From Oppression to Education: Transgressing to Freedom?

In a period of global crisis, characterised by deepening inequalities, a rise of racism and xenophobia, religious and ethnic cleansing, people run for their lives, escaping conflicts, persecution, tortures and deaths. The phenomenon of migration, apparently, can be traced to the Roman times, yet, in the twenty first century, it is considered acceptable to purposely destitute, diminish and dehumanise those in need of protection in most countries of the Global North. Bringing disruption into the trinity of state-nation-territory and constantly being positioned as a threat, an asylum seeker, as a person who is in the process to be recognised as a refugee, became a scapegoat of political agendas and discourses at the highest levels of the patriarchal structures. This study seeks to understand an impact of the Direct Provision System on the life of the researcher and attempts to make meaning of her personal experience as an asylum seeker in Ireland. Subjectivity, emotions, self-reflexivity and voice are central to this research. From Oppression to Education: Transgressing to Freedom? is a narrative inquiry research, an epistolary autoethnography from the daughter to her mother, to elicit a story of powerlessness and oppression and an immense desire for liberation. The life story, in which reality sometimes sounds like a fiction, draws from day to day personal struggles in the context of the Direct Provision System and touches on the major problems of society: structural injustice and inequality, class division, marginalization and colonization through oppression. As Richardson ones said, “no one and no people is utterly powerless”. The researcher reflects on her search for freedom through the power of support and solidarity of local community, and through life-changing experience of education and learning. The implications of this research rely on power of solidarity and hope to engage wider society in conversations on how in spaces, which offer asylum, disempowerment transcends into an unbearable physical feeling of oppression, and how personal experience is always informed by clear political purposes.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

masters

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

National University of Ireland Maynooth

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Pshyk, Zoryana

Language dc:language

en