9

Spaces of Belonging

Sanchayeeta Iyer, Annelies Kusters, Erin Moriarty, Amandine le Maire, and Steven Emery

“Where do I belong?” is an often-asked question in the context of international mobility. Belonging is about feeling at home in places, spaces, and/or groups of people. In this chapter, we explore how deaf people on the move look for spaces where they belong. Because we are concerned with the exploration of spaces of belonging through mobility, we do not examine belonging within preexisting or natal family groups; we do, however, include “new families” in our scope. We show that in spaces of belonging, deaf people typically share interests and/or one or more other social locations. Our analysis of belonging is not limited to deaf spaces, as our participants explored various spaces of belonging, including those where they were the only deaf person among hearing people.

Yuval-Davis (2006) distinguishes between three analytical levels for the study of belonging: (1) social locations, (2) identifications and emotional attachment, and (3) political and ethical values. The first level of analysis, “social location,” refers to people’s positionality along mutually constituting axes of difference (gender, class, race and ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and so on). The second level, “identifications and emotional attachment,” are narratives of belonging within specific groups and of what it means to be a member of a grouping; these narratives express “emotional investments and desire for attachments” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 202), and they tend to come to the fore when the teller feels threatened or insecure about their position within the group. Yuval-Davis warns that (1) social location should not be equated with, conflated with, or reduced to (2) identifications. One can, for example, be a deaf lesbian but not feel at home in deaf lesbian spaces (see Lenka’s story, p. 269), or be a deaf Sierra Leonean and not socialize with other deaf Sierra Leoneans (see Samba’s story). Separating social location and identifications helps to “investigate what brings certain people under certain conditions to identify or not with particular identity groupings” (Yuval-Davis, 2006, p. 268). We show several examples of this in the chapter.

The third level of analysis is political and ethical values, which are attitudes and ideologies about the production and maintenance of boundaries of identities and groups—that is, who is “us” and who is “them.” In other words, ethical and political values are about inclusion or exclusion in groups (whether nations, cultures, or other communities). Yuval-Davis calls this “the politics of belonging.” The politics of belonging also involves discourse on what it takes to belong, on the nature of boundaries (which can be permeable and changeable), and on contestations of these boundaries (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Summarized, “the politics of belonging are comprised of specific political projects aimed at constructing belonging in particular ways to particular collectivities that are, at the same time, themselves being constructed by these projects in very specific ways” (Yuval-Davis, 2010, p. 266).

In the context of this book, belonging is thus not only about feelings of “(not) fitting in” but also about how others define who belongs and how. We are interested in how boundaries of collectivities are being demarcated both implicitly (making people feel “out of place”) and explicitly (statements as to who belongs in the space and how or why). When someone feels that they do not belong in certain spaces, they can experience a drive to participate in or to produce alternative spaces of inclusion because distinctive groups are formed on the basis of shared, common aspects of oneself, such as nationality, language, residence status, belief, and so on. In this process, deaf people can adapt or rewrite their collective narratives around their specific ways of being (i.e., their identifications).

The terms that are most often used to talk about belonging within deaf epistemologies—both within Deaf Studies and within community discourse—are “deaf identity,” “deaf culture,” and “deaf community.” In this chapter, we build on works that have used these framings, but we also frame “belonging” more broadly. This allows us to bring together findings collected in a range of very different contexts, and to bring out experiences that have been obscured in other Deaf Studies accounts.

Many studies have reflected on what it means to be “culturally” deaf and to be part of a collectivist culture (i.e., “the deaf community”) (Ladd, 2003; Padden & Humphries, 1988). Deaf individuals’ intersecting social locations (e.g., migration status, race and ethnicity, nationality, disability) mean that it is possible for them to be placed on the fringe or periphery—that is, “outside”—of what has often been described as “the deaf community,” contrasting with the notion of deaf universalism (see Chapter 1). Deaf Studies has been criticized for marginalizing the voices of disabled deaf people, LGBTQIA+ deaf people, and deaf people of color from the all-encompassing term “deaf” (Dunn & Anderson, 2020; Moges, 2017; Ruiz-Williams et al., 2015). The notion of community also falls short when it is used in the singular way (“the deaf community”). The (singular) term “community” does not suit many of the stories in this chapter because journeys into spaces of belonging are multiple and complicated. However, we do use the term “deaf community” here and there in the chapter because our participants use it. The concept of deaf community is still pervasive in deaf epistemologies when talking about belonging, perhaps even more so than the concept of “deaf culture.” People use “deaf community” in narratives about key aspects of who they are (i.e., those relating to being part of a linguistic minority signing community and that reference shared histories and/or cultures), and they use this lens as part of their worldview.

Importantly, however, we do not treat the terms “deaf community” and “sense of belonging” as synonyms, as some other scholars have done (e.g., Conama, 2022). Rather, we focus on our participants’ search for spaces where they can belong without treating membership in communities as a prerequisite for belonging somewhere. Similarly, Breivik (2005) has engaged in case studies of internationally mobile deaf Norwegians who went to events such as the Deaflympics or who went to study abroad and looked for spaces where they could belong (both abroad and upon their return to Norway). Transnational spaces of belonging, both in Norway and abroad, were crucial for these Norwegians because the deaf community in Norway is known to be very small (Breivik, 2005, p. 43). Deaf people who feel they do not belong or that they are not part of their local deaf community may find that their sense of belonging is facilitated in global/international deaf networks (see Chapter 7).

Another term that is often used in Deaf Studies discourse on belonging is “deaf identity.” “Belonging” is often treated as a synonym for “identity,” for example, in relation to ethnic identity and national citizenship (Anthias, 2008; Antonsich, 2010). Also, “identity” is often used as a term that does not need a definition (Jones & Krzyżanowski, 2008). Anthias (2008) explains the difference between belonging and identity as follows:

Identity involves individual and collective narratives of self and other, presentation and labelling, myths of origin and myths of destiny with associated strategies and identifications. Belonging on the other hand is more about experiences of being part of the social fabric and the ways in which social bonds and ties are manifested in practices, experiences and emotions of inclusion. (p. 8)

Thus, while identity and belonging are overlapping concepts (and belonging, in Yuval-Davis’ opinion, also includes identifications), their emphasis differs. Key to deaf identity-focused approaches is the study of who deaf people think they are (individually and collectively), and who or what they identify with (see Leigh, 2009; Leigh & O’Brien, 2020). Yuval-Davis sees identity politics as a “specific type of project of the politics of belonging” (2010, p. 266). She notes that “identity politics tend to elevate specific location categories of belonging” (p. 266). An example of this is the phenomenon of essentializing “deaf-first” narratives, in which “deaf identities” are seen as the privileged social category under which all other distinctions are located. Many minoritized deaf people lack access to their heritage culture and languages, and/or to knowledge about their other identifications (e.g., LGBTQIA+), which further contributes to the discursive foregrounding of their being deaf.

Scholars have questioned or challenged the narratives that assume that deaf people have a universalistic, unitary sense of being deaf, around which other identities coalesce. They have often done so by studying salience hierarchies of identities, taking an “X-first” approach—that is, “placing identities, forms of power, and modes of redress in competition, but also in a pecking order” (May, 2015, p. 166). For example, James and Woll (2004) have asked whether “black deaf” or “deaf black” better suits the identities of black deaf people in the United Kingdom. Participants who identified as “black deaf” participated in black hearing spaces, and racism from other deaf people made it difficult for them to identify as “deaf black.” Others identified as “deaf black” because they felt their needs as a deaf person were dominant and that communication through sign language was central to them. Others resisted ordering their identities in this way. In the same vein, Ahmad et al. (2002) asked participants—South Asian people in the United Kingdom—to place their identities in order of importance, using cards they had prepared for the purpose (e.g., Deaf, British Sign Language [BSL]-user, Asian, Pakistani, Indian, British, Muslim, Man, Young, Disabled). Foster and Kinuthia (2003) interviewed their participants about which elements of identity were more central to their experience; responses included “deaf first, then deaf Asian, then deaf Asian with low vision” (p. 287) and “being Black, then a woman, then my hearing impairment” (p. 280). The order in which identities were placed in salience hierarchies was often associated with the characteristics for which the participants felt most discriminated against, and with their experiences of white deaf people failing to recognize cultural and religious sensitivities.

Some researchers have pointed out that identifications are situation dependent. Foster and Kinuthia (2003) found that particular characteristics may become more pronounced than others when a person is situated in certain environments over time: For example, a politicized deaf identity may be dominant on a campus where deaf students reside, but some deaf students may experience increased levels of racism, ableism, or other forms of discrimination there compared to other spaces (see also James & Woll, 2004; Ruiz-Williams et al., 2015). In much of the recent Deaf Studies literature, it is recognized that deaf identities are ambiguous, various, plural, complex, and shifting (Leigh & O’Brien, 2020), and scholars have pointed out that identities are always situational, contextual, and often tied up with feelings of not fitting in or being discriminated against. We found an ethnography of “belonging” to be a suitable approach for the MobileDeaf project because the focus is on inclusion and exclusion in various spaces. Conversely, “identities” are still often treated as nested categories within individuals and studied in research activities such as interviews, rather than grounded in ethnography.

The framework of intersectionality has also challenged—even usurped—the “identities” trope. Since the term “intersectionality” was coined by Crenshaw (1989; see Chapter 1), it has been the subject of much academic discussion. Crenshaw was part of a wider black feminist movement, which itself drew on earlier historical sources (see Collins & Bilge, 2016). Although identity was a strong feature of this politics, there was an emphasis on how it called out the nature of power. Key to the debates were discussions on how to liberate people from oppression. The concept has since been expanded from its original emphasis on race, class, and gender to include other forms of oppression (e.g., those based on disability and sexuality), all of which are experienced through multiple intersecting social locations. Despite the breadth of its current application, it is important to acknowledge the labor and knowledge production of the women of color in the United States who instigated and contributed to the initial intersectionality discourse (Nash, 2019).

The use of intersectionality as a theoretical concept and analytical tool in Deaf Studies is quite a recent phenomenon, and a central focus of this work is on identity formation, perpetuating Deaf Studies’ focus on identity (Emery & Iyer, 2022). The authors of these identity-focused intersectional studies reflect the general trend of challenging Deaf Studies’ universalizing narratives, and a rich stream of scholarship has emerged to address the intersections between, for example, deaf and LGBTQIA+; deaf and Asian ethnic minority; black and deaf; black, deaf, and queer; black, deaf, and feminist; deaf and Latinx; and deaf and woman (for references, see Emery & Iyer, 2022; for a recent overview of the literature, see Dunn & Anderson, 2020, and Miller & Clark, 2020). Some of these studies reflect the finding that minoritized deaf people may (also) show a strong sense of identification and solidarity with hearing people from the same minority groups. Studies focusing on the intersectional experiences of, for example, deafdisabled, deafblind, and transgender deaf people remain limited in number.

The previously mentioned studies on identity, although exploring intersections, typically do not address international deaf mobility. In Chapter 4, we noted that studies of deaf ethnic minorities typically do not mention migration, even though some black people in the United Kingdom, for example, are also migrants or had parents who were migrants. Often, international mobility features only peripherally, although there are a few notable exceptions (e.g., Martens, 2020). Additionally, most studies of intersectionality (and not just in Deaf Studies) also limit their analysis to one particular country—what Patil (2013) calls “domestic intersectionality”—and do not center (international) mobility. This approach does not reflect the lives of the many people who are mobile both within countries and across national borders. For example, social locations that are privileged in one geographical location may be marginalized elsewhere (Mahler et al., 2015). Also, mobility can itself trigger new journeys in search of spaces of belonging. Migrants are often embedded in transnational networks and relations that include ties to the country they have left (Anthias, 2008; Anthias et al., 2013; Brickell & Datta, 2011; Greiner & Sakdapolrak, 2013). When deaf people mobilize to a new place, they may be drawn toward people with whom they share a country of origin, culture, spoken/written language, or religion. In the spaces of belonging that they traverse, relations with other people are uneven and are laced with power differences and inequalities, which often result in tensions and even conflicts. The analysis of belonging needs to reflect this fluidity.

