Refugee Comics and Activism as Comics Work

: Kauranen, Ralf

: Anna Nordenstam, Kristy Beers Fägersten, Margareta Wallin Wictorin

Publisher: Routledge

: 2024

: Comics, Activism, Feminisms

: 179

: 191

: 978-1-032-54550-9

: 978-1-003-42539-7

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003425397-17

: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003425397-17/refugee-comics-activism-comics-work-ralf-kauranen

The chapter presents a study of the Illustrating Me project carried out by comics activists from the NGO World Comics Finland. The project, initiated in 2016, consists of workshops, where the practice of making comics is taught by the activists and exercised by the participants, offered to various groups of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in Finland, and the subsequent presentation of the comics in exhibitions. The activist project and the comics workshops are approached through a theoretical lens provided by the concept "comics work" and a relational perspective on comics production involving both human and nonhuman actors. The analysis is based on a reading of comics produced within the project and the project's online materials, as well as on-site observation in a few workshops. The procedures of the workshops result in a kind of "refugee comics" where personal stories are filtered through a collective and collaborative process, driving individual authorship to a shared experience. As a form of comics activism, Illustrating Me has the dual function of providing a means for creative expression and political intervention.