Photovoice as an unfamiliar act of citizenship: everyday belonging, place-making and political subjectivity

This article draws upon a photovoice project with people seeking asylum and with refugee status in Manchester, UK. It considers the ways in which resistance and political subjectivity can be mobilised by photovoice. The article documents where participants were resisting abjection. Firstly, through their engagement in everyday place-making and practices of belonging that were further made by partaking in the photovoice project; and secondly, through gaining political subjectivity and creating a new political community, one where no sovereign power was present. The work posits that engagement in photovoice is an unfamiliar act of citizenship because it is not normative in its form nor is it necessarily intended towards resistance. Moreover, the context in which the claims are being made is unfamiliar: through photography, creativity and a research process. This article reflects on what this means for our understanding of acts, citizenship and resistance.