27-28 June 2013
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
Central European University,
Budapest, Hungary
In times of capitalist crisis and restructuring rapid economic, social, political and cultural change takes place. Two key notions in writings about globalization and neoliberalization have been mobility (of capital, of people, of ideas) and inequalities. Both, mobility and inequalities, result in and catalyze contestations and struggles within a framework of parallel homogenizing and differentiating tendencies accompanied by uneven development on different scales. During the annual graduate conference of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the Central European University, we would like to focus on these changes from two specific critical perspectives: those of migration and urban marginality. The aim of putting these topics together is to create a meaningful intellectual tension between the two bodies of literature, both of which deal with spatial processes and with movements within space. We anticipate papers that would further the debate and shed light on new unexplored aspects of unequal power relations that im/mobilize various social groups and social forces. Building on the interdisciplinary environment of our department, we welcome papers to both panels from advanced MA and PhD students from any fields of the social sciences. We would like to highlight the position of Central European University and welcome research on the semi-peripheral, „post-socialist” experience, but are also looking for comparative cases, theories, and approaches regarding how urban restructuring and migration connects local to global processes in other regions. Two keynote speakers have confirmed their participation, Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna) and Tom Slater (University of Edinburgh).
Panel I: (Re)bordering and (De)bordering: Producing New Immobilities
Crisis impacts migration in multiple and often contradictory ways: crisis may impede mobility due to limited resources and simultaneously trigger
even more (physical) mobility. At the same time, crisis also potentially challenges states’ regulative power and may alter migration policies and regimes to a significant extent. In recent years migrants’ mobilization and protest have challenged “European” space, such as in the numerous hunger strikes in detention centers for “illegal” migrants, as well as marches and occupations organized by asylum-seekers, all of which speak to increased pressure placed on the so-called “Fortress Europe.” Moreover, the attempted reimposition of mobility control over Romanian and Bulgarian citizens in current debates point to sharp internal divisions within the European Union and a continuous hierarchization which highlights the production of categories of “legal” and “illegal” migrants. With this panel we would like to work through the dichotomies of legal/illegal and mobility/immobility and to explore the contradictions and ambiguities concerning migration regimes in “European” or other spaces on different scales.
We invite papers which explore, but are not limited to, the following questions:
– What are the relations between migration policies and migrant subjectivities in contemporary Europe and beyond?
– In which ways do transnational institutions manifest themselves in the everyday lives of migrants?
– What are some of the subversive strategies used by migrants in order to resist imposed immobility and what can that tell us about changing political configurations?
– What methodological innovations can be developed to capture the complex interrelations between the different scales on which the governance of mobilities is played out?
– How does the emergent politics of xenophobia and populism fold into forms of protest against the criminalization of movement, and what discursive battles are at stake here?
– How do discourses and policies concerning the hierarchization of migration in various European and non-European contexts interlock in ways that contradict or mirror European experiences?
Panel II: The Production of Urban Marginality: A Relational Understanding
of Restructuring
In the present global crisis the “urban” element plays a crucial role. Recent urban scholarship has widely covered how financial tools connected to the real estate market and construction industries led to the unsustainability of the subprime credit market, and in addition to the whole process of the financialization of global neoliberal capitalism. It has also attracted a lot of attention how the responses to this crisis have in turn affected the ways in which urban space is produced. In this panel we would like to encourage a relational understanding of contemporary urban restructuring, which means emphasizing how the marginalization and informalization of certain dispossessed urban communities is interconnected with novel techniques and discourses of managing and governing the urban process. The relational perspective on place-making allows us to avoid simplistic accounts that represent inhabitants of marginal spaces merely at the receiving end of structural relations, doomed to a lack of agency, and acute voicelessness. We welcome presentations that aim to relate the different social actors who are involved in the process of place-making and the production of urban marginality.
We are particularly interested in papers which explore the following questions:
– How marginalized communities try to cope with the intensifying process of polarization, deprivation and with the various forms of austerity
– The ways in which urban movements have been altered and new kinds of political voices and practices have emerged together with the changing political subjectivities of inhabitants themselves living in “ghettos”, abandoned spaces” and other “zones of exception”
– The process through which urban governance has started to transform after 2008 in a response to the crisis
– The ways in which criminalizing and penalizing policies are gaining importance, and the ways in which policy makers are using and abusing discourses of fear and crime in an era of advanced marginality
– The particular forms of interaction between „the state” and „marginalized communities” with special respect to the actors who are mediating between the different levels.
– The process of rescaling urban marginality, particularly in the framework of EU policies/projects
A 200 words abstract should be sent to imin.ceu@gmail.com by Sunday, 5th of May 2013. A limited number of bursaries will be available to participants, please let us know if you would need to be considered for this when sending the abstract.
