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  •  October 5, 2022 - December 14, 2022
     8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Migration of Identity

Consultation Group with Poh Lin Lee

October-November-December, 2022

This consultation group is for people who are familiar with narrative therapy practice and migration of identity in an experiential way and have a particular interest in unpacking ideas and practices that can accompany people/families/communities in times of movement (chosen and imposed), transition and liminality. While this can attend to large movements, it is also inclusive of small moments in daily life and moment-by-moment exchanges in conversations and relationships. Together we will explore our experiences accompanying people in these movements through sharing stories of practice and engaging in experiential exercises. 

In my multiple contexts of practice the migration of identity has contributed to:

  • ways of making visible poststructural ideas and the journey of becoming
  • Shifting to include not only ‘who are we?’ questions but also ‘where are we?’ questions that can invite articulating location within experience and relationships
  • Co-design process collaboratively and in response to moment by moment experience
  • the possibility to take up different positions in relation to movement – up close and nuanced alongside stepping out into wider context 
  • the possibility to invite narrative practices in as a community of practices that overlap and circulate and mingle
  • Ways to unpack experience of power, participation and discourse contextual to the journeys of movement people are describing
  • the possibility to attend to experiences of forced movements/migrations/displacements in ways that do not replicate non-choice and linear expectations of movement/progress

Over the 6 sessions the invitation will be to bring questions, concerns and considerations around the migration of identity as well as engage in experiential exercises to explore together what is possible and what surrounds the practice(s).

6 sessions fortnightly on Wednesdays:

  • 5th Oct
  • 19th Oct
  • 2nd Nov
  • 16th Nov
  •  30th Nov
  • 14th Dec

Time: 1.5hrs

According to registrations, time will be determined or two groups will be formed for two different time zones: 1pm and 6pm EST

Maximum 10 people for each group with two spaces saved for reduced fee. 

What is Migration of Identity?

By migration of identity we are referring to cultural and community knowledges and practices of ritual making that can mark and accompany individual and collective movement from one state of being to another in the course of life experience and transitions. Through Michael White’s engagement with ideas of ‘rites of passage’ he invited us to consider what separation, liminality and reincorporation might offer in co-mapping the journeys people were about or in the midst of taking in response to the concerns they were up against.

Earlier examples of Michael White’s practice were engaging the migration of identity maps in response to concerns people were facing in relation to the excessive consumption of substances; responding to men’s (in the Australian context) journeys of stepping away from practices of violence and domination and mapping women’s journeys of reclaiming one’s life from the effects of gendered violence. 

Is this Group for You?

 In choosing to step into this consultation group, what might you be choosing to depart from?

  • ways of being
  • ways of coming to practice
  • ideas, beliefs
  • obligations, expectations
  • something else?

Feel free to engage with the 30min recent video on Departures at the top of this page (also shared on Patreon) to check if this group is for you.

Departures 30min video

Sharing a little about the context and ideas that has me attending to departures in my practice and conversations alongside a few more questions you might like to receive and see what emerges. 

It is intentionally unedited, slow and meandering in my attempts to depart from some long held ideas I’ve been under the influence of in relation to how I ‘should’ be sharing. 

What has emerged is a hybrid of sharing, questions, relaxing (hopefully!) and completely unscripted, therefore a fairly unstructured experience. While I placed my attention on sound in this sharing I thought it was interesting to include the video to not obscure or hide the process. 

In the spirit of departures I invite you to engage in a way that might depart from some of the ideas around how you ‘should’ engage with content. Maybe you’d be up to taking up a different physical position, movement while listening, actively pausing or resisting pausing the video, listening with a different member of your body, napping or something else.

Enjoy!

Further resources

Denborough, D.(2014) Life as a Journey: Migrations of Identity in Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company

Gray, N. (2004) Responding to Men’s Violence, An interview. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, no. 4, p. 3 – 14, Adelaide, Dulwich Centre Publications

Hegarty, ThereseSmith, GregHammersley, Mark. (2010) Crossing the River: A Metaphor for Separation, Liminality, and Reincorporation. International Journal of Narrative Therapy & Community Work. Issue 2

Turner, V. (1964) Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage, The Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion, pp.4-20

Turner, V. (1969) Liminality and Communitas, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago, Aldine Publishing, pp. 94-113, 125-30
Van Gennep, A. (1960) Rites of Passage, New York, Routledge

White, M. (2002) Journey Metaphors, International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, Adelaide, Dulwich Publications, no. 4

Migration of identity Archives – The Dulwich Centre

Faculty

Poh Lin Lee is a Chinese Malaysian Australian woman who comes to her practice through multiple experiences and relationships as a narrative therapy practitioner, social worker, co-researcher of trauma/displacement, writer, teacher, film protagonist and creative consultant. Since 2004 Poh has been engaged in therapeutic co-research with people and communities responding to themes of experience such as family and state violence, displacement (from rights, land, home, body, identity, relationships), liminality and reclaiming practices of staying with experience and preference. Creative and therapeutic fields intersected for Poh whilst working with people seeking asylum within a film project with director Gabrielle Brady, Island of the Hungry Ghosts (2018). Poh is currently a freelancer creating crafted exercises and content to accompany people in their practices/projects/processes on Patreon alongside regularly tutoring, teaching and offering experiential workshops across therapeutic, creative and academic fields.

A Conversation with Poh Lin Lee

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