Intersectional approaches to the study of belonging thus need to be multiscalar; that is, they must take into account various scales, such as local, national, regional, and global (Mahler et al., 2015). The focus on scale is in line with the translocality framework, which “disengages the experience of locality and belonging from being situated in a particular neighborhood or homeland and instead locates it in the mobile bodies and multiplicity of spaces of immigrant lives” (Low, 2017, p. 181). Translocality is a useful framework that looks at simultaneous belonging within the multiple spaces in which people are situated or with which they identify (Anthias et al., 2013). Antonsich (2010, p. 645) uses the term “place belongingness,” meaning “belonging as a personal, intimate, feeling of being ‘at home’ in a place.” “Home” is a symbolic space of familiarity, comfort, security, and emotional attachment (Antonsich, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 2011), which is not necessarily tied to one or more fixed place(s). Mobile people, such as migrants, can build, strengthen, and deepen ties to multiple homes over time, and these homes can be mobile themselves (Ralph & Staeheli, 2011). In doing so, they are homing, which is a process of becoming, an endeavor to feel at home (Boccagni, 2022).

Place belongingness and homing can also be conceptualized on multiple scales (e.g., a flat or house, a neighborhood, a national community, a global community) within which deaf people may be interconnected via networks (see Chapter 7). Place belongingness for deaf people is often related to mobility outside of one’s area of residence: Deaf people visit deaf clubs, the houses of deaf friends, and deaf gatherings elsewhere in the area, the country, and even abroad (as we show using maps in Chapters 3, 4, and 7). Therefore, the study of deaf people’s place belongingness must go beyond national territorial frameworks (Breivik et al., 2002), hence our engagement with translocality and intersectionality when examining mobile deaf people’s spaces of belonging.

In this chapter, by drawing on observations and interviews from selected case studies across our four subprojects, we demonstrate the various ways in which deaf people navigate, maintain, and contest their sense of belonging across different contexts and on different scales. Our purpose is to focus on people’s movements between groups. We consider “groups” in a looser and more flexible way than the community concept allows; for example, our analysis includes tour groups and other temporary groupings. We focus on how deaf people participate in specific spaces and institutions, and how particular spaces give rise to specific experiences of privilege and/or oppression and marginalization. By doing this, we tie into the tradition of deaf geographies, exploring a variety of deaf spaces and how they emerge within specific places (see Chapter 1). In some of the cases we discuss in the next section, we show how affiliations and feelings of belonging can shift across contexts according to “where one stands” (i.e., one’s standpoint or position). We show how various intersections became visible to us in these contexts. Our use of “to us” in the previous sentence acknowledges that our own positionalities shaped the intersections we witnessed or experienced or that were narrated to us by participants (see Chapter 2). Language competence is perceived as one of the most important gatekeeper devices in spaces of belonging; this is covered in Chapter 8, where some of the same participants’ experiences feature.

The chapter is divided into two sections. In the first section, we focus on migrants who find spaces to belong in the place to which they have migrated, in this case, London and Kakuma Refugee Camp. In the second section, we focus on spaces of belonging that emerge in the context of travel for tourism, conferences, and sports events.

Finding Spaces to Belong After Migration

In this section, we focus on deaf migrants, including refugees, who have moved at various stages of their lives (e.g., as a child with their parents, as a student, or as a newlywed). They have connected with people from their home countries and/or from the same ethnic groups, but they have also interacted on a frequent basis with people who are not from their country—that is, in multinational, multiethnic spaces, or in groups with shared interests or ways of being. Some of these are spaces in which they are the only migrant.

In London, there are multiple communities or groups of deaf people. For example, there is a deaf rainbow/LGBTQIA+ community, a deaf European migrant community, and a deaf student community. Migrants may “sample” various groups in search of spaces to belong. Here, we give two examples of locations where Sanchayeeta and Steve did participant observation, which show how deaf people were included or excluded from various deaf spaces. As we discussed in Chapters 4 and 7, deaf Londoners often meet at “deaf pub” gatherings; Sanchayeeta and Steve conducted participant observation at the Shakespeare’s Head pub on several of its fortnightly deaf social gatherings in 2018. The pub is situated in central London, with good public transport links (i.e., within walking distance of London Underground and national railway stations); it is also near City Lit college, which is popular among deaf migrants and British deaf people alike, because it offers affordable, often subsidized, courses with sign language accessibility. The Shakespeare’s Head pub is thus a highly suitable location for a regular deaf gathering. The pub itself is open to the public—at least, to those of an appropriate age, due to the supply of alcohol. On deaf pub evenings, the pub usually employs two security guards outside the entrance to verify people’s age before granting them admittance. However, this is not to say that there were no under-18s at the deaf event: It is possible for younger patrons to enter the pub during the day (in many English pubs, children are permitted on-site to eat until 9 p.m.) and discreetly remain inside after the security guards have taken up their post.

Upon arrival at the large pub, one can spot the deaf space spreading out within the otherwise hearing public space by the moving arms and hands of diverse deaf people. Indeed, several different groups tend to meet within this larger deaf space, with some people moving in and out of different groups to greet their friends or acquaintances, while others stay with the same group the whole evening. Sanchayeeta and Steve observed that deaf migrants tended to gravitate toward deaf people who shared one or more social locations with them, such as being of the same nationality, sharing a language, having attended the same deaf school, being gay, and/or having the same religious background. Some participants stated that by doing so, they were able to feel “at home” within the larger deaf space. International deaf people—that is, visitors and newly arrived residents from different parts of the world—tended to use a variety of languages: International Sign (IS); their national sign language with others who knew it; and BSL. One Indian deaf migrant narrated that she was able to feel “free to be herself” using Indian Sign Language (ISL) with another Indian migrant. A group of deaf people from Nepal switched repeatedly between BSL and Nepalese Sign Language (NSL) because some were not familiar with BSL—including the wife of a Nepalese man who was temporarily residing in London as a postgraduate student. Nepalese deaf people were exchanging stories about living in London, about people and places they knew back home, and about their plans for the future. This regular social gathering is thus one of the deaf spaces where deaf migrants and deaf international visitors can make new friends, actualize their networks (see Chapter 7), and seek signposts to help them access certain information, advice, and resources (see Chapter 4). These acts thus help them to find, produce, and/or maintain a sense of belonging.

There are deaf Londoners who avoid attending deaf events such as the gathering in the Shakespeare’s Head pub. In Sanchayeeta’s experience of living and researching in the city, she has observed how deaf British people (usually white) tend to rank deaf social gatherings and deaf events based on social and class-based hierarchies. The Shakespeare’s Head pub event is viewed as a site where “grassroots deaf” (see Ladd, 2003) people gather; international deaf people were thus present among crowds of grassroots British deaf people. Sanchayeeta has observed that many white, middle-class, British deaf people consider this space (i.e., this pub, and the deaf people attending it) to be a low-hierarchy social gathering, and they said that they avoid going there for various reasons (e.g., “there, usually something happens like a fight”). This draws a parallel to Ladd’s (2003) findings about middle-class deaf people’s attitudes toward working-class deaf people. Some British (typically white) deaf people prefer to attend social gatherings that exclude certain groups, such as youths (“troublemakers”) and unemployed people, and that create spaces for a limited public of “professional deaf people.” Some deaf people from certain religious backgrounds (e.g., observant Muslims, Buddhists) may prefer to avoid deaf events in places where alcohol is served. Class, professionality, religion, and age thus contribute to the production of spaces of belonging, and to the inclusion and exclusion of migrants. Migrants who have arrived relatively recently can find that it takes a while to identify spaces where they can belong, and this can necessitate active networking (see Chapters 4 and 7). The challenge of finding suitable public places to produce or maintain spaces of belonging is illustrated below.

Sanchayeeta and Steve did participant observation at a deaf Muslim organization, Al Isharah, based at the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre. Al Isharah offers basic Quran classes for deaf adults, delivered in BSL. On average, each class contained 10 people between ages 20 and 60, and the classes were made up of various nationalities including Algerian, Pakistani, and Somali, as well as British. After the class, some of the students would socialize in nearby food places before they dispersed back to their homes in different parts of London. On one occasion, Steve and Sanchayeeta were in a food place opposite the mosque, having ordered drinks while they waited for the students to come in after their afternoon class. When three Muslim deaf women and one man arrived, the person behind the counter approached the man and told him via gestures that he could not enter the venue without making a purchase. It transpired that the proprietor was annoyed that the deaf group had been coming in and using the small venue as a meeting place without buying anything. Three of the group left; one woman stayed to buy a pie from the shop. This was not an isolated incident: We observed that the deaf students were keen to socialize with each other, but there were limited places around the mosque where they could do so without the need to spend money. Another time, Steve and Sanchayeeta accompanied a small group of deaf Muslim women to an ice cream parlor, which was also situated not far from the mosque. A few of the women were complaining among themselves about a Somali woman (who was out of sight of the conversation at the time) who typically relied on them to contribute food and drinks to her. They did not want to do so this time. The Somali woman had come to the United Kingdom in the late 2000s after divorcing her husband, and the others found her signing difficult to understand. The group waited until the Somali woman returned to the table before going to purchase food and drink, so as to avoid paying for her. However, when they returned with their goods, the Somali woman did not have anything to eat or drink, and one of the women ended up getting her something after all.

From these observations, we conclude that the politics of belonging in public spaces is shaped by economic as well as social capital. In this example, having sufficient money and the willingness to spend it, or having someone willing to make purchases on their behalf, is an underlying factor influencing whether the students have the opportunity to interact with their deaf Muslim classmates outside of class time. It thus influences where they can belong. A high proportion of deaf people from ethnic minorities in London, including migrants, are not employed and receive benefits. Being in this position can restrict their ability to participate in social spaces where access is dependent on making a purchase. Place-belongingness is therefore harder to establish in proximity to the mosque than at, for example, the Shakespeare’s Head pub gatherings. Here, deaf time and space are preplanned, and even though money does have to be spent to some extent, the pub is a large enough venue that individuals can get away more easily without buying drinks. However, because alcohol is consumed during the pub gathering, the space may be less comfortable for people who do not drink alcohol.

We now shift from a focus on place-nodes, in the form of public venues, to a focus on individuals (i.e., person-nodes) who try to find spaces of belonging within the larger landscape of London deaf spaces. Sana, a deaf Indian Muslim woman, met her deaf British Indian Muslim husband, Shafiq, through shared network connections, and their relationship developed online (see Chapter 7). Once in London, Shafiq acted as Sana’s main guide to British deaf communities in London, taking her to deaf pub gatherings, to a caravan event outside of the city, and to various deaf clubs. The people he introduced her to were mostly grassroots deaf groups, made up of a mix of white deaf people and deaf people from ethnic minorities. Sana found their mannerisms, attitudes, and ways of life to be different from what she was used to, and she was taken aback to find that many deaf people in London made heavy use of English mouthings and wore hearing aid devices. Her expectations had also been shaped by her education: While taking an ISL course, she had learned about deafhood and deaf epistemology and ontology, and initially expected deaf people in the United Kingdom to be “strong deaf,” with a strong sense of deafhood, as she had witnessed in both the United States and India. The mismatches between her expectations and reality colored her interactions with deaf people in her early years.

At British deaf community events, Shafiq told Sana not to question a person’s actions or behavior, and to leave them alone if they did something that she found inappropriate. However, she continued to find it difficult to build new relationships:

People would say “hi” to me. I would reply—they would ask how I was, and I would say “fine.” That would be the end of the conversation as they went to speak to somebody else, so my exchanges were very short. People didn’t talk to me at length. They would ask me how I was, how my job was going, perhaps congratulate me on coming over from India, and that’s it. I resigned myself to taking a back seat, whereas my husband knew his friends really well and they would have long conversations in BSL while I watched from the sidelines, all the while taking in the language. (Finding Spaces to Belong, 00:45:40)¹

Sana’s account shows how difficult it can be to build relationships even in spaces where one wants to belong. Initially, she found it challenging to build rapport with deaf people through these brief and superficial conversations. Her lack of confidence in BSL played a part in this; although she would observe Shafiq’s conversations with others, she would wait until they got home to ask for clarification of things she had not understood. Later, she learned that she could interrupt a conversation and that the signer would clarify meanings for her—a phenomenon that she recognized from her home country and attributed to the shared deaf behavior she valued: “[It is] same with [deaf people in] India! [That’s] deafhood!” (See Chapter 8 for a contrasting story regarding asking for repetitions.)

Belonging was also a slow process for Aisha, one of Sanchayeeta’s newlywed participants. It took her 2 years of effort to build relationships with deaf and hearing people in London through BSL and English classes (see Chapter 8), and through her employment as a carer for elderly and vulnerable deaf people. The changes in her sense of self are shown in the self-portraits she produced for Sanchayeeta (see Figure 9.1) and were also noticeable in her interviews. During her first 2 years in London, she was interviewed several times by Sanchayeeta, who noticed that Aisha gradually reduced her Indian gestures, including the Indian “head wobble.” Belonging in the United Kingdom for Aisha thus meant acquiring a different body language and different ways of communicating, going far beyond acquiring a new sign language.

