Yasmin Gunaratnam

King's College London | KCL · School of Education Communication and Society

In this article, I discuss Lauren Berlant’s way of writing with/in the affective infrastructures of universities, embracing comedy and play, while engaging constraint. My case example is Berlant and Kathleen Stewart’s The Hundreds (2019). In the company of Berlant’s incitements, I come back to the inconvenience of our latter-day crises of scholarly...

Anticolonial and Black feminist scholars and artists have made a convincing case that political and social legibility for racially marked peoples requires active and multi-sensory reiteration. To presence what has been effaced or distorted, images, numbers, and texts must be redacted, annotated, rescaled, reframed, relocated, and repurposed. In dia...

This commentary advocates for more ‘connected’ sociologies of health and illness, drawing from feminist and queer discussions of debility. Debility gives attention to the different scales and locations of infrastructural violence, instigated by colonialism and its interwoven oppressions. I extend the thematic of infrastructural violence to systems...

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Italian reception centre for male ‘unaccompanied minors’. Drawing on the concepts of ‘hostipitality’ (Derrida), the Black Mediterranean, and ‘intimate citizenship’ (Plummer), we examine the political ambivalence of hospitality for young African men as they transition to adulthood and how this is...

This article draws on narrative interviews with volunteers in an English charity, providing temporary accommodation to destitute migrants and refugees. The aim is to investigate the ethical and emotional complexities and ambivalence of the tensions between hospitality and hostility, and conditional and unconditional hospitality, with a focus on sto...

In this article, I flesh out and crip the bodily experience and institutional terrain of academic feminist presentation, so as to socialise the increasing privatising of experience in the neoliberal academy. As a means of staging feminism, presenting is a vital part of the academic habitus, yet it is an experience and practice that is problematic f...

This piece in Discover Society is about the first ethnic minority doctors who died in the early stages of the UK's corona virus pandemic

In July 2013, the UK government arranged for a van to drive through parts of London carrying the message 'In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest.' This book tells the story of what happened next. The vans were short-lived, but they were part of an ongoing trend in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate toughness on immigra...

In July 2013, the UK government arranged for a van to drive through parts of London carrying the message 'In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest.' This book tells the story of what happened next. The vans were short-lived, but they were part of an ongoing trend in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate toughness on immigra...

Living Research Three: Migration research and the media One of the motivations for our project was to use research to intervene in public debates on immigration by providing alternative perspectives on what is often a polarised and entrenched debate where the perspectives of migrants and racially minoritised communities barely feature (Conlan, 2014...

One of the motivations for our project was to use research to inter- vene in public debates on immigration by providing alternative per- spectives on what is often a polarised and entrenched debate where the perspectives of migrants and racially minoritised communities barely feature (Conlan, 2014; Migrant Voice, 2014) and where, as we found, resea...

Responding to claims of Anthropocene geoscience that humans are now geological agents, social scientists are calling for renewed attention to the social, cultural, political and historical differentiation of the Anthropos. But does this leave critical social thought’s own key concepts and categories unperturbed by the Anthropocene provocation to th...

In July 2013, the UK Home Office launched an advertising campaign with the slogan ‘In the UK illegally? Go Home or face arrest,’ mounted on a billboard and driven around ethnically and nationally diverse areas of London. A few weeks later, the @ukhomeoffice Twitter account began to publish tweets about arrests at locations around London, with the h...

This article discusses definitions and debates about the terms ‘hybridity’ and ‘mixedness’ across the natural and human and social sciences, including the work of the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha. Using the argonomic idea of homology, that refers to correspondences in both the quality and the states of a thing or phenomena, insights are offered in...

Three stories about dying migrants in the United Kingdom are at the heart of this article. Working with these narratives, I investigate the neurobiological,subjective and socio-cultural entanglements of disease, pain and dying and the challenges such hybridisations present for attempts to recognise and alleviate suffering. My aim is to show the dif...

This article is a conversation with Professor Heidi Mirza that discusses her experiences in Higher Education, intersectionality and renewed interest in black feminist ideas among new generations

"Death and the Migrant – An Introduction." Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 1–22. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

"Eros" Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 1–22. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Chapter 3 Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 1–22. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Chapter 5 Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 1–22. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Chapter 4 Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 1–22. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Bloomsbury An ethnographic study of diasporic dying and care in English cities.

Narratives of street life from British Bangladeshi Muslim mothers, collected in the aftermath of the suicide bombings in London in 2005, are the focus of this article. The author examines how temporal schemas that combine the unpredictable time of racist events with a rendering of a foreseeable linear temporality of racism and of intergenerational...

This article uses analysis of focus group discussions with palliative care professionals in the United Kingdom to discuss the value of a stance of cultural vulnerability in intercultural social work. Cultural vulnerability recognizes mutual vulnerabilities in caring relationships. The meanings and potential of cultural vulnerability are explicated...

While sharing in the desire to move beyond race as it is currently most often understood and experienced, this chapter attempts to do something different with race – in its conjunction with climate and food. Without losing sight of the profound importance of social inequalities in the impact of global climate change, and all the complex issues of j...

Using sociological research with dying migrants and care professionals, Death and the Migrant describes the unfolding drama and ordinary predicaments of transnational dying in British Cities. At times of dying, lives are looked back on and memories and losses surface. For migrants and settlers, questions of belonging and ‘home’ can loom large. The...

This collaborative article explores some commonalities to be found in narrative methods used by Caribbeanist, Joan Anim-Addo and sociologist, Yasmin Gunaratnam. Recognizing how narrative and stories are socially inflected and relational, our work with diasporic stories approaches narrative as an unstable and evolving event that poses its own ethica...

