Music Refuge

Forced migration has led to the creation of unique spaces within varying contexts where music is made, shared, and experienced. Music Refuge charts over eight years of research to uncover the musical lives of those seeking asylum and refuge in 'host' countries. This book explores how migration, mobility, and emplacement become entangled through musical interactions, focusing on how people seeking asylum create musical spaces. Through music, asylum seekers discover alternate forms of identity that resist categorizations, nationalisms, monocultures, and fixed geographies. Moving away from refugee and asylum-seeking tropes that rely on narratives of victimhood, Music Refuge foregrounds agency and the claiming of space while living within and through asylum seeking systems. Ailbhe Kenny documents the voices of those seeking asylum within multi-sited contexts and frames their music making as spaces for “becoming” and “belonging”. She bridges research in migration studies and music education, offering a fresh perspective and in-depth understanding of adults and children living through asylum-seeking systems within Europe and beyond. The result is a cogent and timely exploration of music as belonging, refuge, and ultimately, hope.

Ailbhe Kenny is Associate Professor of Music Education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. She is the author of Communities of Musical Practice and co-editor of Musician-Teacher Collaborations: Altering the Chord and Sonic Signatures: Music, Migration and the City at Night.