Culture on display, identity on the move: Ethnographic explorations with resettled Karen

For my ethnographic work with the Hobart Karen I created visual maps on which to locate refugee resettlement experiences and narrations of identity. As I explored these experiences with little shared language, visual recording and display became important. The coloured charts I developed, combined with story fragments and other visual modes (observation, photographs and objects) are thus able to ‘speak’ of lived experiences. This close focal length can offer a more detailed picture of ‘settlement success’ than those more narrow views presented in Australia’s neoliberal policy landscape.