As with Sana and Aisha, other migrants have felt varying degrees of belonging in different deaf spaces across the city, and they have experienced difficulties finding spaces where they could belong and in which they were made to feel welcome. Fareed, a deaf Middle Eastern man, came to London in the 2000s during a period of political instability in his home country. He met his Indian wife, Shahina, via a shared friend from the Philippines (see Chapter 7); she joined him in London in the 2010s. In an interview with Steve, it transpired that their respective early experiences of encountering British deaf people in the city had differed considerably:

Figure 9.1. Aisha’s self-portraits: reflections on how her sense of self shifted through moving from India to the United Kingdom.

There are many layers to this narrative: Gender, class, ethnicity, and the timing of arrival in the United Kingdom emerge as factors that affect the experiences of new arrivals. This husband and wife arrived in the United Kingdom in different decades (the late 2000s and the early 2010s, respectively) and thus in different sociopolitical contexts. In the 2000s, societal attitudes toward new arrivals from the Middle East were generally hostile (Wintour, 2017); 2003 saw the invasion of Iraq, and in 2005 the London bombings took place (often referred to as 7/7), in which four coordinated suicide attacks were carried out by Islamist terrorists on the London transport system. Because many people in the United Kingdom associated “Arabs” with extremist Islamism and gender segregation, and because his home country is a member of the Arab League, Fareed seems to have run afoul of these prejudices. Shahina, on the other hand, is Indian, and attitudes toward “Indians” were generally less hostile at the time. Additionally, although Shahina is Muslim like Fareed, she does not wear a hijab or other clothing that distinguish her as such; consequently, she was likely assumed to be Hindu or Sikh. (In Britain, distinctions between different groups of Indians—itself a generalizing term often used to encompass people from various South Asian countries—are often made along religious lines, with Muslims assumed to be Pakistani.) Shahina also has a different social status and education level than her husband, which may also have positively disposed the British people she met toward her. In comparison, Fareed has less access to wealth, and he has limited English skills. He also took more initiative in interacting with British deaf people in the city and was well-known in ethnic minority groups in London. The man’s proactive socializing, combined with his social locations within the spaces he visited (e.g., nightclubs), had exposed him to xenophobia and anti-Arab and Islamophobic microaggressions. By being asked what he was doing in the United Kingdom, he was made to feel that he did not belong; this is an example of boundary creation through the politics of belonging. Fareed also explained that he experienced a change over time and that he got negative responses mainly in the beginning. As we saw in Aisha’s story, developing a sense of belonging can be a long process.

Although Aisha has reduced her “Indianness” while in the United Kingdom, other migrants have foregrounded aspects of their identities that they did not place strong emphasis on before migrating. A notable example is some migrants emphasizing, or even “discovering,” their deaf identity following migration; see Rosa and Francesca’s narratives of “becoming deaf” (in Chapter 4). Another key example is sexuality, of which Luis and Lenka are illustrative. In Finding Spaces to Belong, Luis, a young Guatemalan man in his early 20s, describes coming to the United Kingdom via Portugal, having grown up living between these two countries (00:21:58).² He chose to move to London to progress his education to degree level because accessibility and support for disabled students in the United Kingdom are better than in Guatemala and Portugal. At the time of the first interview (2019), Luis stated that he had planned his stay in London to be temporary, intending to have a rich social experience while getting on with his studies. During his first year of living in the city, he had interacted with two gay men from France and Germany and had learned more about their lived experiences in these countries. In Guatemala and Portugal, both predominant Catholic countries, the quality of social life within queer communities is low, and they are not very visible. Luis came to the conclusion that equality, rights, support, and social life for queer people in London are better than in these four other countries. Based on this information, he decided to stay in the city long-term. For Luis, being in London allowed him to freely explore his gay self. This social location was not at the forefront of his mind when he was planning his migration to the city; however, through his socialization with deaf gay men in the city, it became central in his thinking about his future life. In the following quotation, he explains that he sees queer deaf spaces as spaces to which he has a strong bond, based on his dual identification as queer and deaf. He noted that the wider deaf community is slow regarding the uptake of new terminology and perspectives in relation to sexual identities, especially in comparison with hearing people. He told Sanchayeeta that he consequently found it easier and more comfortable to be among the queer deaf community than the wider community:

On the one hand you have the wider deaf community, the deaf world, and on the other hand smaller groups, such as gay and lesbian. My sign for that community is “queer” [RAINBOW]. In these subgroups, you have closer bonds with one another which you don’t see in the larger deaf community. The larger community can actually be oppressive to these smaller groups […], which is one of the reasons why social bonds in those smaller groups form very quickly. […] The wider deaf community finds it hard to learn and understand all the different terminology for different [queer] identities, and the community is often not open-minded—they lag behind in terms of attitude changes. So, when you compare this to the wider hearing community who have taken on board these new concepts quickly, the deaf community often […] suffers from gaps in information. […] I have found it better with my fellow queer deaf [people] because we share much more in terms of experience and identity, so we have a dual connection. Our deafness and our membership of the queer community unites us. Of course, I am able and happy to get on with people across the full spectrum; it’s more about whether the wider deaf community is accepting of me or not. I, myself, am very flexible and just want to get on with my life. (Finding Spaces to Belong, 00:27:27)³

Luis clearly distinguished between “social location” and “identification” here, as well as alluding to the “politics of belonging” (see Yuval-Davis, 2006). In terms of his social location, he explained that he is a gay man, but that his identification with queer people as a collective came to the forefront in London, where he found belonging in queer spaces (not exclusively deaf queer spaces). This experience of identification came to influence his perspective regarding his future. He flagged the politics of belonging within the wider national setting (London was identified as a “better” place to live for disabled students and queer people alike because of the “rights” and “support” available) and also within the wider deaf community, stating that he felt he belonged less in deaf spaces where people are “not accepting” of his sexuality. Although Luis talked about having a dual social location (queer and deaf), he also often gathered with people who had more than these two social locations in common with him—for example, people who were not only deaf and queer, but also male, and part of an ethnic minority, and/or a migrant. For example, he socialized at the Shakespeare’s Head deaf event with mostly European gay men of different ethnic backgrounds.

Similar to Luis, Lenka N. also talked about belonging in relation to sexual orientation in the film Finding Spaces to Belong (00:01:19).⁴ A deaf Czech woman of “Gypsy” (her term) heritage through her deaf mother, Lenka moved to England to gain work and life experiences because there were limited academic and employment opportunities for deaf people in her country of origin (see Chapter 8 for other parts of Lenka N.’s story). Like Luis, she did not arrive with the expectation that she would eventually make the United Kingdom her permanent home. After living and working in the United Kingdom for a few years, she began to question her sexuality and her desire for companionship when she entered her 30s. At that point, she was introduced to a deaf Czech man from the same region she was from, and they also share the same (Czech) signed and spoken languages. These factors played a part in the growth of their close friendship, and Lenka considered him as her “brother.” He introduced her to his circle of deaf gay friends. Lenka felt “at home” among them: She had found a space where she could relax and be herself, and thus “belong.” She had not yet interacted with deaf lesbians in the city because she was not comfortable entering spaces that she felt were, in her words, like a “meat market”; for example, she had attended a mainstream lesbian club and bar in which women were checking each other out, and she felt “on display.” When she met her first female partner (a South African hearing woman), she became connected to a small group of hearing lesbian friends, made up of migrants of different ethnicities and nationalities. While she was with her South African partner, Lenka called this group her “core friends.”

In contrast, Lenka found that deaf lesbian groups tended to question her participation in the space and that they treated her like a guest because she had a different background from many deaf lesbians, being a deaf migrant who also fluidly switched between signing and speaking. She did not find that she experienced the same ambivalence with the hearing group of friends. However, as Lenka moved into a different chapter of her life and as her relationship with this partner came to an end, she found herself increasingly distanced from this “core group,” preferring to participate in a deaf (wider community) space where she could sign with anyone and take a break from lipreading. She is now in a relationship with a British deaf woman. Certain elements of Lenka’s “homing” narrative, such as the years that she felt “at home” in hearing spaces with other queer people, show that her spaces of belonging (“identifications”) have aligned with different social locations during different periods of her life. For Lenka, spaces of belonging were mainly with smaller groups of friends, which have shifted throughout the various stages of her life.

The previous stories have included examples of migrants connecting with people from their countries of origin as part of their journey to find spaces in which they can belong. Lenka’s new Czech “brother” introduced her to the gay people who became her good friends, and Nepali people gravitated toward the Shakespeare’s Head to catch up with each other. In the next paragraphs, we explore this theme further. We look at belonging on a translocal scale, by looking at deaf people’s simultaneous affiliations across national borders—within the host country, within the country of origin, and within groups of deaf and hearing migrants originating from the same country.

Another story featured in Finding Spaces to Belong is that of Samba. Originally from Sierra Leone in West Africa, he was brought to London as a teenager after his father’s marriage to a British resident. On her advice, Samba was brought to the United Kingdom to obtain quality secondary schooling. He went to a deaf school in London. When Samba was young, he socialized within a crowd of young deaf men, most of whom were first- or second-generation migrants attending the same school and football (soccer) club. However, he started to question this circle of friends as a space of belonging because they were involved in “bad boy” activities he described as “very un-Christian.” He had also been threatened with a knife by a white man who was part of this crowd. Samba described his involvement with the group:

Before, I thought that by being with [this crowd of young men], with bad boy behavior, smoking spliffs and all that, I thought it was a form of integration. It was integration in a way, but did the group have a good reputation or profile? No, they had a bad reputation, and I came to realize I didn’t want to be associated with them. I didn’t want to go down that path of life. I removed myself from them. It was really hard to leave them actually, but […] I have Christian faith and that was important to me.

There is ongoing discourse, rooted in colonialism, in the U.K. news media and social policy that portrays young black men “on the street” as pathological, deviant, underachieving, unemployed, and responsible for inner-city crimes (Gunter, 2010). Samba’s narrative shows the influence of this discourse: He described in the interview how he was perceived by society based on his appearance (“a bad boy”) and by his association with the “bad profile” group conducting illicit activities (smoking cannabis) in public spaces—that is, fitting the racist stereotype of a young black inner-city man. He found an alternative “home” within a church close to where he lived, in which there were Christians of various backgrounds (including those from Iran, the United States, India, and elsewhere) and where he could access biblical knowledge via BSL interpreters. There were also classes provided in BSL to explain biblical texts in more depth, and a BSL Bible discussion group attended by deaf people born in the United Kingdom as well as deaf migrants. By breaking away from his former associations and aligning himself with the people at the church, Samba experienced a shift in how society perceived him, having found what would be perceived by many British people as an “appropriate” way of integrating into the mainstream. He even obtained part-time work as a caretaker at the church.

Samba presented his Christian faith as the core of his being, and he experienced place-belongingness alongside spiritual fulfillment at the church due to it being both a multicultural and multilingual Christian space:

I am deaf, and black, but none of that matters in church […] [T]hat doesn’t mean I have to abandon my culture; I still keep that. It is an integral part of me, but the Christian faith […] has taught me humility, given me a sense of calm and belonging. I have been able to integrate with people from different nationalities, as well as British, and take on BSL as a rich and living language. This hasn’t depleted my ASL; I have a richness of language in both signed languages.

Samba’s sense of belonging was based on the access and shared values he found there. He asserted that his deafness and skin color did not matter at the church; by this, he did not mean that they were erased, but that at the church, deaf and hearing people of different nationalities and ethnicities had opportunities to come together. He was also enabled to improve his BSL skills, as well as to preserve his ASL by using it with deaf people from abroad.

The church was also attended by hearing people from the Sierra Leonean community in London. The church is located in the same borough where Samba lives, an area where Sierra Leonean people reside and socialize, and where they can go to Sierra Leonean spaces such as shops, cafés, and restaurants. Samba took Sanchayeeta and Jorn (who was filming) to a Sierra Leonean food place that was a less than 10-minute bus journey from the church (Finding Spaces to Belong, 00:17:34).⁵ The people eating and working there were from the local Sierra Leonean community; they welcomed Samba, who gestured and used spoken English as he greeted them and interacted with the person behind the counter, but the conversations were short and superficial. As Jorn set up his video camera equipment, Samba ordered himself a meal and drinks, and a specific drink he wanted Sanchayeeta to try, and then took a seat. Samba had been expecting his father to be there, but he was not, and there was little interaction between him and the other customers. The film shows him eating his meal in silence while the other patrons and staff have a conversation, with the TV in the background displaying a program from Sierra Leone. Samba mentioned that he would sometimes bring his deaf friends (who were not from Sierra Leone) to this place, at which he was able to enjoy the Sierra Leonean ambiance and food while also having conversations in BSL. During a panel on migration organized by Sanchayeeta and Steve, Samba explained:

My deafness is the reason I face barriers in my family, not race. However, then when you are in the deaf community, race may be more prominent. […] It’s about being deaf but more about being black. So, in a different context, you’re experiencing different types of oppression and have to come up with different strategies and resolutions about how you’re going to answer to those.

