Digital Storytelling And Visual Representations: Refugees Disrupt Stereotypical Narratives

This community-engaged participatory action project aims to disrupt stereotypes about refugees by defying existing power dynamics through the use of photographic expressions paired with socio-cultural and political narratives. Refugee participants and a team of researchers co-created a series of unexpected digital narratives that centered individual refugees as the main visual storytellers in their inner city West Hill neighborhood in Albany, New York. The project created space to question commonly held beliefs that deny agency and/or voice to resettled refugees. The participants produced human-centered digital story fragments that incorporated words of resistance, defiance and clarification. This collaboration contributes to a more complex understanding of the dynamics that shape social cohesion in diverse neighborhoods, including in areas with high concentrations of resettled refugees.