Social Sciences Week 2024: Harmful Care, Careful Harm (event)

The Networks of Care team were delighted to be part of this year’s Social Sciences Week, an annual event that “celebrates and showcases the diverse range of social sciences disciplines and research in Australia. It provides a platform for researchers, academics and practitioners to engage with the broader community and raise awareness of the significant impact that social sciences research has on society.”

This year, Networks of Care project lead, Dr Leah Williams Veazey, hosted an online event entitled “Harmful Care, Careful Harm: Relational Entanglements in Migration”. The event also served as the launch event for the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies’ new Migration, Im/mobility and Belonging Research Theme (see previous post). The event brought together six stellar speakers from across the field of migration studies to consider the complex and dynamic relationship between care and harm in international migration.

Migration researchers have documented the many forms of harm that arise from the systems, institutions and interactions surrounding the movements of people across borders. Researchers have also explored the many forms of local and transnational care that are created by, or persist despite, international migration. In this event, we explored how care and harm are entangled in diverse migration contexts. Relationships of care (for example, between migrants or between migrants and ‘allies’ in civil society) may arise in response or resistance to the harms imposed by exploitative policies and practices. Equally, policies and practices that appear to be ‘caring’ may reproduce, obscure or naturalise harm, at times perpetuating the very inequalities and injustices they purport to address.

The event was well attended, with many themes relevant to the Networks of Care study. We look forward to the next event!

Harmful Care, Careful Harm - event flyer