Samba found it hard to have deep interactions with Sierra Leonean people due to language barriers, yet he experienced racism in deaf spaces; this confirms the findings of James and Woll (2004), Ahmad et al. (2002), and others researching the racialized and ethnicized politics of belonging. He contrasted his belongingness in BSL-dominant spaces in the church and the café with the barriers experienced by hearing people from his country who also resided in London, and he also differentiated himself from other deaf people from Sierra Leone in London: “Other deaf people from Sierra Leone may not be Christian and would really struggle to feel they belong.” Even though Samba is aware of other deaf people from Sierra Leone living in and around London, he does not socialize with them.

Despite not socializing with many deaf Sierra Leoneans in London, Samba had a strong sense of duty to help deaf people in Africa. He has been involved with African deaf charities that are based in London, such as Aurora Deaf Aid Africa. Sierra Leone remains in the forefront of his mind: He returned to visit the country of his birth in 2003, has kept in touch with friends there, and dreams of going back to share resources and empower the deaf community there by running an organization with deaf development at the center of its work. In this way, Samba’s aspirations were oriented toward deaf people in his home country and, more widely, in Africa. The diasporic connection with country and continent of origin was another value Samba shared with the people at his church, which was mostly attended by migrants or the children or grandchildren of migrants. The congregation frequently talked about development “at home” (i.e., in their countries of origin), and giving back to home countries was considered a central value. In relation to this connection to the “home country” and continent, Samba explained that he could maintain what he called his British and African identities (he used Africa and Sierra Leone interchangeably) through having dual passports. In this respect, Samba aligned belonging with national citizenship as well. A British passport has enabled him to have the right to live and use public resources in the United Kingdom while maintaining his African identity, although he also felt that gaining British citizenship had been at the cost of “weakening” his Sierra Leonean nationality. His acquired British citizenship is a formal indication that he belongs in the United Kingdom, where he has lived for the majority of his life; less officially, he saw his participation in the church as a form of integration into British society.

For Samba, Africa and Sierra Leone are present in London not only in the form of other (hearing) Sierra Leoneans living in the borough and the cultural markers they provide (including the availability of familiar food and drink), but also in the form of discourse about the homeland and in his own future aspirations. By belonging to a multicultural church, he experiences a sameness of values and an acknowledgment of his connection to both his home country and his deafness. Samba’s story is an example of how migrants are not merely embedded in and shaping the locale in which they are situated, but also in translocal connections with people, places, and resources across the globe at the same time. The stories of the Indian women Sanchayeeta interviewed, all of whom had migrated upon marriage, reveal several layers of complexity as to how these women have experienced translocal belonging. Using the lens of translocality, Sanchayeeta uncovered how her participants have maintained (or created new) connections abroad, both back in India (see Chapter 10) and in other countries where they had visited or lived, but also with other Indian female marriage migrants to the United Kingdom and with British Indian or British Asian people.

Some of the women Sachayeeta interviewed would also interact with each other in their homes. Even though they were not necessarily close friends, they had several social locations in common, and some of them had known each other in Mumbai. Over the course of her data collection, Sanchayeeta noted that Rita went to Aisha’s home to teach her to cook a new recipe, Meera invited Seema and her husband to her in-laws’ house, Meera and Rita visited each other’s homes in the same part of London, and Shahina hosted a birthday party at her home to which Meera, Seema, Aisha, Rita, and Sanchayeeta herself were invited. The latter example shows how the researcher can become part of the networks and events under study (see Chapters 2 and 7). Aisha was also drawn to meet other “Indian women” (used as a generalizing label) who were not recent migrants. She longed for a space where she could share experiences, struggles, advice, and resources. However, Aisha learned that although she and British Indian deaf people might share a similar skin color and heritage connection to “the motherland,” some British Indian people seemed to identify as more British than Indian:

We were the same in that we were Asian, but they had a lot of British culture; their skin looked the same as mine, but they weren’t interested in what was going on in India. They were more drawn to British culture, whereas my identity and culture is different. They have grown up more bicultural than me, but are dismissive of our home country.

Aisha had learned that the British Indian deaf people were different from the deaf people with whom she was used to interacting in India. She found that they were not particularly interested in their connection with India, and she noted that the British Asian deaf people in London had grown up exposed to Western ways of life, where, for example, marriage is not considered compulsory. The women noted other differences between themselves and British Asians/British Indians. When discussing their search for spaces of belonging, they often talked about “ethnic minorities” in London (a term that comprises both migrants and nonmigrants), and about British Asian or British Indian people in particular. For example, Shahina found it preferable to socialize with deaf people who shared a similar conversational and educational “level” as she does:

The deaf people I first met [in London] before I got married were able to communicate with me on the same level, but after I got married, the people my husband introduced me to were on a lower level […] They didn’t have education, no degree, they claimed benefits, they moved in with families, and they went to college but didn’t complete their studies. They loved to be in receipt of benefits. I was shocked to learn that.

Shahina later clarified that she included people from Eastern Europe, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and so on, in this description. It was not only Shahina who found it hard to relate to other “ethnic minorities” in London: Some of the other women interviewed by Sanchayeeta saw deaf people from certain sectors of ethnic groups as being difficult to connect with due to a different (“lower”) level of conversation, reflecting a lower educational status. They had not expected this because they had thought the education system in the United Kingdom was better for deaf people than in India.

The women thus viewed themselves as having better education and/or employment in India than many of the people they met in London. They also felt that they had a different mentality about employment. Like Shahina, Meera was taken aback by the discourse surrounding benefits. She said: “They think I go out and am partying all the time” (i.e., that she had no work to do) and that she was “on benefits.” She felt people in the British Asian community had no idea how hard she had worked, and she resented their assumption that she claimed benefits and was unemployed. The neoliberal-capitalist economic system in India, and the absence of benefits for deaf people in that country, has contributed to the construction of a mentality of self-sufficiency (Friedner, 2015); for this reason, some of the participants who had recently migrated from India resented how they were being viewed, and judged, by the British Asian community. Two of them also experienced that older British Indians in the United Kingdom expected them to be deferential by using honorifics (e.g., “aunty” and “uncle”), and they noted a contrast with how they had interacted with older Indian people in the United States. They were thus positioning themselves within the Indian diaspora, comparing the characteristics and attitudes of “Indians” in India, in the United Kingdom, and in the United States, while also aligning themselves with their fellow Indian marriage migrants and with Sanchayeeta, who is British Indian herself.

These examples show how deaf newcomers in London may “try out” various spaces of belonging over the years, seeking out deaf people with other shared social locations and/or shared interests. The “trying out” element applies to establishing whether the deaf newcomer feels able to connect with the other people there, but it also applies to establishing whether they feel comfortable within the places in which these spaces of belonging are produced. We identified the obligation to spend money or to be around alcohol as factors that could deter people from socializing in certain spaces. In the sections that follow, we show that there are parallels, but also contrasts, between London and Kakuma Refugee Camp as places in which spaces of belonging are sought after migration.

As we saw in Chapter 3, Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya houses people from various countries, ethnic groups, and clans, with different languages and religious backgrounds. Violent conflicts frequently take place between and within the various refugee ethnic groups and communities, and these are often exacerbated by the politics of intratribal and national conflicts taking place in their respective home countries (Jansen, 2011). These conflicts have also influenced the organization of life in the camp, with the camps’ zones of habitation having been divided by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees along ethnic and national lines. For example, the Southern Sudanese refugees are not all housed in the same area of the camp but are separated into three main groups—the Dinka, the Nuer, and the Equatorians—due to the geographical, linguistic, and ethnic distinctions among them. These habitation divisions are intended to help avoid ethnically based factional fighting (Newhouse, 2012).

Historical differences in cultural and religious practices have been propagated in conflicts between ethnic groups, but also between people of different nationalities. As an example, attacks outside of the camp by the Somalia-based Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab typically target Christians; this creates and stokes tension between Somali and (majority Christian) South Sudanese refugees inside the camp. As a consequence, Somali people are often portrayed in a negative way by South Sudanese people, being associated with fear and suspicion (Stoddard & Marshall, 2015). This negative stereotyping goes both ways, with Somalis also negatively characterizing South Sudanese people. The general culture of fear and distrust can be seen in the many stories about spies and government agents from various countries circulating in the camp, with refugees from Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan often discussing rumors of government or military personnel being secretly present among them (Jansen, 2011). The fact that the home countries’ divisions have been transplanted into the camp is a clear example of translocality, and, as the camp contains large groups of people from the same countries and tribes, a “South Sudanese politics of belonging” (for example) applies not only in South Sudan but also within the camp.

It is thus common for groups, clans, and communities within the camp to fight each other and to talk negatively about those of other nationalities (Jansen, 2011). Deaf refugees often spoke to Amandine about their differences and disagreements with people of other ethnicities and/or from other countries, adding negative portrayals of these people as “bad” (see Chapter 3). For example, several deaf refugees from Somalia would describe hearing South Sudanese people to Amandine as having bad manners, or as being thieves, bullies, or worse; there is an interesting parallel here with the stories collected in London, described previously, in which people described others as “not being clever” or “not being educated”—an othering mechanism in the politics of belonging.

It is notable that the Somali refugees Amandine spoke to generally specified that they were talking about hearing South Sudanese people; similarly, deaf people in the camp often told Amandine that they did not have hearing friends from other ethnicities or countries, and they portrayed these people negatively. However, when Amandine asked her participants about friendships between deaf refugees of different nationalities and ethnicities, they would often say that they could tolerate being friends with deaf people of different nationalities. However, these border-crossing friendships between deaf people were constructed as “out of place” within hearing-dominant gatherings organized along national or ethnic lines. For example, Ken, who is Dinka (an ethnic group native to South Sudan), asked his Somali friend Halimo to come and watch him dance at a Christian South Sudanese cultural event held every Saturday in Kakuma 1. Halimo refused to attend, explaining that it would be too difficult for her to travel to that place. However, Amandine had observed that Halimo was normally willing to go to any deaf event or any deaf gathering, and she would make the effort to attend events that were farther away than Ken’s dance event. It is possible that the distance was used as an excuse; Amandine suspects that Halimo may have (also) refused because she is a different ethnicity, nationality, and religion from Ken and the other (hearing) people who would be attending. In contrast, Atem, who was from the same ethnic group as Ken (i.e., Dinka), was willing to accompany him. In other words, it appears that the refugees were conscious of the politics of belonging along multiple lines, and deaf-hearing divisions had an impact on which social locations formed the basis of spaces of belonging.

Whereas national and ethnic border-crossing appeared to be less common in hearing gatherings in the camp, Amandine regularly participated in deaf gatherings where there was a mix of different ethnicities, tribes, nationalities, and religions. During an interview with Ken, he discussed these intertribe interactions:

Tribes from Somalia are different [from me], but I want Somali friends to come visit me at my house and we can communicate and share stories until we are tired, and it is good for me. I ask Halimo, my friend, [to come to my house], it is good. Deaf refugees from Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Burundi are happy together.

Homes were often discussed as a core meeting place in addition to the public spaces in the camp. They functioned as places where people could exercise autonomy in terms of whom they spent time with. When considering the places where Ken would meet people, it is notable that he would usually meet with deaf refugees from other countries, tribes, and ethnicities outside of his home—at adult learning classes, for example, or at church. However, although he would more often host fellow South Sudanese deaf people in his home, he was also happy to host Halimo, who is Somali. In his own home, Ken was able to create a space of belonging with Halimo. Similarly, Halimo’s home and shop functioned as an important place for small deaf gatherings to occur (see Chapter 3).

Gatherings in homes took place between friends, but although friendships did exist between ethnic groups and nationalities, it is worth noting that the deaf inhabitants of the camp were mostly married to, or in a relationship with, someone of the same ethnicity or nationality as them. When couples married, they would move in with each other (the wife usually joining the husband’s household) and continue living in clusters with people from the same ethnic or national group. Homes were thus primarily spaces of ethnic sameness for deaf as well as hearing people, despite the examples given previously of ethnic and national borders being crossed within the space of the home.

