who are either in the asylum seeking system or has been through the asylum seeking system. And I just want their stories to sit between the chapters and be these very unique individual snapshots into people's stories. And I think in many ways they're kind of counter stories to what we expect of people seeking asylum. And so what's quite funny about the interludes is I thought. I genuinely thought I might end up with three or four. And I began reaching out to, you know, various networks globally, people I know, you know, who work with people seeking asylum and work with musicians who seek asylum. And suddenly, actually, the response was overwhelming. I had an enormous response. So much so that I began thinking maybe I need to do a book just of these stories. And, you know, and in many ways I have another idea in my head about that now because of it. But, you know, I ended up putting in 10, so that you have kind of pairs of interludes between the chapters. And what's interesting is people now who've read the book, that's one of the first things in the feedback they give me is about the interludes. People really love the interludes, and I can see why. They really bring you to the heart of those very individual and unique stories of people who have used music in various ways to be part of their asylum seeking journey. And I think it's incredibly powerful.
- [21:33]
Dave (Interviewer)
Yeah, it really is. And it's one of the Things that you mentioned, the kind of things like data analysis and the academic elements of the text. But it brings through, I think, some of the experiences and some of the, yeah, benefits really of music that you're talking about elsewhere in the book. And one of those, you sort of talk about this idea of kind of radical belonging. You've already mentioned the way that, you know, music is one space where we can get beyond just the monolithic like category of asylum seekers and, you know, bring people's multiple and differentiated identities together. But at the same time, the question of kind of building community in these asylum spaces is a quite complex and tricky one. And in what ways did music and the projects actually create these kind of radical acts of belonging?
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Alva Kenny
Yeah, so everything about asylum seeking systems, everything about these centers is these are very oppressive spaces. They're very marginalized spaces that people are living within. Even. Even the way that the setup is to be temporary. You know, people are literally in these centers waiting on word of whether they would be granted refugee status or not. So they're extremely uncertain places. They're very stressful places. You know, I refer to them in the book as limbo spaces because there's just this. And they can go on for years. You know, the idea about these centers is that people are only supposed to spend a few months in them, but that's not the way the world works. And a lot of that often has to do with housing crisis as well in countries. So they end up spending often years in this really strange waiting space wondering what's going to happen next. And so because of that, there is this feeling, this kind of non belonging that goes along or the kind of non feeling citizen status that goes along with being within these centers. And so music, what I found over the years is it helps to redefine what it means to belong in these very oppressive systems. And people seek out, despite everything that's set up to not belong, people do seek community in these spaces. And music is one way to do it. I'm not saying it's the only way, but it's one way.
- [24:12]
Dave (Interviewer)
That sense of kind of building community comes up later on in the book where you talk about this idea of communities of musical practice. And I guess, I mean, it'd be wrong to draw a division, I guess, between things like the interludes and then academic analysis, because actually the two are not just intertwined. But you know, the interludes are academic analysis. And the academic analysis has elements of, you know, the kind of participation, the life stories, the experiences of working on the projects. But from this idea of communities of practice, I got the sense that the book was arguing that we're getting new knowledge from music. And I was intrigued by that, both in terms of what these kind of new knowings are, but also, I suppose, what these communities of musical practice might be as well.
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Alva Kenny
Yeah, so my first monograph was on communities of musical practice. So this work is also extending that. And the interesting thing about communities of musical practice is just to start there is it's all about collaborative learning. It's learning through community. It's learning through. It's a sociocultural theory of learning. And it's about people learning in various modes of participation. So that participation can be very central or it can be peripheral, for instance, but learning is happening all the time. So you know, one way that communities of practice in particular, somehow that, you know, that word can often be abused in that people sometimes claim a community of practice if you have one workshop. But you know, that's not what it is. The point of a community of practice is that it's about sustained engagement. It's about learning through community. It's about learning through shared repertoire that's built up over many, over long periods of time. So in a similar way, you know, any of the projects I've engaged with in these centers, I didn't want them to be these one off events. I wanted to immerse myself in these spaces and build relationship with people and also for people to build relationships with each other. And by doing so, by having these social musical encounters, you know, the social was just as important as the musical in these centers and in these particular music workshops. And by doing so, by having these essentially these possibility spaces created, like that's where people begin to learn, you know, And I don't just mean learning as in musical skills or musical developments, but learn different ways of being, different ways of encountering the other, different, you know, ways of experiencing the world and negotiating their identities within these socio musical encounters. And so when I talk about new knowings, you know, I'm not just talking about musical knowledge. I'm talking about new ways of being and interacting and processing the very unique spaces that they're living within. But also, I don't want to dismiss, I think these can also be quite activist spaces as well. I think there's lots of new knowings through the activism of actually making music in these very oppressive spaces. And actually on one particular project, we had these events called sing ins in the centers. And they turned out to be really important. And that's where we had and we invited in people from local communities into these centers that, you know, as I stated before, really marginalized, you know, often very silenced out of the way and hidden from local communities. And we had these singing events where we invited in people to come and sing, just come and sing for a couple of hours with the residents in the centers. And actually we received such an incredibly positive response from those sing in events. There was so much interest in those sing in events that we couldn't even accommodate the amount of people who wanted to come and do it. So and sometimes that can be. That was an interesting kind of finding in a way, because so often we get these very negative portrayals of how communities respond to centers in their areas. You know, we often see a lot of discourse around protests, for instance, and actually as much as you have that, and that does exist, but you also have a huge amount of goodwill within local communities who actually really do want to get to know their neighbors and want to be engaged. I want to be part of. I want these new communities to be part of their communities that they have existed within. So I've actually found a huge amount of goodwill. And that in itself, that invitation of inviting people into the center, that in itself is a radical act, you know, that in itself, where the residents of asylum seeking centre get to be hosts, that in itself was radical. So, you know, I think there's. There's also a lot of new knowings in people resisting forms of oppression, whether that's through. Through the limbo spaces they've been forced into or the silencing that occurred. But, you know, it did. Did provide a means to react to that.
