Radio and the anti-geopolitical ear: imaginative geographies of a Syrian family’s migration to Europe on BBC Radio 4

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines imaginative geographies of forced migration and refugee settlement in a BBC radio series that follows and gives voice to a Syrian family as they journey to Europe. Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 2015 and 2017, the episodes have since been repackaged as a podcast on BBC Sounds. The paper answers Horton’s (2019) call for greater engagement with media and popular culture by foregrounding radio as an understudied medium with the capacity to shape listeners’ geographical imaginations. It explores how this series, presented by Manveen Rana, broke new ground through its journalistic-ethnographic form, eyewitness reporting and amplification of refugee voices, and analyses how two imaginative geographies of journey and settlement are constructed through sounds and the spoken word. The paper concludes by theorising radio as a slow medium and demonstrating how Rana’s journalism pushes beyond Toal’s (1996, p. 171) ‘anti-geopolitical eye’ to evidence an anti-geopolitical ear: that is to say, Rana encourages a way of listening to Europe’s migration ‘crisis’ that disrupts discursive framings of refugees as ‘victims’ or ‘threats’ by recasting the family as tangible and relatable human beings. This finding has significant implications for media reporting on migration and scholarship on journalistic storytelling and the construction of geographical imaginations.