Music, Forced Migration and Emplacement

This book analyses the negotiation of place, belonging and uncertainty enacted by a group of 60 men and women seeking asylum who gathered weekly in a community space in Bristol, UK, to share songs, memories, laughter, and precariousness with other established and new city-dwellers. Building on a rich corpus of ethnographic data, this book explores music-making to address “what goes unnoticed” in existing ways of thinking about forced migration.

By looking at the junctures where leisure, forced migration and urban analyses intersect with grassroot solidarity with and by people seeking asylum, it offers an interdisciplinary reading of music, forced migration and emplacement for scholars across leisure, anthropology, sociology, and geography. This book contributes and provokes novel discussions regarding refugees’ everyday experiences and negotiations of precariousness, suspension, and marginality in Britain.

“This book provides a rich narrative about the politics of musicking for the men and women seeking asylum in Britain who are at the centre of the study. Nicola De Martini Ugolotti weaves together theoretical considerations with ethnographic details, capturing important stories that speak to the affective intensities of pleasure, homing desires, and abject fear experienced and re-claimed in the UK hostile environment.” 

- Aarti Ratna, Associate Professor in Sociology and Social Sciences, Northumbria University

“This book offers vital engagements with questions of migration, music, and leisure, set within and against the violence enacted towards people in the UK’s asylum system. Finely-textured ethnographic content and a wealth of academic scholarship showcase why music and leisure matter toward understanding the politics, spaces, and lives of people seeking sanctuary and belonging in contemporary Britain, and beyond.” 

- Brett Lashua, Lecturer in Sociology of Media and Education, University College London