WATER/MIGRATIONS is a series of interdisciplinary debates organised by Poznań Garage Sale, a grassroots group supporting refugees and people who have experienced migration. This year, the group has been invited to take part in Generator Malta’s project Water Is You. The three interdisciplinary debates will be held online and will focus on demonstrating the specific correlations between WATER understood as a resource, WATER as a political instrument and WATER as an area for activities concerning ecology and the experience of migration. During the debates: Water/Crises/Migrations, Water/Cities/Migrations and Water/Solidarity/Migrations, we will meet with an interdisciplinary group of activists, artists, researchers, architects and, above all, people who have been directly affected by the discussed problems.
Debate 1: Water/Crises/Migrations
The debate Water/Crises/Migrations opens a series of three discussions focusing on the correlation between water-related issues and migration. We will look for answers to questions about how we can describe, link and analyse the interrelations between the exploitation of water resources, climate change, politics, social discontent and the so-called ‘refugee crisis.’
In the first part of the discussion, we will examine how the longest ever drought in the Middle East (2006-2011) has contributed to demonstrations, higher prices and, ultimately, the Syrian civil war which has led to the refugee crisis. In the second part, we will look at potential interdisciplinary actions (and their limitations) which artists and non-governmental organisations can take regarding fair access to water resources. We will focus on the specific connections between the management of water resources across the world and refugeeism, as well as the forms of action we can take.The meeting is organised with the support of the grassroots group Poznań Garage Sale.
Katarzyna Czarnota is a PhD student at the Faculty of Sociology at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (UAM). She has been involved in action-research projects using critical action-research methods. Recently, she has collaborated with the UAM Faculty of Sociology and the Social Space Research Group at the University of the Arts Poznań on two education projects: Role of the Artist in the Gentrification Process and Sociologic Intervention in the Context of Contemporary Art. Czarnota’s research focus is on social inequality, housing, new forms of racism, and the so-called ‘refugee crisis.’ In her work, she combines theory and practice.