Crisis, Mobility and New Forms of Migration
An international conference to be hosted by the Migration and Integration Research Cluster at the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century (ISS21)
University College Cork, 2nd-4th September 2014
http://migration2014.wordpress.com/
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Sarah Spencer (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford)
Dr. Piaras Mac Éinrí (School of Geography & Archaeology and ISS21, University College Cork)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Since its beginning in 2008, Europe’s economic crisis has had a profound impact on societies across Europe and beyond its borders, with significant implications for migration and integration. In October 2010 Angela Merkel announced that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany had ‘utterly failed’. In February 2011 David Cameron declared that state multiculturalism in Britain had failed.
This international conference will explore the multiple ways in which contemporary economic, social and political crises in Europe (and globally) intersect with new and old patterns of migration-related mobility. The role of transnational migration in constructing identities, in cultural representations and the re-drawing of centre and margin in Europe will be central themes. Mobility and immobility provide a valuable lens through which to explore some of the ways in which inequalities and borders are produced, reproduced, experienced and re-created in European and global contexts. Diverse forms of spatial mobility such as short-term and circular migrations, returns and re-migrations, transnational family arrangements and long-distance commuting have become important livelihood strategies for people within and outside Europe in dealing with current economic and political realities. States respond to mobility and crisis through deepening and diversifying mechanisms of regulation and social control of mobility and of migrants. Non-state actors and institutions, such as religious organisations, play an increasingly important role in mediating the migration context. These processes give rise to ongoing questions surrounding contested concepts such as identity, integration, diversity, human rights and equality as they relate to migrants, non-migrants and diasporas. They also provide methodological challenges to researchers seeking to make sense of rapidly changing social, demographic and political realities.
The current economic crisis within Europe has contributed to something of a shift in migration patterns, as many western and southern European states, such as Ireland and Portugal, have re-emerged as sources of labour migration and have become re-imagined as European peripheries. To what extent does this involve a re-drawing of centre and margin in Europe and a re-racialization of Europe’s peripheries? Does the concept of ‘free internal movement’ make sense in understanding the dynamics of crisis outmigration from peripheral Europe? And how does immobility relate to mobility in the context of regulation, social control and crisis? This is also an interesting moment at which to assess Europe’s place in a globalized world, the relationship between global centers and peripheries, and how the intersections between crisis, global migration, gender, family and postcolonial ties are being re-shaped. Migration, mobility and immobility are key aspects of Europe’s relationships with other global regions and also in the ways in which Europe and its borders are imagined and constructed.
We welcome empirical, theoretical, methodological and policy-focused papers that address these issues, including, but not limited to any of the following themes:
- Economic crisis and affluent mobilities
- New/old mobilities and youth migration to and from European states at a time of austerity
- State and EU responses to and shapings of migrations
- Migrant religions in Europe
- Across the Mediterranean: cultural representations of migration as seen from the South
- Transnational families, children and new mobilities
- Creativity, mobility and transcultural capital
Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by 21st February 2014.
If you would like your paper to be considered for any of the thematic panels listed below, please email your abstract to the Panel Convenor as indicated below.
All other abstracts should be sent to migrationucc@gmail.com.
Migrant Religions in Europe
The religious landscape of Western European countries has changed rapidly in the last two decades particularly due to the large influx of migrants coming from outside of Europe but also because of intra-European migration following the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the enlargement of the European Union. This panel focuses on mobility, migration and religion and investigates how through the process of migration religious identities are affected and new religious forms are generated. (Panel Convenor: Dr. Yafa Shanneik, y.shanneik@ucc.ie)
Economic Crisis and Affluent Mobilities
The current economic crisis has not only impacted on migration patterns of under-privileged migrants groups. It has also had an influence on the directions and routes taken by more relatively privileged migrant groups – or, what may be broadly termed “affluent mobilities”. This panel seeks to explore novel configurations of affluent mobilities that have arisen, or become more pronounced, in the wake of the 2007 global economic downturn. Contributions are welcomed on papers broadly addressing issues of lifestyle migration, business travel, the transnational capitalist class, elite migrants, middle class migrations, migration between developed countries, intra-European migration. (Panel Convenor: Dr. David Ralph, dralph@ucc.ie).