In the previous quotation, Ken talks about differences between nationalities, and less about tribal, ethnic, or religious differences. This was a common pattern in the conversations and interviews refugees had with Amandine, possibly due to Amandine’s line of questioning (i.e., about international interactions), and possibly due to their expectation that, as a newcomer, Amandine would have limited knowledge of the various divisions between tribes and ethnic groups within particular countries. The limited duration of Amandine’s fieldwork in Kakuma Refugee Camp prevented her from doing a more fine-grained analysis of the divisions between its inhabitants.

In deaf people’s narratives of belonging, a distinction was often made between deaf people living inside the camp and those living outside the camp. In Kakuma Refugee Camp, deaf refugees are physically located in Kenya, but their interactions with other deaf people mostly involve other deaf refugees (i.e., originally from outside Kenya), rather than deaf Kenyans. There were exceptions to this: Some deaf refugees had studied in Kenyan high schools outside of the camp (see Chapter 10), whereas some deaf Kenyans from nearby villages had studied as day pupils in the camp’s schools. Additionally, Anthony was a deaf Kenyan teacher working in one of the schools in the camp; he was also friends with some of the leading figures among the deaf refugees (such as Atem and Halimo). Amandine became aware of several other friendships and relationships between Kenyan deaf people and non-Kenyan deaf people. For example, she encountered a Turkana deaf woman from a village near the camp who was in a relationship with a deaf Sudanese refugee. They met through a hairdressing course provided by the Saint Clare of Assisi training institute in Kakuma town, just outside of the camp (see Chapter 3). She explained that although marriages between refugees and Kenyan citizens are not allowed, they were living together in Kakuma 1 and were hiding their relationship from the authorities in the camp. In other words, mobility can be triggered by marriage or relationships, although there are constraints placed on this.

To summarize the previous few paragraphs, deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp did mix across ethnicities, religions, and nationalities to varying degrees, but more so in some places (e.g., on courses in Kakuma Town) than in others (e.g., in their homes). There are, of course, individual differences between deaf people as to how much “border crossing” they do in their socializing. Some people preferred to mostly interact with people from the same ethnicity, country, tribe, and/or religion: Abdi, a deaf Somali Muslim, spent his leisure time teaching deaf children subjects such as mathematics and English in the after-school programs run by the camp’s mosques. Additionally, as we see in Chapter 10, some refugees expressed longing to return to their homelands versus resettlement elsewhere, reinforcing the relationship between spaces of belonging (both real and imagined) and personal identifications based on place, ethnicity, and other markers.

There were also deaf spaces where an apparent overpresence of a particular nationality was experienced. Amandine observed an example of this one day when she was writing up her field notes in the offices of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the organization managing the deaf units in the camp’s schools. While there, she observed Halimo and a young deaf woman from Somalia visiting the manager of LWF in the same office. During the meeting, the Somali woman was too shy to talk with the manager, and Halimo asked on her behalf that she be moved from Nassibunda School to Fashoda School because she had moved from Kakuma 3 to Kakuma 1 and Fashoda was now more conveniently located. She was allowed to move schools. However, a few days later, the Somali woman came to the office again, by herself this time, to ask to quit Fashoda School because she did not enjoy it due to the high presence of South Sudanese deaf people. This example shows the discomfort that some of the deaf refugees felt when surrounded by deaf people from a different ethnic group or country.

Amandine also encountered examples of even more stark divisions, and even abuse, between deaf people of different backgrounds. National, ethnic, and religious divisions are infused with colorism, a form of discrimination based on the belief that lighter skin is best; the discursive history of colorism partially overlaps with that of racism (Dixon & Telles, 2017). Colorism in Africa is influenced by various geopolitical factors, and it has historically been a deep-rooted issue within, and between, Sudan and Somalia. Within Sudan, fair-skinned “Arabs,” who identified themselves as such rather than as African (McDaniel et al., 2021; Monteiro & Ford, 2016), have tended to occupy senior positions of power, whereas black Africans experience discrimination and marginalization. This racial inequality has a long history in both Sudan and Somalia. There are lighter-skinned and darker-skinned people within each country, but the contrasts are also marked between countries. Black Sudanese people are seen as “more black” than black Somalis, and Somali people tend in general to be lighter-skinned than Sudanese people. A deaf Sudanese woman, Ayen, explained her experience of colorism at the deaf unit she attended at Nassibunda School in Kakuma 3:

In this excerpt, the young woman explained that her experience of colorism was of being “blamed” (using an ASL-concordant sign; see Figure 9.2) by Somali deaf students in her deaf unit in Nassibunda, due to her comparatively darker skin tone. She did not clarify what the “blaming” or abuse entailed. Ayen had moved to Nassibunda School when her household moved to Kakuma 4, following the destruction of their home in Kakuma 1 by extreme weather. Kakuma 1 is more diverse than Kakuma 2, 3, and 4 in terms of the ethnicities, nationalities, and religions of its inhabitants because it was established earlier; as a result, the deaf unit in Kakuma 1’s Tarach School had a mix of deaf students from Somalia, Sudan, and other countries. In contrast, Ayen was the only student from Sudan in the deaf unit in Kakuma 4’s Nassibunda School. In both her story and that of the Somali woman at the LWF office, Nassibunda School can be understood as a place of belonging for Somali deaf people but not for Sudanese deaf people.

Figure 9.2. The sign used by Ayen for “blame.”

In summary, in Kakuma Refugee Camp, we find divisions based on skin color, deaf-hearing, ethnicity, religion, and nationality; we also find that deaf people experience competing demands when navigating spaces of belonging, at times downplaying their involvement with hearing people and tending to overemphasize deaf–deaf connections despite there being incidents of colorism and other forms of discrimination between deaf people. There are situations and places where deaf people’s different social locations come to the fore more starkly, either because of spaces being organized along ethnic or religious lines (such as cultural events and domestic residences in particular areas of the camp) or because of the dominant presence of deaf people from a particular nationality (such as in certain schools). These divisions are examples of translocality: Despite the deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp having fled Somalia and Sudan, their experiences in the camp mirror both the internal politics of their countries of origin and the political tensions between these countries. While they were based in Kenya, and using KSL (see Chapter 8), their experiences of belonging were thus also very much related to their homelands.

Producing Spaces to Belong When Traveling

In the previous sections, we examined how deaf people who have migrated at some point in their life (whether recently, as in the case of Aisha and Luis, or longer ago, like Lenka, Samba, and most of the refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp) have explored various spaces of belonging over time. We now move to a set of examples in relation to another type of mobility—that is, when traveling to a country for a short period of time, such as on a touristic trip and/or to sporting events. We explore how these travelers find or create spaces of belonging in more transient contexts, and often based on brief encounters; however, lasting connections are also made, as we will show.

Erin’s findings from her research on tourism in Bali show that many tourists have expectations of belonging in deaf spaces, and/or with other deaf people, in the country they are visiting. Being part of a tour led by a deaf guide, in a group of fellow deaf tourists, and visiting deaf institutions and key sites can all be understood as localized experiences of belonging to an imagined global deaf community while also exploring a specific, different culture; similarly, social media hashtags like #DeafTravel and #DeafWorld can be used during or before travel as a way of creating and participating in virtual, cosmopolitan deaf spaces of belonging (see Chapter 6). Cosmopolitanism is characterized by an openness and respect toward, and a tolerance and enjoyment of, difference (i.e., different cultures and languages) located within a global sense of belonging (Salazar, 2015).

As an example of a cosmopolitan deaf sense of belonging, when Erin interviewed a group of young white tourists (two women and a man) from France, one of the women said, “I don’t feel like being alone. I go to places where there are deaf people. I travel to places where there are other deaf people so as not to feel alone.” The other woman followed up on this comment, saying:

I think it could be because, when I meet a deaf person, and I am deaf, we are the same, we sign—we have that in common. Two cultures meet and learn from each other. If I meet hearing people it’s alright, but deaf with other deaf people it is nicer.

These people thus established spaces of belonging through the shared experience of using sign language. The French women did, however, make a distinction between their respective French and Indonesian “cultures,” and they repeated several times throughout the interview that they felt “lucky” due to their French nationality and privilege in terms of material resources and legal rights, and “pity” for many deaf people in the Global South (see Chapters 6 and 10 for more on this theme). Their cosmopolitan sense of belonging was thus not based on the assumption of a universal deaf culture but, rather, on signing. The commonality of being signing deaf people is what creates the sense of belonging across different national cultures (as explored in Chapter 8).

As has been mentioned, deaf tourists often make visits to “deaf villages” in search of idealized deaf spaces, where families and community members are presumed to have no communication barriers and are thus considered inspiring (Kusters, 2010). A further impetus to visit is the aspiration to belong in a space that is far away but somehow also familiar. Tourists who visit deaf villages tend to have the expectation of being able to easily interact within the community; however, the reality is often different (see Kusters, 2015, for similar examples in Adamorobe, a deaf village in Ghana). As we saw in Chapter 6, James, a white deaf man from Australia, experienced visiting Bengkala as “an anticlimax” and felt “deflated” not to find a deaf utopia with signing in all domains (see #deaftravel, 01:11:52).⁶ Nathalie, a white deaf woman from the Netherlands, was similarly disappointed by her experience in the village (#deaftravel, 01:01:27),⁷ having envisioned the village as a place full of “strong deaf people.” “Strong deaf people” is a common term in deaf epistemologies to refer to having a conscious and politicized deaf identity and actively participating in deaf cultural institutions. After Nathalie’s group visited Bengkala, she realized that the deaf village was not an exceptional place, because hearing people were in charge there just as in other places. Nathalie did experience a feeling of DEAF-SAME, but that was not enough to establish a sense of belonging. She wanted, and expected, to belong in this “signing village” but instead felt uncomfortable and out of place.

Nathalie’s group included a man of Indonesian descent whose Indonesian-born parents had moved to the Netherlands. In Bengkala, he was perceived as SAME, based on his appearance. The deaf villagers that the tourist group interacted with told him that he was “like them” because of how he looked, with a particular focus on the shape of his nose (nose shape, rather than skin color, being the more common marker of ethnic identity in Bali; indeed, the sign used for “white people” can be glossed as POINTY-NOSE) (#deaftravel, 01:10:00).⁸ During this conversation, the man said that he felt as if Indonesia was “home.” As a member of the Indonesian diaspora, he had a translocal sense of belonging in Indonesia based on his appearance and familial connections. Another aspect of (perceived) belonging based on race and ethnicity is the status afforded to tourists of East Asian descent, who can “blend in” on the surface when they travel through Indonesia. During her fieldwork, Erin spent seven days accompanying a couple who were traveling through Indonesia on their honeymoon. Sheila, an American woman of East Asian descent, was traveling with her husband, a deaf man from Italy, and she explained in an interview with Erin that because of her appearance, she had a different experience in Bali than her white husband. For example, she was often charged the “local” price for admission to various tourist sites, whereas the white people in her group were asked to pay the significantly higher “foreigner” price. People’s backgrounds and appearances can thus affect how they are treated by the people who live and work in the places they visit. These are examples of the politics of belonging, whereby people decide who are “insiders” and who are “outsiders” based on their perceived race or ethnicity. The politics of belonging are thus always at work, even in the case of brief encounters and short-term or one-time participation in spaces, including visits to tourist sites and the deaf village.

In line with the example of Lenka calling a fellow Czech person her “brother,” there were many examples of tourists trying to make or label meaningful connections with deaf people abroad by using kinship terminology. For example, Erin met Sven, a white deaf tourist from Europe, who sponsors a girl in Bengkala and continues to support the family by sending money for renovations to their compound, paying school fees for the girl (whom he refers to as his “daughter”), and supporting other family members. Sven considers this family as his own extended family, and he considers Bengkala to be a second home. Sven initially visited Bengkala as a tourist after learning about it during a sign language conference and reading about it online. As Sven kept visiting the village, over time he transitioned from being perceived as a tourist to being a “visiting family member.” He has established belonging in Bengkala by taking on the role of a provider—a gendered, supportive role that establishes his claim of belonging through his sponsorship of the family. The family often describes him as “son” or as a “father.”

