“More than one voice,” a radio workshop intended to create the conditions for speaking out and getting rid of subalternity: Modalities of a transformative research

This article describes a twofold approach: on the one hand, conducting research without dominating by collectively producing knowledge with people seeking refuge; and, on the other hand, creating the conditions for them to speak out, emancipated from processes of subalternization. The structural violence in which people seeking refuge are caught produces epistemic injustices. Indeed, the asylum procedure as well as the discourse on applicants constrain their speech and do not allow them to be seen as political subjects. How then can we allow them to speak out? How can one avoid reproducing epistemic violence as a researcher? Questioning our dominant position both as researchers and as volunteers, we draw on the conceptual framework of subaltern studies and decolonial thought to analyze the position assigned to asylum seekers and the relations they maintain with the “established” based on a multitude of colonial continuities. On the basis of these observations, we created a radio workshop that functions as a succession of spaces to transform these relationships and create the conditions for speech freed from the constraints analyzed earlier. The workshop is thus organized in the form of a continuum of three spaces: from the most protected where speech can emerge; to spaces that open outward—with guests—; to public meetings where the radio productions of the workshop are presented and debated. In doing so, the workshop is questioned with regard to the modalities of a transformative research of the social relations at work: Can the collective production of knowledge be a praxis of equality allowing these people to be seen as thinking and acting subjects?