Cultures of migration and conflict A song from the 1930s, recorded in 1939 in California by Ottoman migrants, in the early 1900s in the United States was about longing. It was, not really by Ottoman Turkish, but Ottoman Armenian, and about land in the East of Turkey. A reference to this can be found in thousands of
Ibrahim Sirkeci
similar photos found in archives and in museums, showing migrations, and the expressions of the migration experience of that time. Today we are seeing something slightly different; more like a sign of art; cautions that the would-be migrants need to be careful about. Somehow, criminalized over and over and, otherwise quite routine and ordinary human experience is migration. If one considers, perhaps, two or three generations, it is likely one would find pretty much everyone is, somehow, a migrant or related to some migrants. However, today, the ways in which migration policies and trends shape the world is overall negative. There is an overemphasis on the dark side of human mobility, or the dark side of human experience—which makes human mobility a necessity. Movement is always, exceptions allowed, a function of conflict. Conflict here is drawn in a very broad sense to include subtle and latent tensions, disagreements, discomforts, difficulties as well as armed and violent clashes. Most of my work, and particularly the work carried out by Jeffrey Cohenis about insecurity, mobility, movement, and cultures of migration. Jeff and I co-edit the journal, Migration Letters. Despite the title, it is not an artistic work, it introduces a novel type of writing to migration scholarship, and our colleagues, academics, learned to write shorter—an achievement.
376
