‘Experts by Experience’: What’s beyond the label?

Guest post by Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes, Research Associate, University of Glasgow, and Tesfalem Yemane, PhD Candidate, University of Leeds. This blog was written as part of Migration Yorkshire's Refugee Integration Yorkshire and Humber project, part-funded by the European Union Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. As part of this project Migration Yorkshire has employed peer and community researchers and has produced a migration peer research toolkit.

Tesfalem Yemane in conversation with Hyab Yohannes

In this conversation, Tesfalem and Hyab reflect on the popularisation of the phrase, “experts by experience” in the refugee and migrant sector in the UK. Coming from refugee backgrounds themselves, Tesfalem and Hyab offer a contribution to the debate on this phrase, with some critical reflections on why the unreflective popularisation of the expression may reinforce the image of refugee subjectivities as lacking other skills.

Tesfalem: In recent years, the phrase “experts by experience” has become a popular term in the refugee and migrant sector. A growing number of refugee organisations and researchers use the phrase to describe the expertise of refugees and migrants. The general objective is to inform policies and services by paying special attention to the experiential knowledge base embodied in a person’s story of migration. What are your thoughts on the label “experts by experience”?

Hyab: I think such mainstreaming of the phrase goes to show the importance of building on the knowledge of and working with people with lived experience of migration in designing policies and services. This said, however, I wonder if popularising the phrase may result in the discursive erasure of one’s subjectivity. By erasure of subjectivity here I mean the discursive construction of the refugee in a singular frame of essentialised victimhood, vulnerability, otherness, and illegality. If (perhaps inadvertently) the term only privileges stories of refugees’ flight, victimhood, vulnerability, despair, journeys rife with danger and so-called unique knowledge/experiences, I would argue it negates other stories, skills, qualities, and attributes they might have. This selective privileging of the refugee experience can then lead to silencing and destituting these other skills and knowledges. That is, to me, an erasure of one’s subjectivity. It relegates the refugee to the zone of unknowability, unintelligibility and invisibility while at the same time reproducing a submissive and precarious subjectivity – ‘expert by experience’.

Life stories of people before they become refugees is not reflected in this submissive and precarious subjectivity. If you consider, for instance, the 1951 Refugee Convention, it uses a narrow and Eurocentric legal frame in that a person must demonstrate they are escaping what it calls a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’. However, the notion of ‘persecution’ does not include other factors (notably, climate refugees). All experiences are reduced to and measured against the idea of ‘well-founded fear of persecution’. It is in this context that the refugee is labelled as ‘expert by experience’. The refugee is imagined as the expert in vulnerability, as well as subject of otherness, violability, illegality, and deportability. What this means is, as refugees, you and I are described as “experts in our vulnerability”. As Professor Walter Mignolo points out, this is a case of ‘negated locations of knowledge and understanding’ embedded in the foundation of the Refugee Convention and the discursive formulation of the category of the refugee. This results in other aspects of our experiences, knowledge, and modes of being dismissed, which in turn erodes our subjectivity and diminishes our humanity.

Tesfalem: On the other hand, I wonder if the phrase can be deployed as form of acknowledgement and affirmation of the self-agency, resourcefulness, emancipatory improvisation, and experiential knowledge of the refugee. Is ‘expert by experience’ a case of leveraging the emancipatory nature of becoming a refugee and negotiating difficult migration journeys and experiences? Does it signify a precarious subjectivity that successfully contests and unsettles violent borders and remakes her/himself, regains agency and produces a new subversive subjectivity? I wonder if (or how much, if it does) the ‘expert by experience’ shows this aspect of our stories of displacement and emplacement. Or is it, as you said, more about the ontological exceptionalism of the refugee where s/he is imagined as a “victim”, vulnerable, hardened by a difficult past, is hardworking, resilient, toughened by circumstances during the migration journeys.

It is also important to highlight that there is an element of embodied knowledge within us that comes from our experiences of migration. But we might have skills other than what is imagined in our stories of exile and displacement. Beyond the labels, a refugee can be a trained lawyer, journalist, nurse, artist, engineer, and teacher, to mention but a few examples. I agree with you that, the phrase, well-intentioned as it may be, perpetuates the traditional image of the refugee as a victim, helpless, uneducated, low-skilled (save the embodied knowledge). The image constructed of refugees seems to be based on the perception that they have been through difficult journeys that have framed a certain subjectivity. And this makes me wonder about which aspects of our ‘way of being’ (our stories, skills, qualifications, dreams, interests) it privileges. If I may take you as an example, you are a former refugee, a migration scholar, a refugee advisor and have an educational background in political philosophy. I am not sure which aspect of you I would be highlighting by describing you as an ‘expert by experience’.

Hyab: It is important to reflect on this when we use such phrases. Perhaps we should also highlight that the phrase as used in the refugee sector might be more of a working language rather than a discursive construction of refugees as characterised by many lacks—lacking skills, lacking agency, lacking craft, lacking knowledge and expertise other than displacement.  The point of our reflection here is, therefore, on the abstract, conceptual and symbolic connotation of mainstreaming it.  And one thing is for sure, you have your skills within you. Being labelled does not mean that one is not skilful. It is just that the skills might be overshadowed or overlooked. In this context, it is incumbent upon us to be reflective of phrases such as ‘expert by experience’ which may be taken to only narrate one aspect of refugees’ life. If this is naturalised, refugees may be denied the opportunity to fully utilise their skills and, as a result, may be reduced to precarious subjectivity.

In view of such under-recognition of the skills and potential of the refugee, scholars like Mignolo highlight the need for what he calls “grammar of decoloniality”. In other words, Mignolo is calling for a process of “de-linking” from closed epistemes (forms of knowledge) to avoid essentialising an image of the ‘other’ as characterised by many inadequacies. The closed institutional and linguistic practices, whether in the humanitarian sector or public institutions, should be reformed by bringing decolonial linguistic praxis (combination of theory and practice). This could come in the form of convergence of research and practice to challenge the essentialising practices. We need to critically engage and question the limits of the common practices that may contribute to the depiction of the refugee in a certain image. That requires decolonial praxes committed to the work of opening the closed episteme to the possibility of decoloniality. In considering the possibilities of decoloniality, subversive subjectivity becomes conceivable in the ruins of coloniality.

Tesfalem: And I guess this is to be achieved by constructively engaging with the existing institutional practices rather than calling for a radical rejection of those practices. It is about critical engagement and finding a common language. I also think it is important to view this conversation in view of the progress being achieved in the refugee sector with regards to “inclusivity” and “participation”. Such a progress may be expressed in different forms and language such as embodied experience, co-production in policy and research projects, setting up refugee advisory boards and peer researchers. There is practical work and grassroot movements driving change however slow it might be. My work and experience with Migration Yorkshire (first as Peer Researcher and then as Community Researcher) may also serve as evidence of the direction we are going.

Hyab: I think your last point is important. Decoloniality might sound like a cliché, an abstract, or even accusatory. It should not be misconstrued as a call for a complete abandonment and rejection of a particular episteme or mode of being. As Mignolo contends, it is about changing the terms of engagement and relating without losing the embodied content and intra-human contact. I guess it is also about opening and dis-enclosing (opening up spaces for alternative epistemes) the monologic practices and epistemes for radical questioning and pluriversal modes of being. We can only talk of inclusivity and participation in non-exclusive and decolonial terms when we have achieved such radical openness and pluriversality.

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