Document Type
Doctoral Thesis
Disciplines
5.4 SOCIOLOGY, 6.4 ART
Abstract
This thesis is situated at the intersection of arts, human rights and migration policies and practices. Contextualising five of my previous publications, the thesis is a critical reflection on my transectoral work as an advocate for the rights, recognition and professional development support of persecuted artists relocated to European Union countries for safety. Focusing on the decade 2009-2019, with a coda regarding significant events in 2023, the thesis exposes observed disconnects between a European cultural policy discourse stressing diversity and inclusion and the realities encountered by artists at risk seeking sanctuary. The thesis includes two chapters, an introduction and a conclusion. Referring to three of my published outputs, ‘Bridging Citizenship’ (2022), ‘Citizenship and Culture’ (2012) and ‘Analysing the Art of Resistance’ (2014), chapter one employs a series of case vignettes from the lived experience of anonymised artists with whom I worked to relocate, to amplify questions of citizenship and hospitality and illustrate systemic inequalities. Chapter two focuses on the public sphere and my engagement with Halliday’s structure of global governance (2005), interacting with international, state and civil society platforms by writing, speaking and organising, using existing or creating new networks of arts and human rights professionals to promote awareness, engagement and concrete actions for the displaced artists. The other two published outputs included in this thesis, ‘Seeing the World in a New Light’ (2011) and ‘Artistic Freedom: A Moveable Feast’ (2018) as well as an analysis of the process of providing background research for ‘Artists, Displacement and Belonging’ (IFACCA, 2019) illustrate my advocacy with, consecutively, the political sphere, policymaking institutions and arts organisations. The thesis uses the theoretical lens of the ethics of care as a grounding for processes undertaken by the international arts sector in Europe to equitably welcome and support incoming artists impacted by displacement. Networking is presented as a methodology rather than a practice to examine to what extent civil society actors, individually or in epistemic communities and transnational advocacy networks, can influence public policy. Taken together, the thesis provides a recent history of the evolution of a transectoral matrix of arts, human rights and migration that identifies itself as the artistic freedom sector, focusing on one of its constituent elements, that of the protective relocation to Europe of artists-at-risk. In a context of ubiquitous networking and at a moment when concerns for care and well-being in the arts professions are emerging, the thesis explores if and how the arts sector shares collective responsibility for structural injustice and proposes an ethics of care as foundational to the evolution of common practices at a moment of increasing human migration.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/4jny-6h04
Recommended Citation
DeVlieg, Mary Ann, "Artists’ Displacement and Rights: Citizenship, Care and Advocacy in the Networked Arts Sector in Europe" (2024). Doctoral. 118.
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/appadoc/118
Creative Commons License
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Publication Details
Artists’ Displacement and Rights: Citizenship, Care and Advocacy in the Networked Arts Sector in Europe. A thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirement for the award of PhD (Doctor of Philosophy). Mary Ann DeVlieg (MA) School of Media Centre for Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research College of Arts and Tourism Technological University Dublin, 2024.
doi:10.21427/4jny-6h04