RecBord sought to respond to big societal challenges. Migration is one of the most pressing issues of the current political moment, yet the situation has changed since 2015: from the flashpoints of tragedy and headlines of ‘crisis’ in the seascapes of the Mediterranean. Attention should accordingly shift to the lives of those in protracted displacement, and how the violent border logics of ‘Fortress Europe’ play out in urban spaces. In other words, questions of integration and inclusion need to be examined from the bottom up – as lived experience rather than policy or politicking. This means paying attention to the sensory realities of everyday life, which requires bridging and expanding disciplines.
RecBord argued that sound is essential to understanding borders and displacements, but these connections have scarcely been explored in scholarship. Forced migration studies is yet to listen to music and sound cultures; displacement remains at the peripheries of music and sound studies. The research built on three recent conceptual interventions: first, that borders do not just exist at the perimeter of a territory, but are produced within and through culture; second, that migration is a sonic act as much as a spatial one; third, that citizenship and integration are constant processes, produced through the senses and their perceived naturalisation. It sought to push research on music and migration forward to meet the challenges of the current moment.
The main result of the project was the development of collaborative sensory methods. Particularly during research in Athens, the project developed through a series of activist lessons – things learnt from colleagues of refugee background who took the lead in recording what is happening in Athens: both to try and fix damaging narratives about refugees; and to spread word of the situation from within.
RecBord sought to to convert these activist lessons into activist methods – informed by ideas and practices of collaborative ethnography. This meant commoning the ethnographic process: learning from others as equal subjects, putting tools of ethnography in their hands, as well as control of the research process; using research to support and extend the activisms of those we work with; and co-producing outputs that subordinate academic goals to projects of social justice and transformation. This ethos guided the production of a radio programme produced as part of the project, and it feeds into ongoing publication plans. Listening, in all cases, became a method and a political act.
