Migration, Liminality and Place: Migration Walk as Critical Pedagogy

Migration, Liminality and Place: Migration Walk as Critical Pedagogy’, addresses the key global challenge of migration through a ‘Migration, Liminality and Place’ (hereafter ‘the migration walk’) walk with undergraduate and postgraduate students in the city of Cork. Co-facilitated by key support agencies such as Welcome English, Cork Migrant Centre and Nasc, in the process of the walk we learn that walking is also about wayfinding or pathfinding and that we can develop a sense of connection to place by walking in the city, and the more we walk the more we might develop what Tim Edensor calls a ‘mobile homeliness’. The walking classroom engages the empathic, performative and sensing body and provides a creative way of understanding the complexities of migration and also the biographies of migrants in Ireland today. Developed with community partners, the walk offers an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary pedagogy that can be used by schools, universities and also community groups, and by tracing the stories of migration to and from Cork city, the supports in place to welcome newcomers to the city, and the activism and advocacy work of the community partners. The walk seeks to address and mitigate the liminality experienced by migrants and forced migrants.

The walking classroom on migration engages what Ivan Illich calls ‘convivial’ ways of learning – participatory, relational methods of teaching and learning together, through empathic and embodied learning. We learn not just with our minds/heads but with our hearts and our bodies – our senses. We put relational, active listening and convivial tools at the centre of the walking classroom. Indeed, the walking method engages the empathic, performative and sensing body, and provides a creative way of understanding the complexities of migration and, importantly, the biographies of migrants in Ireland today. This walk has been conducted with undergraduates and masters students as part of their sociology, criminology and anthropology modules. The walk has also been delivered to newly arrived Ukrainian people seeking humanitarian protection, to introduce them to the city and offer welcome and hospitality. We discovered, in the process of undertaking the migration walks in Cork city, that one outcome of the rhythm of walking involves walking as a basis of thinking, knowing and relating – especially when we walk together and learn together – and this, in turn, might address and mitigate the liminality experienced by migrants and forced migrants.