Unsettling Narratives, Exploring Activism Networks: Learning in/from Counter-Hegemonic Worlds

This chapter considers how activism networks—including counter-colonial social mobilisation that might take various forms—can help to generate vital spaces of learning inside, and outside, the classroom. Reflections explore the roles of diaspora and other diverse groups in society in anti-deportation rallies, including in raising critical consciousness in public media, supporting grassroots funding and building intercultural avenues for exchange in displaced communities. We consider examples of teaching and knowledge-sharing that offered attention to experiences of coming from Iraq to Scotland and building networks of activism and advocacy as part of the Refugees for Justice initiative. We also reflect on differentiated kinds of non-governmental organisations that are differently positioned within contesting state politics and grassroots organising; and we explore the possibilities of diaspora networks that re-orient critical consciousness regarding both international and local political struggles. Additional curriculum examples include exploration of struggles in communities displaced by British colonialism and settler-colonialism, relating to Canada, Zimbabwe and Palestine/Israel, and seeking to reclaim colonially dispossessed land, in some cases crossing borders as a result of that dispossession. Further examples harken to dilemmas faced in deciding between a United Nations diplomat or a grassroots social justice advocate as the “lead” for particular conversations in classrooms, and the dangers of pre-emptively assuming too much about “realism” and “what is practical” as the basis for mobilising for social change. We also briefly gesture to teaching moments related to the student encampments set up in the spring of 2024 in an attempt to change university policies relating to military violence in the context of Israel/Palestine. Complex outcomes of various movement-led and community-led efforts are explored, and brief wider reflections on the possibilities of counter-hegemonic thought in teaching about displacement conclude the chapter.