Despite many podcasts that take an oral history format or are about oral history as a method, there is very little research that critically connects podcasting to oral history or theorises about the possibilities of podcasting as an oral history practice. This article draws on recent research that argues for a focus on the work around podcasting praxis as an important site of analysis for understanding the community-building potential of podcasting work, especially in the context of migration and diaspora, where non-Western migrants are often not treated as the authorities of their own (hi)stories. In examining two episodes of Kerning Cultures and drawing on concepts from oral history, I develop the concept of shareable authority, a term that links oral history methods to digital media practice and scope. The article offers a contribution to oral history practice, as it demonstrates numerous methods for making authority more shareable between many collaborators and making the distribution of authority more transparent, both of which have implications for power-sharing and decolonial knowledge production. 

This article explores the intricate dance between desire and distance in ethnographic research and creativepractice, advocating for the inclusion of love letters as a methodological tool for critically articulatingindividual and collective desires. Grounded in the authors’ experiences at a workshop held during the 2023PARSE conference, the text delves into the genealogy of desire in research, situating love letters within aframework of intimacy and vulnerability. Drawing on diverse academic backgrounds, the authors reflect onthe intersections of personal and professional realms, emphasizing the ethical imperative of acknowledgingresearchers’ subjective experiences. Through a deep dive into the workshop’s planning process and itsenactment, the article elucidates the transformative potential of love letters as a means of fosteringconnection and understanding within academic and creative communities. This article invites readers toreconsider traditional research methodologies and embrace the tender work of love letter writing in theirown practice.

Scholarly work addressing art and migration has clustered around certain themes: art as therapy, art as expression of identity and memory, art as political mobilization, and art as integration. Similarly, scholars have noted the significance of tattoo art in terms of embodied identity and reclaiming the self after trauma. The overlap between these literatures remains a largely unexplored area of inquiry. This article examines tattooing as an everyday artistic practice in a refugee’s post-migration life. Through an ethnographic case study focusing on Kash, an Iranian man who sought asylum in Sweden, I theorize tattooing as intercultural bridgework (Anzaldúa 2002) functioning in three ways: self-expression, a mode of social integration, and ultimately a transferable skill. This article argues for considering tattoo art as a sustainable (meaning, something that can sustain the artist) art form in the post-migration context. A focus on tattooing as a refugee/migrant practice presents a novel contribution to work on migration and art and allows for an examination of the embodied intersections of expression and integration outside the realm of project-based research.

Working at the intersection of migration studies and radio studies, we interrogate podcasting’s potential as a practice-based activist research method. This article documents podcasting’s role in an ethnographic project conducted together with Konstkupan (The Art Hive), a migrant-focused community arts space in Malmö, Sweden. We argue that the value of podcasting as a practice-based research method exists in its potential to function as a boundary object. Boundary objects are technologies and processes bridging social worlds and providing sites of communication and translation between groups. Challenging narratives that detect a decline in podcasting’s radical potential, we argue that as a boundary object, podcasting’s political significance continues in how it convenes small, diverse, but attentive ‘listening publics’. A boundary object does not demand consensus on the meanings or representations it produces, affording space for both the synchrony and dissonance of narratives produced by migrants.

Palestinians share a history of exile oriented towards the loss and reclamation of a homeland, often expressed through a shared visual lexicon and mythos. In the context of refugee camps, however, local visual culture and everyday practices demonstrate how Palestinian lives are also grounded in local stories and experiences. How do Palestinian refugees deploy everyday practices to create their home spaces? What can these practices reveal about refugees’ myriad belongings? And, in thinking about these practices, what can be said about how a feeling of home can be articulated in exile, which is at its heart the forced removal/dislocation from home? This article uses a comparative ethnographic analysis of two Palestinian camps in Lebanon to challenge overarching narratives of ‘Palestinianness’ by calling attention to the rich multiplicity of Palestinian refugee identities. In focusing the analysis on everyday practices ‐ specifically street art and walking ‐ by which residents make and experience home in the camps, the article grapples with the seeming contradictions between ‘home’ and ‘exile’ that colour the experiences of not only Palestinians, but also refugees and asylum seekers in other circumstances of protracted uncertainty, as they attempt to migrate and make home in new countries.