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Dave (Interviewer)
I mean, it strikes me from what you've been saying there that there's lots of, I guess, kind of quite practical insights in terms of supporting asylum seekers, you know, helping to transform the conditions, the places that they pass through, but also, you know, as you've mentioned, engagements and interactions with local communities who, you know, they are their neighbours and our neighbours in turn as well. And often, sometimes academic publishers can be like, could you stick a conclusion in with some practical guidance or something like this. But I think from the book's work there is so much insight, not just actually on the kind of practicalities of the four case studies, but a sense of how we build a better world. And maybe as a way of kind of concluding you could talk through some of those possibilities for practice that the book identifies.
- [30:59]
Alva Kenny
Absolutely. So I think if the book has any impact at all, I think I would love it to inform the design of these inclusive musical spaces into the future. And for us to really think and consider, how can we design for these musical spaces that we know have enormous benefits? You know, how can we design for these spaces within our schools, within our communities, within our cultural organizations, within our universities, within our local choirs, our local ensembles, bands, et cetera? How are we being inclusive? Are we including everyone? Are we including these newly arrived people who are seeking international protection? And how do we do that? So, yeah, towards the end of the book, I talk about different ways of doing this. The types of approaches, you know, I speak about approaches that would, you know, espouse things like active participation, collaborative learning, agentic ways of making music, you know, recognizing previous knowledge. That's such an important one. You know, sometimes people can go in to these centers and assume, you know, some kind of zero base, when actually people, of course, within these centers, many of them very accomplished musicians themselves, you know, and that needs to be recognized. And also, actually, it was hugely important to say, particularly when I broadened out the project where, you know, I started out, where it was myself, I was both workshop facilitator and I was also a researcher. And obviously, you know, with. With more significant grants, I was able to widen the scope and indeed employ people to be workshop facilitators. And actually I found that within that reflective practice, hugely important, you know, particularly amongst people who are going in to work with these communities. So that. And what I mean by reflective practice is really questioning your own biases, your own assumptions and thinking through, how did that session go? What could I have done better? You know, these are things that we talk about, particularly in the education field all the time, the importance of reflective practice. So it's not, you know, just about filling the time and having. Having fun. It's about, actually, can I deepen my practice here? So I think there's a huge amount for facilitators themselves who work with these communities to learn and reflect on in designing for these spaces into the future. And that's not just in music. I think that's across the arts and cultural industries. Really thinking through how we can address forced displacement, which we know is on the rise and is only going to continue. I mean, at this point, we have over 120 million people who are forcibly displaced worldwide. It's only going to get worse because of things like climate change, war, conflict, persecution. And so rather than always being in this crisis mode, rather than always being reactive, we need to plan for. We need to plan for these communities and think about ways of meaningful integration and meaningful engagement in the arts and culture. As well as all the other things that they need.
- [34:25]
Dave (Interviewer)
I mean, you mentioned earlier, you've got, you know, at least one more book idea that's come from this series of projects that the book captures. But at the same time, writing an academic book is a big job. It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, particularly actually in the context where, as you say, the refugee and asylum crisis globally is really kind of pressing and has a variety of different, really kind of grim and unpleasant voices railing about it and in some cases, physically against it. And so is there a sort of future project that draws, extends, develops the book, or are you moving to be working on something maybe still in the music kind of context, but slightly different from this work?
- [35:25]
Alva Kenny
Well, at the moment this book was written while I had actually embarked on a whole new project, so that wasn't easy. But I was kind of determined to bring almost a decade worth of research in that field into a book, and I'm really glad I did. But I also started, and I'm almost at the end now of a project about music in the intercultural schools. So stemming from my work with asylum seeking communities within the centers they live in, I began thinking about, well, what's happening, particularly with the children and young people in these centers in their schools. And so I embarked on a project that I'm still involved in on looking at, again, issues of belonging, issues of community, but in school contexts. So, you know, what's happening for these children and young people in school? And again, what role is music playing within school spaces and classroom spaces? And how are teachers as well, grappling with diversity in their classrooms and using music as a vehicle to. To address various challenges with that. And so that's a whole other area that has been incredibly interesting. And you can imagine some really overlapping issues with my work that I came across within the centers that are now translating into school spaces, but also some new issues too, because again, I'm dealing with often very conservative educational structures and systems, and often schools are ill equipped and teachers are ill equipped to deal with the significant levels of diversity that are now exist, particularly within Irish classrooms. So that work has been incredibly interesting. And again, I hope to, you know, new projects will also stem from that, I think, in various ways. And so often I've kind of, you know, some people think that I have some great strategy with all of this work, but actually, in many ways I tend to follow things that interest me and just go for it. So, for example, my interest in how these children and young people, what was happening in the schools they attend. That interest started actually when I was in Germany that year. You know, I decided to go into some of the schools where the children that I've been working with in the center, I decided to have I, you know, got permission to go into their schools and I sat in their classrooms and I just observed and my interest was peaked then and I began developing a whole new project from that.
- [38:31]
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