Be yourself the change, the candle in the darkness

The UK ambassador to Lebanon highlights the work of CENDEP student Basma Eldoukhi

DEP Masters student Basma Eldoukhi writes:

This is a reflection of my experience volunteering to support vulnerable people in the community in this unprecedented period of time.

I always believe that as COVID-19 is very infectious, kindness, compassion, love and solidarity are more infectious in this sense, simply because we are humans. It’s our humanity and humility at the same time.

When I saw the NHS Volunteer Responder application advertisement, I applied without hesitation because I wanted to support and help people in the community I am living in. Because we are all in this together and as I always follow in my life this motto “If not me, who and if not now, when?"

Neighbourly humanitarianism: Volunteering as intimate politics against Australia’s asylum regime

Tess Altman from the University of Southampton writes about her Work in Progress seminar on Thursday:

Volunteer humanitarianism by ordinary citizens in support of migrants facing hostile deterrence policies has become an increasingly common feature of the global humanitarian landscape. In this talk I focus on volunteer humanitarianism for people seeking asylum in Australia, a country with one of the most hostile deterrence regimes in the world towards people seeking asylum arriving by boat. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with humanitarian NGOs and volunteers providing services during 2015-16 in Melbourne, I discuss two standout features of their volunteer humanitarianism: a deep ambivalence with unequal relations, leading to humanitarian discourses of need being replaced by equalising cultural tropes such as neighbourliness and fairness; and the proximate and personal nature of humanitarianism undertaken “at home.” Volunteer humanitarianism in this context was a form of intimate politics against Australia’s hostile asylum regime, that was also infused with a complex gendered and racialised everyday politics of helping.

The seminar is at 16.30-18.00 on Thursday 13 February in room JHB303 in the John Henry Brookes building, Headington Campus. (The full list of seminars for this semester is here.)