In another example of sponsorship and an associated sense of familial obligation, James, the Australian man mentioned previously, was a sponsor for a deaf boy, paying for his school fees to attend the deaf school in Denpasar. James first visited Bali years before he started sponsoring the boy; he came first in 2015 as part of an Australian deaf yoga retreat in Ubud, a well-known center for spiritual and yoga tourists. In an interview, James described his immediate sense of place-belongingness in Bali, which contrasts somewhat with his later experience in the deaf village:

I never thought that I would come to Bali, it wasn’t on my list. But in 2015, a group of deaf Australians who were into yoga had a retreat in Ubud. At that time, I was interested in yoga. I was more interested in yoga than in Bali. I didn’t expect it, but from the moment I arrived in the airport here and the [exit] doors opened, I was in love. I didn’t know what happened to me, I absolutely loved it. I had never felt connected to any other countries, but I feel that connection here. I was hooked. (#deaftravel, 00:27:34)⁹

James described his affective entanglement with Bali in romantic terms, as being “hooked” and “in love” with it. He returned to Bali several times and built friendships with members of the deaf organization, Bali Deaf Community, and began a romantic relationship. Through these friendships, he became a sponsor for the previously mentioned boy, the nephew of his Indonesian friends. James framed this specific relationship as a familial relationship, referring to the deaf boy as his “nephew”—an example of kinship terminology being used as a way of establishing belonging, and eliding dynamics of inequality in terms of access to social and material capital. This is, therefore, another example of translocality: These tourists have instilled a country abroad with a sense of home, making it “their” country as well.

James’ commitment to supporting the Bali Deaf Community also included volunteering his time to teach at the school for deaf children in Denpasar. James spent a few days observing other teachers and learning BISINDO, and then he led theater and literature lessons as a way of “giving” to Bali. James explained, “I am not a wealthy man, but I have skills and experience as a teacher in Australia. This is a way that I can contribute to the Balinese deaf community.” James engaged in fundraising for Balinese deaf people during the pandemic (see Chapter 10). After travel became possible again, James returned to Indonesia to see his deaf Indonesian boyfriend and continues to participate in translocal affective networks, supporting his boyfriend’s tailoring business by advertising his products on Facebook.

In the previous sections, we focused on how tourists establish belonging with “locals” in the countries they visit. We now move to belonging within groups of tourists while continuing to focus on the theme of “family.” In Chapter 8, we discussed how a German deaf tourist called a fellow German her “child” because she was teaching her how to communicate in IS and ASL. In another example, Erin joined a small tour group led by deaf Indonesian guide Wahyu, comprising Biff and Laura, a white deaf couple from Australia, and Magan, a deaf man from India. After she approached the group and introduced herself, Biff introduced himself and Magan, saying of Magan: “He is like my son.” They had met in a Facebook group focused on sign languages and transnational deaf connections about 4 years prior and had since met in person three or four times, maintaining communication online. The description of their relationship as father-son reflects the power dynamics in the relationship: Magan, the “son,” is of a different economic class and South Asian, whereas Biff, the “father,” is white and comparatively wealthy. The couple had paid for Magan’s travel expenses for his trip to Bali and explained that they were “teaching” him how to travel and experience other cultures. The couple said that they did not have children, so they invested in deaf people from countries in the Global South, “teaching” them about deaf identity and the appropriate terminology to use (such as the rejection of the word “dumb”). Other examples included Biff teaching Magan how to make change in foreign currency. When Erin, Magan, and the couple were in a café, she noticed that Magan had taken Biff’s wallet and gone to pay for the drinks. Noticing her watching, Biff told her: “I am teaching him how to figure out the money.” This illustrates that in situations of unequal power dynamics and access to resources, some deaf tourists frame their relations with people from other backgrounds as relations of kinship as well as of patronage. This dynamic is not always one-way, however; the group explained to Erin that when out for dinner the night before at an Indian restaurant, Magan had done all of the ordering for them, guiding them through the menu and choosing them delicious food that they both enjoyed.

Another example of establishing belonging within a group was an instance of humor during the Travass tour, based on shared understandings of the deaf ecosystem. While the group sat waiting for lunch to arrive following a visit to a site, the discussion turned to perceptions of deaf people who are on government benefits and who travel instead of working. Two of the group members, one from Germany and the other from the United States, were vocal about their perceptions that some deaf people take advantage of the welfare system. During this discussion, a tour member from London made a joke: “What does DEAF mean? It means Deaf Expect All Free!” (see #deaftravel, 01:38:04).¹⁰ The shared laughter was a form of bonding among the group, who were all different nationalities but could relate to in-group humor about the foibles of deaf people. Travel to a different place forces the traveler to shift their attention away from the familiar and to engage with difference in some form; the group had done this by traveling to Indonesia, yet they also bonded over shared deaf experiences and community knowledge from their countries of origin. Many deaf tourists seek out sameness by connecting with other deaf people, and this is experienced as DEAF-SAME—but also as different (Moriarty Harrelson, 2015), a notion that nuances the ideal of a deaf universalism exhibited by so many deaf tourists (see Friedner and Kusters’ [2015a] edited volume on this topic).

We now move on to two examples of discrimination within tour groups. The deaf tour groups observed by Erin in Bali were generally small international deaf spaces, consisting of several people who had gathered in the context of leisure. The Travass group was composed of white deaf tourists on a tour together in Indonesia, and also Kareer, a Muslim man from London. His narrative shows tensions between his personal positionality and the collective of the group of deaf tourists. Several of the white tourists jokingly marked Kareer as “other” based on the color of his skin, teasing him about his “tan.” Erin asked Kareer in an interview how he felt about these jokes; Kareer chose not to acknowledge the implications of comments about his skin color, saying that they were just joking and that he did not believe in marking his difference. He downplayed the other group members’ behavior:

We know there are countless issues happening in the world related to racism, sexism, and many others. I am trying to make fun of that because I do not want this negativity all the time. I am trying to make things more positive. The topic of being black is not important to me—it doesn’t make you different or apart from others—we don’t need it. […] I am trying to be a force for change—getting rid of those labels and promoting diversity. […] Really, I am open-minded and never bother talking about that issue. When I say open-minded, I mean we never speak specifically about that topic. […] I instead choose to care and show interest about where a person is coming from, or other details about who they are. […] I grew up in London and there is a strong amount of diversity. It is multicultural, including public figures—it’s a melting pot of people from all across the world. […] Being raised in that environment has helped me to travel more easily. I am open-minded to meeting people from any kind of background, race, religion, it doesn’t matter to me. I grew up open-minded. That helped me—I am not a sensitive person, if someone teases me, or makes fun of me, I don’t become angry or aggressive. It is a reflection of that person.¹¹

This “politics of belonging” narrative suggests that despite having been singled out as “other” by the group, Kareer placed more importance on positioning himself within the bounds of the hegemonic group of travelers, seemingly focusing on what they shared as a group—that is, deafness and membership in a sign linguistic minority. He maintained his involvement within the tour group’s deaf space of belonging by downplaying comments or “jokes” about his race. These sorts of comments have frequently been framed as part of a deaf way of being; it is a common stereotype that deaf people tend to be blunt, descriptive, and direct when joking and making comments (Mindess, 2006). Kareer’s way of dealing with this was to have a thick skin and to be open-minded himself, with open-mindedness implying a tolerance for racist jokes. It can be difficult to call out humor as racism, or even to decide when a joke is racist, because playful subversiveness can be a marker of the genre (see the previous DEAF joke example, and also Chapter 8). It is important to note, too, that Erin’s positionality as a white woman and Jorn’s as a white man (he was filming the interview) are likely to have shaped how Kareer discussed racism, because black and brown people are often reluctant to talk candidly about racism with white people (Eddo-Lodge, 2017). Kareer explained that ignoring jokes is a strategy that gives him a sense of agency in ensuring his and others’ continued enjoyment, because the group enacts belonging via jocular behavior and not by discussing differences. However, it puts the burden on him to remain positive and cheerful. Kareer also noted that he is from London and that this has shaped his positionality; in this and other narratives shared in this chapter, we see that affiliations to London can be complicated and that embracing multiculturalism (as in Samba’s example) can be a strategy for belonging.

Another example of this strategy concerns Heena and Harish, a newlywed couple from India who had traveled to Bali for their honeymoon and joined a deaf tour, led by Indonesian deaf tour guide Wahyu and in which a few Italian deaf people also took part. They were made uncomfortable by the comments that another person in the group made regarding migration to Italy. The group visited Tirta Empul, a water temple in Bali that is popular with tourists; as they were waiting for Wahyu at the entrance, a banana vendor approached Heena and an Italian, Roberto. As they interacted with the vendor, who was being a little pushy in trying to sell them bananas, Roberto commented on “pushy” vendors in Italy, which segued into a monologue about “floods” of migrants into Italy, whom he defined as “Muslims,” “Africans,” and so on. Roberto signed, “… [they] need to airlift them back.” Heena, who is a Muslim from India, subtly challenged Roberto, saying with a smirk: “Airlift them back? Really?” Roberto did not seem to understand that his xenophobia was making her and other observers uncomfortable, and he continued with his monologue while Heena looked at him and laughed awkwardly. This is an example showing a painful and difficult situation being strategically defused using humor, or through treating potentially objectionable statements as though they were intended to be humorous. Erin observed this conversation unfold while Jorn was filming it (#deaftravel, 01:26:26);¹² in a later interview, she asked Heena how she felt about it. Heena rolled her eyes, shrugged, and said, “I knew what he meant. I know. With people like that, you can’t argue. Just ignore it.”

Heena and Harish did not purposely seek out other deaf tourists on their trip to Bali, but because they took a tour with Wahyu, they met other deaf people through him. Not everyone that Erin interviewed and interacted with had sought out other deaf people when they traveled, but there were many examples of people experiencing deaf–deaf belonging and making claims to familial connections, as well as the discrimination that Heena experienced. Harish explained that he did not see a reason for seeking out other deaf people; even though they did meet other deaf people during the tour, Harish said that it seemed presumptuous to assume that every deaf person would want to interact with other deaf people while on holiday. He said: “So what? So what if you are deaf? Go on and do your thing.” Some deaf people also seek out hearing people during tours. A member of the Travass deaf tour group, Ronja, a white woman from Germany who was a new signer and wore a cochlear implant, ran into a group of hearing Germans in the Monkey Forest, and she abandoned the deaf group to go speak in German with them. Later, Ronja said that “it felt so good to speak in German.” Ronja’s example of feeling pleasure and comfort in speaking German meant she enjoyed briefly participating in a German space of belonging in Bali. This is a further example of another facet of translocality, that of being at home within a language environment, and with people from one’s home country, while abroad.

We now move to a different context: that of the XVIII World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) Congress in Paris in 2019. Within the larger global space of deaf belonging that is the congress, there are subspaces with (invisible) boundaries determining who is included and who is not, based on the group(s) that constitutes the majority in those spaces. In Chapters 5 and 7, we gave examples of subgatherings during the WFD congress on the basis of nation, region (e.g., East Africa), and other axes of belonging. The congress constitutes a confluence of networks in a large “deafened” space, and during international events such as this, people often (re)connect with others with whom they are already networked, thus creating smaller or bigger spaces of belonging. The examples from the WFD event discussed below focus on deaf people with additional disabilities. At the WFD congress, Annelies observed more disabled people using wheelchairs, walkers, or crutches and more deafblind people (with or without guides or interpreters) than in the other transnational settings in which she did fieldwork. Next, we discuss two different accounts of deafblind persons’ respective experiences of tension within the WFD global space of belonging, as related to their being deafblind, their physical mobility, and their race.

Often, presentations at deaf conferences are not properly accessible to deafblind people due to inadequate lighting, not being able to see the signing clearly (e.g., because of the signer’s clothing or their position), and the ways PowerPoint presentations are created (e.g., dark lettering on light backgrounds rather than the other way around). In areas where people socialize, such as pubs and restaurants, dim lightning often makes it difficult for deafblind people to use residual sight. Deafblind people communicate in a variety of ways, including using their residual sight in a smaller signing space, hands-on signing (touching the hand of the person who is signing and following their movements), and Protactile signing (signing rooted in touch, on the interlocutor’s body). Protactile signing originated in the United States (Edwards, 2014) but is less common elsewhere. Korian, a black deafblind man from the United States, prefers to use Protactile signing; his experience was that in the international space of the WFD congress, he needed to educate people on how to communicate in this way:

The communication [here at WFD] was varied because some know PT [Protactile] well, and others don’t. People that I have met have different experiences with deafblind individuals than mine. I showed them the way I sign and that they should not discriminate against me. They didn’t know what PT meant. When I meet with a person, I like to feel their body—their head, for example. I touch it like this. That is their body and I want to know it. Some people were surprised that I can feel vibes. I can’t see how a person feels, but I can feel it on my hand. I feel their posture. When I communicate with them, we touch each other, which is comfortable. Some people aren’t comfortable and that is fine with me. I am not really anxious about that.

