Programme:
Wednesday 16th October
7pm
Journey into a Far Country: Stephen Sedley on the human rights of the 21st
Century migrant.
Human rights are widely regarded as the guiding principle of global politics
today. They are now part of our national law. But what about the human
rights of asylum-seekers and other migrants? What have human rights
principles to say about their relationship to the settled population? Do
they mean that national laws and local interests are by the way? Stephen
Sedley, Judge of the Court of Appeal, and sometime UK Judge at the European
Court of Human Rights talks about the human rights of outsiders. After his
address, Stephen will take questions from Courtenay Griffiths QC, Andrew
Nicol QC, Keir Starmer QC, and human rights lawyer Jane Coker
Theatre
£8/£7/£6
Sunday 20th October
2pm
MiGrate Britain
The ICA invites some of our famous immigrants to read from their own work,
with special reference to the condition of remaking a homeland in the UK.
Speakers will include Doris Lessing who was born in Iran in 1919 to British
parents. She moved with her family to Zimbabwe, and later to school in
Salisbury. Her many books and plays include Each His Own Wilderness, and
Memoirs of a Survivor. Poet Yang Lian was born in Switzerland in 1955,
raised in Beijing at the time of the Cultural Revolution, and has lived in
London since 1994. His work (still officially banned on the Chinese
mainland) includes Ghostspeak, a meditation on writing in exile. Palestinian
writer and activist Ghada Karmi will be reading from In Search of Fatima
which tells of her fleeing Jerusalem in 1948 to live in Golders Green, all
the time following the political events in the world she had left. "Here is
a story" says Edward Said "of exile and displacement, rich in detail and
human experience.." Fay Weldon lived as a child in New Zealand, attended
University in Scotland, and was and young and poor in London where she first
encountered the "louche, the hopeless and the golden-footed.." Her first
novel The Fat Woman's Joke was published in 1967, and her new book is a
memoir, Auto Da Fay. Poet George Szirtes was born in Budapest, and spent his
early childhood in Hungary before coming to England as a refugee. Budapest
is a persisent presence in his work, a spectral place, where desire "pulled
like a tooth." His collections include The Budapest File, and An English
Apocalypse.
Theatre
£8/£7/£6
Thursday October 24th
The ICA Economist Debate
7pm
17 Percent and Rising? A New Right in Europe
Migration now tops the agenda of European politics. Populist right wing
parties are already in national government in Austria, France, Italy, the
Netherlands and in Denmark, and while they encompass a variety of styles,
they all oppose immigration. Such parties continue to dramtically change the
political landscape. Do these ascendant movements share other common causes
and characteristics? How should mainstream politicians and media respond to
them? And is Britain immune to such tendancies? Speakers include Marco
Pastors, city counciller for the right-wing Leefbaar Rotterdam, the party
once lead by Pim Fortuyn; and Claude Moraes MEP, advocate of a strong
pro-immigrant response to the right. In the chair is John Micklethwait,
Economist US Editor Timothy Garton Ash, author of several books on the
recent history and politics of Europe - most recently, HISTORY OF THE
PRESENT (Penguin) regular contributor to the Guardian and the New York
Review of Books, and a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and Anthony
Browne of The Times. In the chair is John Micklethwait, Economist US Editor.
Thursday 24th October
7pm
George Lamming and Stuart Hall
George Lamming and Stuart Hall first read together at the ICA in 1958 in an
event called Caribbean British writers, along with V S Naipaul and Samuel
Selvon. Lamming (born Barbados, 1927) moved to the UK in the early 1950's,
and Hall (born Jamaica, 1932) travelled to Oxford University as a Rhodes
scholar in 1951. Hall went on to teach, write, and broadcast, offering key
critical foundations and reference points to the field of cultural studes.
Lamming has lectured in universities around the world, and his books include
The Emigrants and The Pleasures of Exile. He has made the journey from
Barbados to join Hall, and to read from, amongst other things, his
groundbreaking first novel In The Castle Of My Skin, written in London in
1953.
£8, £7 Concs. £6 ICA Members.
Theatre
For more info.:
ICA
The Mall
London
SW1Y 5AH
Tel: +44 (0)20 7930 0493
http://www.ica.org.uk
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Note: The material contained in this communication comes to you from the
Forced Migration Discussion List which is moderated by the Refugee Studies
Centre (RSC), University of Oxford. It does not necessarily reflect the
views of the RSC or the University. If you re-print, copy, archive or
re-post this message please retain this disclaimer. Quotations or extracts
should include attribution to the original sources.
|