The practice of live sociology in situations of pain and suffering is the focus of this article. An outline of the challenges of understanding pain is followed by a discussion of Bourdieu's ‘social suffering’ (1999) and the palliative care philosophy of ‘total pain’. Using examples from qualitative research on disadvantaged dying migrants in the UK...

This article suggests that one way of leaving behind the gravitational pull of essential and hierarchical conceptualizations of race is to follow climate science in digging deeper into the prehistory of human evolution and physiological differentiation. We begin by outlining the value of Paul Gilroy’s (2000) post-racial imaginary, set out in Betwee...

Culture has a profound influence on our understanding of what is appropriate care for patients at the end of life (EoL), but the evidence base is largely nonexistent. An international workshop was organized to compile a research agenda for cultural issues in EoL research, and assess challenges and implications of the integration of the culture conc...

The practice of live sociology in situations of pain and suffering is the focus of this article. An outline of the challenges of understanding pain is followed by a discussion of Bourdieu's ‘social suffering’ (1999) and the palliative care philosophy of ‘total pain’. Using examples from qualitative research on disadvantaged dying migrants in the UK...

In this article the author draws upon research with palliative care professionals in the United Kingdom to discuss the value of a stance of cultural vulnerability in intercultural care. Cultural vulnerability recognizes the reality, but also the ethical value of uncertainty and not-knowing in care. Attentiveness to professional narratives is advoca...

The use of narrative methods has a long history in palliative care, pioneered by Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement. This book provides a multidisciplinary examination of work with narrative and stories in contemporary health and social care, with a focus on the care of people who are ill and dying. It animates the academi...

This article examines the limits and potential of hospitality through struggles over auditory space in care at the end of life. Drawing upon empirical research and a nurse’s account of noisy mourning in a multicultural hospice ward, I argue that the insurgent force of noise as corporeal generosity can produce impossible dilemmas for care, while als...

The benefits of breastfeeding are now recognised and promoted by governments and healthcare services internationally (WHO 2007),with feeding regarded as a significant part of the maternal role: in the words of the World Health Organization: ?no gift is more precious than breastfeeding?. The idea that breastfeeding can be a ?gift? signifies the incr...

This chapter discusses in detail the principles and the assumptions that underlie narrative interviews and that can also be used in clinical practice. In this discussion, the narrative practitioner serves as a midwife to narrative by helping and coaxing narrative into the world. © Oxford University Press, 2009 (all other chapters)

Identity transformation is of major concern in the social sciences (Brooks and Wee, 2008), but there is currently little agreement about the processes through which it occurs. This chapter illustrates the ways in which processes of identity change can be theoretically accounted for by analysing the ways in which Silma (a pseudonym), a first-time mo...

This paper provides a critical examination of cultural competence approaches, using the findings of a development project in the black voluntary sector that aimed to increase awareness of palliative care amongst older people and carers from groups most commonly referred to in the UK as being ‘minority ethnic’. The project involved narrative intervi...

This paper makes a case for multi-sensory research. By engaging with questions of ethnicity, culture, space and sound, the discussion will show how taken-for-granted, everyday practices can be part of the ways in which whiteness is produced within health care spaces, affecting how different bodies are able to move through and occupy space. The pape...

This article discusses the care of older people from groups most commonly referred to in the UK as being “minority ethnic”. It considers the significance and growing popularity of social policy initiatives aimed at cultural competence in care provided at the end of life. Drawing upon qualitative focus group interviews with 56 health and social care...

This paper discusses the use of different forms of artistic representation (poems, images, music, literature) to convey research findings. It theorises creativity as emerging from the precarious interplay between external and internal worlds that can surprise and demand invention and representation. Using examples from palliative care and ideas fro...

Recognition of the importance of 'cultural competence' is now central to health care policy and to nurse education and training across the international spectrum. Detailed engagement with models of cultural competence is comparatively recent in palliative care nursing. This article presents the findings from a development project on elders and care...

Members of the public are increasingly consulted over health care and research priorities. Patient involvement in determining cancer research priorities, however, has remained underdeveloped. This paper presents the findings of the first consultation to be conducted with UK cancer patients concerning research priorities. The study adopted a partici...

Members of the public are increasingly consulted over health care and research priorities. Patient involvement in determining cancer research priorities, however, has remained underdeveloped. This paper presents the findings of the first consultation to be conducted with UK cancer patients concerning research priorities. The study adopted a partici...

Yasmin Gunaratnam reports on a survey which reveals differences in the awareness of breast health among different groups of women

This chapter examines how biographical approaches can be used to enrich intercultural and anti-discriminatory practices and the ways in which racialised identities can be reproduced and challenged within healthcare services. It uses the case study of Maxine, a black Jamaican service user. The chapter begins by outlining some of the limitations in c...

Researching `Race' and Ethnicity provides an innovative discussion of the methodological, epistemological and ethical challenges of doing qualitative research that is informed by questions of `race', ethnicity and social difference. By identifying and challenging `categorical thinking' and many longstanding assumptions about the meanings of `race'...

Increasing attention is being given to the challenging of racism and racial harassment in health care organisations. Very little, however, is known about anti-discriminatory practice in the health services, or how professionals give meaning to ‘race’ in their work with service users. This paper examines these issues through representations of the ‘...

Using an innovative analysis, this article concocts an imagined ‘dialogue’ between hospice staff and minoritized service users. It mixes together narrative extracts about food from separate qualitative interviews, enabling staff and service users to ‘talk’ to each other against a context of the multicultural provision of food within an English hosp...

Last month marked the first anniversary of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry report (MacPherson, 1999), which put ‘institutional racism’ firmly on the agenda of British public services. Brief details relating to the Inquiry are highlighted in Box 1 and a definition of institutional racism is provided in Box 2. During the past year the UK Government has...