Korian emphasized that being black makes it harder for him to educate people on PT because it means touching other people’s bodies, much more so than is the case with hands-on signing:

I am black, which makes it even harder. The history of black people coming to the United States was as slaves. […] When I was born, [my family] told me to be careful, especially with touching people. I became blind later in life, so I understood what my family meant. I heard that some people think I am fake. They think I am fake because I am black, and deafblind. That I play being like that. It becomes a discussion. I don’t mind, what is important is that I advocate and educate people about the importance of tactile things for deafblind people, and that my skin color doesn’t matter.

Korian is aware that he is perceived differently from white deafblind people in the United States, and he appears to attribute his experience of his deafblindness being disbelieved to white people not having seen or met black deafblind people before. Like Kareer, Korian emphasized that skin color should not matter in international deaf encounters, stating that people should focus on him as a deafblind person; however, he also acknowledged that people have been prejudiced against him because of his skin color and that he has experienced barriers because of this. In this global space, he has attempted to direct attention away from his race and toward his deafblindness through his attempts to educate people about how to communicate with deafblind people by using hands-on and Protactile signing. This further confirms the pattern we observed of deaf black and brown people diverting attention away from their race or ethnicity; we assume that this is probably particularly acute when they talk to white deaf people (in this case, Annelies).

In the conference hall where poster presentations and exhibitions were organized at the WFD congress, Annelies observed a few deafblind people using Protactile signing in a circle of four while seated. One of these people was Tashi, who uses a crutch for walking; they require to be seated to use both hands to communicate for longer conversations. As a result, they told Annelies, they sometimes feel that they struggle to belong in deafblind spaces:

One thing is deaf space, another thing is deafblind space. Yesterday there was a deafblind presenter explaining about the identity, diversity, and so on. It made me think of deafblind crip. There is a challenge in deafblind space—where does a deafblind person stand when they need tactile communication? That is causing a barrier. I can stand, yes, but tactile communication needs two hands. PT is good for giving information with two hands, but I have to hold my crutch with one hand. I can then only sign with one hand. Deafblind people ask me to use both hands, but I can’t, I have to explain to them that I use crutches. I can’t stand for a long time, so I ask people to sit down with me. Even in deafblind space, I face barriers. I am thinking about how deafblind people are communicating around here. If you know a deafblind crip person here, please connect me with them.

In this example of “identifications,” Tashi identified as “deafblind crip” and not just as “deafblind”; they felt that this impacts on their belonging in deafblind spaces and expressed a longing for fellow deafblind crip people. Tashi said that while they do feel they belong in deafblind transnational space because of Protactile communication, they also face barriers due to their other disability because the majority of other deafblind people can communicate when standing up. For Tashi, the availability of sitting space, and the willingness of interlocutors to sit, is important to enable communication. Access to this space of belonging is therefore not only related to the material space, but it is also affected by how people use the space and respond with their bodies.

The next examples focus on the Deaflympics, and they further show how different perceptions of disability inform a politics of belonging. The Deaflympics were organized very early in the history of international multisport events: They were launched in 1924, between the launch of the Olympic Games in 1896 and the Paralympics in 1960. The Deaflympics have often been described as a participation-level event that is also a social gathering (Harrison, 2014). The combination of socialization and sports means that this “[i]nternational Deaf sport competition actively promotes the old ideal of the Olympics—the brotherhood of man through sports” (Stewart, 1991, p. 7). There have often been debates over the need to organize the Deaflympics separately from the Paralympics (Ammons & Eickman, 2011), with one frequently used argument being that deafness is not a disability—perpetuated, for example, by Jerald Jordan, president of the Comité International des Sports des Sourds (CISS, now the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf [ICSD]) from 1971 until 1995. His opinion was that including deaf athletes into the Paralympics would mean enforced integration into a hearing and speaking environment: “The Deaf athlete views the disabled athlete as being a hearing person first and disabled second” (Jordan, in Ammons & Eickman, 2011, p. 1150). The argument continues that deaf people should be considered able-bodied in sports because deaf people do not by default have mobility-related disabilities and gather together primarily based on their being signers (Stewart, 1991). This is an ableist argument that ignores the reality that deaf people may have multiple disabilities and that deafness can be constructed as a disability in itself. It also neglects the fact that deafness is very much “measured” in the context of the Deaflympics: Participants need to provide audiograms in order to compete in the Deaflympics, demonstrating that it is not sign language use but being physically deaf that lends one access.

In the global space of the Deaflympics, belonging and not belonging are thus made very explicit in rules focused on hearing status. In many international deaf events and networks (e.g., the WFD congress), there is an implicit expectation that those present are deaf (this also encompasses hard of hearing and deafened people) and/or that they are signers. In these contexts, if a person says, “I’m deaf,” they are typically taken at face value, and there is no requirement to specify “how deaf” they are according to external metrics. In the Deaflympics, IS is used as lingua franca between athletes, coaches, and so on, indicating an implicit expectation that many or most people in the space are signers. This expectation, however, is trumped by the 55 decibel (dB) rule: If you have 55dB hearing loss, you are eligible to participate in the Deaflympics, regardless of whether or not you are a signer. In advance of the international championships, audiograms are checked, and there are selective hearing tests during the Deaflympics too, which are seen as equally important as (or even more important than) doping tests. The 55dB rule did not exist in the early years of the Deaflympics; when it was founded in 1924, the event was called the International Silent Games, with participation open to deaf signers. Following a number of incidents where hearing athletes were caught speaking, and consequently discovered to be hearing, the 55dB rule was implemented in 1979. The rule is considered essential for ensuring a level playing field among deaf people by excluding hearing people; neither is the use of hearing aids permitted during the competition (Harrison, 2014; Stewart, 1991; see Breivik et al., 2002, for descriptions of an incident involving a player using a hearing aid).

Over the years, there have been many discussions about whether 55dB is the “right” number of decibel loss for participation in the Deaflympics or whether the threshold should be higher. People who are moderately hard of hearing can generally access mainstream (top) sports training better than profoundly deaf people because they can communicate directly with hearing trainers and co-players. This has an impact on the level of competition and raises the chances of those with more residual hearing. People who hear more are less likely to know how to sign, however. In deaf team sports, an increasing number of sports players are nonsigners. With a higher decibel threshold (e.g., 75dB), there may be a higher proportion of deaf signers participating; however, an increasing number of profoundly deaf people do not sign either, given the spread of cochlear implants and mainstreaming. Furthermore, a higher decibel threshold may result in fewer people attending overall, making the event unsustainable. These are some of the arguments raised in relation to revising the rule.

The presence of nonsigning oral athletes has been a theme of discussion in deaf sports since their inception, and it features centrally in the Deaflympics’ politics of belonging. The perceived problem with the presence of nonsigners is the impact on the general atmosphere and language ecology of the events. Nonsigners are likely to speak only with others from their own country’s delegation, for example, especially if there are interpreters available to facilitate communication with sign language users. Where there is a critical mass of people who use speech with each other, the space can divide along oral/signing lines, undermining the “brotherhood” ideal. Pavel, the captain of the Russian chess team, commented during the 19th Winter Deaflympics in 2019:

What’s important for me is the gatherings and the camaraderie in sign language. When the environment becomes more oral, then signers like myself can only communicate superficially, so we seek out and revert to communicating only with other signers. One of the great things about these events is that it feels like there are no barriers because everybody can sign, so if we lose that aspect, it would be concerning.

Athletes who communicate only in spoken language are less inclined, or less able, to communicate internationally. For example, the Russian ice hockey coach, Valery, said about communication between the ice hockey teams:

If people can’t sign, how is that going to work? Back in 1991 when the American team came, we could connect with each other, everyone signing away. It was the same with the Canadian team. Today, neither team has any sign language and we’re strangers to each other. It’s bizarre. The Finnish team have been good, as has the team from Kazakhstan. It’s just not possible to communicate with the teams from America and Canada. The only interaction we get is when we shake hands before or after the games. There is no other exchange or friendly conversation at all.

At the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, certain countries were seen as “more oral” than others because they brought “oral” sports teams, such as the American and Canadian ice hockey teams, in contrast to the Finnish and Russian teams where communication happened in sign language. Marty, the Canadian ice hockey team manager, pointed out that it created a split between signers and nonsigners: “When you see deaf people signing [IS] with each other, it’s the same all over. When the hard of hearing join in, then it’s different, we’re two separate groups.” Note that nonsigners are here dubbed “hard of hearing”; this is often the case, even though there are, of course, hard of hearing signers and deaf nonsigners.

In her study of the politics of belonging at the Deaflympics, Annelies asked her interviewees at the 2019 Winter Deaflympics whether they thought athletes should be required to sign. Several interviewees said that it is the “audiograms that decide” and that it is “the sports that matters and not the signing,” but they also admitted that they would like it if the use of signing was somehow stimulated or even enforced. Being exposed to signing for weeks on end can be a transformational experience for deaf and hard of hearing nonsigners, and Isabelle Malaurie from France, a leading figure in the European Deaf Sports Organisation, said that it was crucial to include them:

We need to help and support them, bring them into the fold, to teach and encourage them to sign. Not marginalize them, but welcome them. There are some, however, who prefer to speak, and you have to respect that. For us the most important thing is sport! And whether you sign or speak doesn’t matter. We’re here for the sports. […] They are oral and don’t know sign language, but it shouldn’t matter. We should all be working together as a collective. […] They [“oral” deaf people] may be uncertain at first, but we must work actively to make them feel that they are one of us. It was that way in the past, but I think now unfortunately we’ve formed cliques. There is nothing wrong with being oral, they are not our opposition, and we need to respect them. My thinking is we need to keep inviting them into our team. Then they will see that we can all communicate, and that’s important.

The quotation above clearly shows the tension between respecting the communicative diversity of deaf people (including the decision of some people not to sign) and the desire for an idealized, cosmopolitan, fully signing environment. Isabelle talked about the Deaflympics being a global deaf space where all should feel they belong, including deaf and hard of hearing nonsigners, and the importance of welcoming these nonsigners to the fold; this evokes cosmopolitanism in a way that includes a diversity of deaf people. At the same time, her comments held the implicit hope that the nonsigners may “convert” to signing (see Bechter, 2008). Isabelle felt that there is a need to encourage people to sign because they are in an international context where signing is the norm. She was aware that deaf sports events are important places for identity building and for exposing deaf and hard of hearing people to signing (see also Stewart, 1991). Other interviewees emphasized that exposure to signing should be increased at the national level to start with because hard of hearing, nonsigning athletes are less likely to be signers by the time they reach the Deaflympics if they have exclusively trained and competed with hearing players prior to this. Even when people do not use or learn IS at the Deaflympics, they may be exposed to the national sign language used in their team (assuming it contains enough signers) because the majority of deaf athletes spend most of their time with their national team or delegation during the Deaflympics competition.

For reasons of communication dynamics, competitive advantage, and so forth, there were a number of seemingly longstanding debates about whether deaf sports should be split into signers and nonsigners. Some people were in favor of fragmentation between a deaf and hard of hearing group, following the model of the Paralympics where there are many categories in each sport corresponding to categories of disability. This is a major difference between the Deaflympics and the Paralympics; currently in Deaflympics, everyone (e.g., deafblind, deafdisabled, hard of hearing, signing, nonsigning) competes against each other, leading to inequalities. (Note: Annelies observed more deafblind and deafdisabled people in chess competitions than in other sports.) Another type of fragmentation proposed was to distinguish between signing sports and deaf sports; however, Pavel observed that “signing sports” would probably become flooded with hearing interpreting students who want to practice their signing.

In summary, the politics of belonging in the deaf sports world is firmly influenced by the question of “what comes first” in terms of belonging—being physically deaf or hard of hearing, or being a signer? The debates around belonging in, and the priorities of, deaf transnational space are complicated by the overlapping and partially competing purposes of the Deaflympics: that is, as an occasion for deaf people to socialize and as an occasion for deaf people to compete.

This brings us to a second issue in terms of belonging as it relates to hearing status. Notably, there are not only tensions regarding the presence of hard of hearing people who are considered to be “like hearing people,” but also regarding actual hearing people. As the standards of the Deaflympics have been raised, this development has been accompanied by an increase in the number of hearing coaches and trainers. One of the consequences of the professionalization of deaf sports is the reduction in deaf leadership, which is also related to the way in which deaf sports are funded (i.e., that more funding is available when standards are high; see Chapter 10 for more on this). There are varying perspectives on deaf versus hearing leadership in deaf sports. Some deaf athletes that Annelies spoke to were happy to work with hearing trainers, especially as there was a dearth of qualified deaf trainers. Although some hearing coaches did know the national sign language of the team they were coaching, they typically did not know IS. Other hearing coaches did not know how to sign at all, and they would communicate with their athletes and others via speech and/or through sign language interpreters.

