The theme for the 14th Nordic Migration Researcher Conference points to issues of sovereignty, demarcation, distinction, exclusion and discrimination, but also to issues of transience, communication across distinction, and acceptance. Aspects of ‚the global turn‘ and the Europeanization of Europe, not least as manifest in migration and migrant populations, have brought border and boundary issues to the forefront not only in social science and humanities scholarship, but also placed them with exceptional prominence on the political agenda.
The conference will be organized in plenaries, subplenaries, and workshops.
For each of the three days, the plenaries will focus around a specific topic. The following topics have been defined:
Transnationalism and the relevance of borders:
Specifically, the relevance of state/European borders in our attempts to understand migratory movements and migrant population ‚integration‘. What reshapings of the sovereignty regimes do we see, and why? Do we see a development towards a sociology of mobility? Or do we see a re-nationalization within Europe? Borders, boundaries and identity construction are crucial issues here.
*Adrian Favell, University of California, Los Angeles
*John Urry, Lancaster University, UK
Mobility and gender:
Increasingly, there has been a stronger and much needed focus on gender within studies in international migration and ethnic relations. This plenary will deal with, and tie together, some ways in which gender constructions are tied to imaginaries of community, and gendered distinctions in agency and the quality of life;
Speakers:
*Uli Linke, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
*Laura Augustin, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Liverpool, UK
Globalizing idioms and human rights:
Increasingly, globalizing and essentializing idioms, especially religious and ethnic ones, have been seen as major impediments to reasoned resolutions to conflicts and controversies. These idioms have been largely contrasted with human rights perspectives. The plenary will explore these issues, with particular attention also to the essentializing dimensions in the human rights discourses.
Speakers:
*Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania, USA
*Michael Ignatieff, University of Toronto, Canada (confirmation pending)
The Organizers welcome proposals for sub-plenaries and workshops. The sub-plenaries will generally be short lectures, intended to be of interest to a set of workshops. Proposals to arrange workshops are welcome. In addition, the organisers will arrange workshops so that all participants who want to give workshop contributions will have an opportunity to do so.