The Made in Migration Collective is a fluid group of displaced and non-displaced individuals based in several countries in Europe. We use archaeological and cultural heritage methods to co-document personal belongings and places significant to lived experiences of contemporary forced displacement in Europe. Applying prefigurative anarchist practices, we used film, photography, ethnographic interviews, drawing, and creative writing, to record and reflect upon identified material culture, and co-curated a digital heritage exhibition called ‘Made in Migration’. The exhibition is contextualised within Europe’s colonial legacies and British immigration law as ongoing colonialism. Through enacting anti-racist, anarchist prefigurative principles The Made in Migration Collective actively exposes neoliberal and nationalist ideologies which continue to racialise and immobilise people according to colonial categories, first developed in disciplines such as archaeology and anthropology. In this talk, I explain the background to the project and offer a clear example of the important role that anarchist interpretations of cultural heritage can play in disrupting powerful partial (western) historical narratives, redefining the recent past in revolutionary ways.

You can view the Made in Migration virtual exhibition here.

Rachael Kiddey is British Academy postdoctoral researcher at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Her current project, ‘Migrant Materialities’, looks at the role of material culture in situations of contemporary forced displacement in Europe (2018-2022).

Rachael received her PhD from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York in 2014. Her doctoral research involved developing pioneering methodologies for working archaeologically with homeless people, documenting how heritage can function in socially useful and transformative ways. This research was shortlisted for The Times Higher Education Widening Participation Award 2012. Her monograph ‘Homeless Heritage’ was published by Oxford University Press in 2017 and it won the Society of Historical Archaeology’s prestigious James Deetz Book Award 2019. Rachael is a Senior Common Room Member and College Advisor at St Antony’s College, Oxford and an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London.

The USYD Archaeology, Museums and Heritage seminar series is free and open to the public. Due to the current COVID-19 restrictions in Sydney, seminars are online only. Registration is essential, and registered attendees will be sent the Zoom link. Zoom attendees agree to abide the by the University of Sydney’s ICT policy.