Notably, the technical directors (TDs)—those who oversee and lead all competitions in one sport, such as alpine skiing or snowboarding, and are the supreme authority in each sports competition—were always deaf. This meant that, in the organizational hierarchies, the hearing coaches were “sandwiched” between the deaf athletes and the deaf technical directors. In TD meetings, two representatives of each country must be present (of whom the coach is typically one); the guidelines state that where possible, one of these must be a deaf sign language user. Hearing coaches may not address the audience directly, but they must address the audience via a deaf representative from their country. Annelies asked one of the TDs (who chose to remain anonymous) why this was the case:

Well, it’s in our rules. This is the Deaflympics, deaf is in the name. It’s a deaf way of working, and we don’t cater to hearing people. […] If a hearing person were to come to the front, they’d have to be interpreted via two interpreters in turn, and that way you almost never get 100% of the message. With a deaf person signing, it’s 100% clear. […] The hearing people should stay seated in the audience and give deaf people their space, this is the D-E-E-E-A-F-F-F-lympics after all [signed in an expanded, emphatic, almost angry way].

The involvement of hearing trainers and coaches is thus associated with additional interpreting chains—that is, between visiting countries’ national sign languages, the host country’s national sign language, the host country’s national spoken language, and IS. Interestingly, in the TD meetings, hearing people were positioned as nonsigners and deaf people as signers, even though a large number of the athletes did not sign; however, the deaf people representing the teams in these meetings were usually signers. The previously mentioned deaf TD regularly got frustrated when leading these meetings—for example, when hearing officials from Italy spoke over them—and with people who signed and talked over each other. The TD would lose control over the communication, having to sign STOP STOP frequently. The addition of hearing people who did not know IS and/or who did not engage in effective turn-taking, in combination with the audience not following the TD’s admonitions, led to a very complicated communication dynamic.

There were thus continuous debates throughout the event about who belongs: deaf, hearing, hard of hearing, signing, nonsigning, familiar with IS, unfamiliar with IS, and so on. There were spaces of belonging for deaf IS signers, such as the ICSD congress and the TD meetings, and also spaces where “oral” deaf people “officially” belonged (i.e., they had the “right” to be there), such as the sports competitions. However, there were still tensions between signers and nonsigners in these latter contexts where nonsigners were in the majority, because their speaking affected the cosmopolitan communicative atmosphere. This shows how the politics of belonging encompasses much more than simply deciding who is in and who is out and making these distinctions part of the event’s regulations (e.g., through the 55dB rule). Debates continue regarding who belongs “more” than others, irrespective of whether people are “officially” allowed in a space.

Conclusion

Deaf people on the move navigate and maintain their sense of belonging, and their experiences of feeling at home, alongside feelings of being marginalized and excluded from certain spaces. Deaf people who move to a new country may “sample” various spaces before they find those that suit them, seeking out people with shared backgrounds or experiences, including class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and/or shared interests. They may shift between different spaces of belonging (such as clubs or groups of friends) at different life stages.

When people are mobile to a new country, they may socialize with deaf locals of that country. Examples covered in this chapter include going to nightclubs, going to local deaf pub evenings, having a local partner, volunteering in a deaf school, and visiting a deaf village. Although mobile deaf people are often the only international deaf person among deaf locals, we have also given examples of mobile deaf people taking part in multinational spaces, regardless of the type of mobility. These spaces include gatherings with other deaf migrants or other deaf refugees, going to a deaf pub evening, participating in a deaf tour group, and attending a conference. In the latter cases, people may not interact a lot—or even at all—with deaf locals (see Chapter 5). Belonging as an internationally mobile deaf person can depend strongly on the “feel” of the place—specifically, is everyone welcome there and, if not, who is not? Whereas deaf migrants in London may be openly asked what they are doing in the United Kingdom, it is expected that there will be representatives of various nationalities at the WFD congress and the Deaflympics, and there is a communal history of interacting with deaf people from different parts of the world and of experiencing using various sign languages. These play a part of a sense of belonging and membership in an imagined cosmopolitan deaf community.

For brief, transient encounters, shared deafness can be the sole trigger for interaction, but for more meaningful or longer, actively maintained connections, deaf people often produce spaces of belonging based on more than just shared deafness. We have shown that some queer deaf people and deafblind people connect with each other based on shared ways of communicating and/or shared experiences of being minoritized (i.e., being deaf and queer, or being deaf and blind). However, being deaf and queer, for example, does not mean that spaces of belonging are automatically produced (or attended) based on this shared social location, and sometimes minority positions “clash” or are hierarchized in certain ways. When deafblindness (for example) intersects with being black and/or other disabilities, this can lead to complicated dynamics within international deaf spaces as people experience how relations within the space are unequal, being infused by specific politics of belonging. Identifying as a queer deafblind crip or as a black deafblind person, for example, does not automatically lead to participating in spaces constructed along these specific intersections (see Moges, 2017, about the rarity of black deaf queer spaces).

Deaf people who are part of a larger diaspora sometimes have multilayered journeys of belonging as they explore their (dual) nationality. The Indian women in Sanchayeeta’s study explained that they had related in various ways to deaf and hearing Indians in India, to other deaf Indian female migrants (some of whom they had already known in India), to deaf British Indian citizens (including Sanchayeeta), and to deaf Indians in the United States. “Being Indian” was often generalized in the stories collected by Sanchayeeta to cover a range of religious and ethnic backgrounds; the term was diasporic and could be applied to those located in different places in the world, taking on different meanings in relation to the length of the person’s (or their parents’) stay in that country (e.g., whether they were a recent migrant or British Indian). We saw the same multiple situatedness of nationality in Kakuma Refugee Camp: Deaf refugees also belonged to more substantive groups of people originating from the same countries, tribes, and ethnic groups. Colorism and national stereotypes contributed to tensions between certain deaf refugees.

People who are minoritized in the context of international mobility may engage in producing salience hierarchies of identifications, and they may place a politics of belonging at the forefront of their experience of various spaces of belonging. For example, they may prioritize talking with deaf people who are “on the same level” or interacting with people of the same religion. We noted that constructing “salience hierarchies” appears to happen most often when people are discriminated against, abused, or subject to prejudice based on colorism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, or ableism. For example, we have shown how some deaf people in Kakuma Refugee Camp foreground being deaf over national differences, and how deaf people may deemphasize the salience of their race or ethnicity, instead foregrounding other characteristics as being more significant in international deaf space—for example, being deafblind or being open-minded. The example of the Deaflympics, with its 55dB rule and its meeting policies, effectively illustrates the debates on salience hierarchies—that is, whether someone considers themselves to be “deaf first” or “a signer first,” both in the context of the Deaflympics itself and in the Deaflympics versus Paralympics debates. The deaf people we encountered engaged in a politics of belonging by stating clearly where they belonged and how they saw themselves and others as belonging there (or not) as well. The burden to take the initiative to “fit in” or “adapt” to the majority (and so belong) often lies with deaf minoritized people, and sometimes such statements of belonging were not accepted by others.

Linking with the theme of cosmopolitanism running through the book (see Chapter 1), we note that a “politics of belonging” that centralizes the production and maintenance of boundaries seems to be at odds with the notion of cosmopolitanism as challenging boundaries—that is, as a utopian “boundariless politics of belonging” (Yuval-Davis, 2011, p. 147). People may travel or migrate to a new place where they encounter deaf people who embody different cultures and languages; they may hope that DEAF-SAME gives them automatic access to various spaces of belonging. However, they may then experience disappointment or run against boundaries set within these spaces, which may place them in a marginalized position on the basis of their intersected social locations. Being “open-minded” is often seen as central to cosmopolitanism and is often emphasized in deaf spaces; we showed this in Chapter 8 and in this chapter, with the example of Isabelle welcoming nonsigners. Being able to say that one is open-minded is, however, also related to privilege: It is “easier” for privileged people with power to perform open-mindedness or to signal a cosmopolitan attitude (see also Chapter 8). When minoritized people say they are open-minded, it may be at their own expense, inducing them to downplay markers of their minoritization (see Chapter 10 for an example of downplaying gender). Posing as a cosmopolitan can, in that respect, be interpreted as a burden.

The politics of belonging not only covers who is included and excluded, but also how people define their experience of belonging. A core concept that has often come up in our study—especially when we were looking for examples of belonging—is typically expressed in terms of “family” and “home.” Both metaphors take different shapes throughout the data. The “family” metaphor is not unusual for global spaces such as the Deaflympics and the WFD congress, which serve as spaces in which one can belong within a transnational deaf community, corresponding to the ideal of a global deaf space of belonging—which is sometimes explicitly called “family” (Breivik et al., 2002, p. 29). However, “family” is also used in different ways, as shown with the example of Lenka’s “brother,” but mostly in the tourism examples: the Australian couple who went on holiday with their Indian deaf “son,” and the various examples of foreigners fostering newly declared “family members” in Bali. Tourists will “fall in love” with specific places or countries and, from there, establish ties of belonging as they invest in the local community, perhaps by becoming a sponsor for a child or family. Thus, even in contexts where spaces of belonging can be initially short term and fleeting (typical of touristic encounters), people look for deeper and more meaningful connections, and they consolidate spaces of belonging by using kinship terminology in translocal ways.

Connected strongly to the “family” metaphor is the “home” metaphor. The concept of home in the nonmetaphorical sense—that is, a person’s residence—is often fraught. In Kakuma Refugee Camp, homes are spaces where people can and do receive people from other countries and ethnic groups, although the location of residences was also organized along national or ethnic lines. Home is also connected with homing: the creation of new homes after migration, especially when deciding to settle down; with having a “second home” in a cherished country abroad; and/or with feeling at home in certain groups. Finally, it is also connected with “the homeland,” which often means the country of origin from which mobile deaf people have traveled, sometimes decades earlier. Although refugees had fled war in their country of origin and many hoped for resettlement in a third country, in other examples there was also a yearning to return to “the homeland,” either temporarily or permanently (also see Chapter 10). This was found with Samba: He chose to live in an area of London with many Sierra Leonean people and to attend a multicultural church in the area, which further fed his yearning to do something for his “home country.” For many mobile deaf people, “home” is thus located in various places across the world, and it may also be associated with deaf spaces of belonging in these countries, as in the case of some (volun)tourists in Bali. The “family” and “home” metaphors bring forward the translocal nature of international deaf spaces of belonging, demonstrating the multiple associations and attachments that deaf people have and maintain—even when they are back in their country of origin.

The short-term deaf mobilities studied in this project were sometimes undertaken for, or led to, the establishment of mostly deaf spaces (see Breivik et al., 2002). In the Deaflympics, hearing people’s position is contested, even if they sign; in a deaf village, some visitors (such as Nathalie) struggle with the fact that hearing people are still in charge. Some people “become deaf” upon migration, as they shift into sign language use (see Chapter 4). However, in keeping with the translocality lens, we also showed how deaf people may share identifications with hearing people from the same nation, or how they may participate in “deaf pockets” within larger hearing minoritized and/or multicultural spaces.

Our focus on belonging emerged by using an intersectional lens when analyzing our data on international mobilities: We focused on where people go, and with whom they associate, when participating in or producing spaces of belonging. In this process, they were on the receiving end of, and actively participating in, a politics of belonging. Our use of “belonging” as the overarching concept to tie together these various stories has brought out aspects of the stories for which terms such as “identity” or “community” would not be optimally suitable. The examples of “family” and the various meanings of “home” demonstrate this; additionally, the community framework would be unlikely to bring out the variety of spaces that were navigated by, for example, the Indian people Sanchayeeta interviewed, and how they felt about various “types” of British/Indian deaf people. Who is included in, and excluded from, various spaces is very much about who “belongs,” about who is “us” and who is “them,” whether the politics of belonging is put down in hard rules (such as the 55dB rule) or in implicit expectations. The focus on belonging within the study of mobilities has also brought out different types of belonging that people “go and look for” or long to belong in. People moving to a new country may be in search of spaces of belonging on a regular and deeper basis, while people who visit a country for a shorter period may expect to encounter transient and temporary spaces of belonging in the first instance.

1. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=00h45m40s

2. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=0h21m58s

3. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=00h27m27s

4. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=1m19s

5. https://vimeo.com/854367099#t=0h17m34s

6. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h11m52s

7. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h1m27s

8. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h10m00s

9. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=27m34s

10. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h38m04s

11. Note that this interview was undertaken in 2018, 2 years before the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum in the United Kingdom.

12. https://vimeo.com/588352737#t=1h26m26s