State and EU responses to and shapings of migrations
We are interested in papers that examine diverse areas of state policy, including employment, adoption, trafficking, political representation, access to state services (e.g. education, health, social services, social welfare, housing) and outcomes of those services. Specifically, we would like papers to address one or more of the following themes: how transnational securitisation, marketisation and bureaucratisation have become embedded in state policies, rolling back certain supports, mobilising some peoples and immobilising others; how states make efforts to ‘attract’ certain migrants, keep others out, and how they justify emigration; the role of internal state institutions regarding migrations, and the contradictions between them; state engagement in distributing ‘voice’: Decision making processes – who gets heard and who decides. (Panel Convenors: Dr. Karl Kitching, Claire Dorrity and Prof. Alastair Christie; contact k.kitching@ucc.ie)
Across the Mediterranean: Cultural Representations of Migration as seen from the South
The experience of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa who have attempted to cross the Mediterranean has become a recurring theme within cultural production across the region. Indeed, the figure of the harraga who burns his or her identity papers before attempting the crossing, has figured in films, novels, installations, photographs and a range of art forms. What can be learned from these representations produced by artists and writers from the South but, often, promoted and distributed within Europe? This panel seeks to explore the relationship between the aestheticisation of migrant experience and its funding and distribution and invites reflection on the ethics of such forms of representation. (Panel Convenor: Dr. Patrick Crowley, p.crowley@ucc.ie)
Creativity, mobility and transcultural capital
The ‘cultural turn’ in academic literature on post-industrial, post-Fordist global capitalism stresses the power of creativity to transform the identity of place. The growing interest of policy makers in cultural production and consumption is related to the spiralling popularity of the ‘creative city’ rhetoric (Florida 2002, 2005) which argues that that a city’s social and economic health, its sustainability, and the quality of life of its inhabitants are promoted through cultural activity and engagement with ‘the arts’. Furthermore, the presence of migrants, Florida (2002) argues, contributes to the attractiveness of the city for creative entrepreneurs. This panel explores the positioning of migrants and ethnic minorities within this doctrine of creativity. What assumptions are made about migrants’ contributions to the ‘new cultural economy’? What are the implications for transnational mobility? Which migrants are discursively privileged? How does this renewed interest in creativity value the transcultural capital of professional ‘creatives’ – artists, musicians, writers, actors, film-makers, dancers, etc – and might it offer more flexible opportunities for migration to, and within, Europe? (Panel Convenor: Eileen Hogan, e.hogan@ucc.ie)
New/old mobilities and youth migration to and from European states at a time of austerity
The current economic crisis within Europe has contributed to something of a shift in migration patterns, as many western and southern European states, (some, such as Ireland and Portugal, more than others, such as Spain and Greece) have re-emerged as sources of labour migration and have become re-imagined as European peripheries, even as their own internal labour markets remain or become increasingly segmented.
At the same time the phenomenon of increasing globalisation in the EU and beyond may also mean that those without the requisite educational, social and cultural capital may find it more difficult than ever to migrate and prosper. A related issue is the question of ‘crisis migrants’ who are still leaving peripheral Europe and the ‘peripheral world’ more generally and who end up at the sharp end of life in core economies where social protection and decent working conditions are breaking down in an era of zero-hour contracts. These phenomenona raise questions concerning issues such as a European ‘brain drain’, the nature of internal EU mobility, relationships between peripherality, mobility, immobility and exclusion and the impact of EU policies in such fields as regional and rural development, youth policy, labour policy and migration. (Panel Convenor: Dr. Piaras Mac Éinrí; p.maceinri@ucc.ie)
Transnational families, children and new mobilities
We invite original empirical papers which explore the position of children within transnational families including child agency in negotiating transnational intimacy; children, technology, and transnationalism; children left-behind and child circulation between transnational contexts; child imaginings and transnational lives; and how children are positioned within the collective family transnational agendas. (Panel Convenor: Dr. Angela Veale; a.veale@ucc.ie)
Follow @ISS21UCC and http://migration2014.wordpress.com/ for more information.
Contact migrationucc@gmail.com with any queries.
Conference Organising Committee: Alastair Christie, Linda Connolly, Pat Crowley, Claire Dorrity, Kathy Glavanis, Eileen Hogan, Tomás Kelly, Karl Kitching, Piaras Mac Éinrí, Caitríona Ní Laoire, David Ralph, Yafa Shanneik, Angela Veale, Allen White
This conference is supported by the UCC Strategic Research Fund.