Fashion & Migration/s: On Skills, Agency & The De- and Re-valuing of Labour

Session 2: Fashion & Migration/s: On Skills, Agency & The De- and Re-valuing of Labour will take place on Thursday 13 March 18.00-19.30pm, Q801

One in 30 persons is a migrant today (1). The movement of people, whether forced or voluntary, is a fact – that has shaped our world since the onset of humanity. Current climate, economic, humanitarian, political and conflict crises fuel migrations. People leave their homes to save their lives and livelihoods. Yet, migration is increasingly framed and perceived as a threat, a danger mainly to destination countries, currently global Western countries in particular, which forget their colonial pasts and profits, and their own histories of migration.
The global fashion system inherently relies on flows of people, but also materials and skills. While fashion as an industry has effectively been built on successive waves of migration, it has contributed considerably to the environmental crisis that, in turn, has brought forth millions of climate migrants (2). Dress is also an intimate experience for migrants, as they are confronted with the loss of their personal belongings, material scarcity, and trauma.

This research seminar series proposes fashion as a lens to better understand contemporary and historical migration processes, and to consider how fashion mirrors or potentially challenges current political discourses. Fashion & Migration/s opts for a multifaceted approach to explore the entangled connections between these two parameters– through experiences, objects, spaces & places, times, skills & techniques. Deliberately transversal, bi-lingual and multidisciplinary, it bridges theory and practice, and brings together academics, designers, curators and artists. As a starting point, Fashion & Migration/s is anchored in material culture, in the affective quality of objects inviting us to visualize, materialize and investigate the lives of people on the move.

About the talks & speakers

Dr Bethan Bide: "Community, opportunity and expertise: How Jewish migrants made London’s East End a centre of fashion innovation in the late 19th century"

London’s East End has a long history of association between immigration and fashion and textiles. In the late seventeenth century Huguenot silk weavers settled in Spitalfields, having fled religious persecution in France. Second-hand clothes dealing was also common amongst the Jewish community that had begun to establish itself in the seventeenth century. But the fashionable reputation of the area underwent a radical transformation from the 1870s to the 1910s thanks to its rapidly growing migrant Jewish population and their adoption of new technologies and ways of making tailored clothes.

This talk explores how processes and experiences of migration shaped this transformation, and how prejudice against these migrant workers in turn shaped perceptions of ready-made clothing and East End manufacturing. By exploring the innovations that occurred and the conditions that fueled these, it returns agency to a much-misunderstood group of workers and calls for a reassessment of their contribution to the development of London as a global fashion centre. It also sheds light on the ongoing significance of migrant labour to the British fashion industry and invites a reassessment of contemporary prejudices about certain types of fashion labour and the people who perform it.

Dr Bethan Bide is a design historian with an interest in the business histories of fashion, the role of fashion in museums, and the relationship between materiality, memory and fashion as biography. As Lecturer in Fashion History at the University of York she has worked on research projects with a number of different partners from the cultural and heritage sector to produce exhibitions and educational and outreach activities. Most recently, this includes collaborating with the Museum of London on the exhibition Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style. Bethan is currently Director of the Pasold Research Fund.

Rezvan Farsijani: costume designer and stylist in the film and fashion industry (Iran)

Rezvan Farsijani is a costume designer and stylist in the film and fashion industry. Specialist in Iranian fashion. She studied film at the University of Arts in Tehran and Paris Diderot University, as well as fashion design at the École Duperré. Her work explores the relationship between geographic displacement and dress behaviors, a concept she refers to as “clothing accents.” She has collaborated with various French fashion houses and worked as a stylist for French magazines. Her artistic project Alefba, in collaboration with the École Polytechnique of Lausanne and Afghan women, earned her the prestigious Canon Award for her role in preserving cultural traditions. She also contributed to the Fabric of My Life project, supported by the European Union, which helps migrant women develop textile skills. Working with international filmmakers and artists has provided Rezvan Farsijani with a nuanced perspective on clothing across cultures. In the West, where fashion is highly visible due to accessibility and open communication, she analyzes how dress behaviors evolve. At the same time, her deep ties to the Middle East and the Orient grant her access to sartorial expressions that often remain invisible due to political and social barriers. This dual perspective allows her to blend the visible and the unseen, the expected and the unexpected, infusing her creations with originality and depth while illuminating hidden narratives. Her collaborations at the intersection of cinema and art, combined with her multicultural experience, give her a distinctive vision that is both cinematic and artistic. Throughout her career, she has distinguished herself by weaving connections between clothing and society, narration and the body, as well as between cinema, society politique and clothing.

Dr Katharina Grüneisl: "Asian Factory Workers in Jordan's Desert: Labour Migration as a Premise of Productivity the Clothing Industry"

Over 55.000 foreign workers - predominantly women from South Asia - sew sports and outdoor clothing for American brands in secluded industrial zones across Jordan. How did Asian migrant workers come to manufacture American clothing in the Middle East? This presentation unpacks how Jordan turned into an attractive clothing production location through a Free Trade Agreement with the United States and attracted clothing producers to relocate from Asia. It then examines why these producers insisted on recruiting foreign labour, establishing a dormitory migrant labour regime that confines foreign workers between factories and dormitories and keeps them in extreme legal precariousness. Overall, the presentation shows how labour migration enables particular forms of exploitation that underpin productivity and competitiveness in the global clothing value chain, which is dominated by the cost- and time-pressure of large Western fashion brands.

Dr. Katharina Grüneisl is a geographer and ethnographer interested in labour, feminist political economy and urban transformation. She researchers social and political relations in the global garment value chain, with a focus on the used clothing economy in Tunisia, and the dormitory migrant labour regime in Jordan’s apparel production. Katharina is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham (UK) and an Associated Researcher at the Institut des Recherches sur le Maghreb Contemporain - IRMC (Tunisia)

Organizers:
• Sophie Kurkdjian, Assistant Professor, Fashion Studies, AUP
• Renate Stauss, Associate Professor, Fashion Studies, AUP
• Magali An Berthon, Assistant Professor, Fashion Studies, AUP

The Speakers:
• Dr Bethan Bide, design historian & lecturer in Fashion History at the University of York (UK)
• Rezvan Farsijani, designer
• Dr Katharina Grüneisl, geographer & ethnographer, University of Nottingham (UK) & Institut des Recherches sur le Maghreb Contemporain - IRMC (Tunisia)