Call for Papers AAA 2015 - "Migrants in Border Zones"
Abstract:
The border defines migrants as those having to cross it - and often recross
it. Much work on immigration has focused on the border as an obstacle or
hurdle which migrants get behind them as soon as they can. But borders – at
once marginal spaces and zones of state and para-state activity – can also
provide livelihoods, thus attracting and retaining migrants rather than
repelling them. Whereas borders are known to be a key technology of
territorial sovereignty and yet distinctive from the source of this rule -
what Brenda Chalfin has called the "double life" of territorial rule -
there is less understanding of how those who are marked as migrants from
another country can also making a living in these sites. For these migrant
workers, border zones can thus become both liminal areas, a space of
transition between state sovereign powers, and a source of economic
activity, if not potentially a place of contingent belonging. Their work in
border zones heightens issues of security and often informs the type and
range of authority relations informing their livelihood activities. This
panel draws on ethnographic research in a number of border zones, providing
insight into the specific cultural politics of livelihoods that occur
within, if not across, the territories adjacent to national borders. In
light of growing politicization of international migrants around the world,
we seek to provide a more detailed understanding of those working and
living in the actual border areas, posing a number of questions such as the
following. What circumstances draw migrants to work in border zones around
the world? How does their labor sustain circuits of capitalist profit and
state control in these volatile areas, and how does it contest or undermine
these forces? How do the state technologies and personnel deployed in these
exceptional spaces interact with these migrants working there? How are
opportunities on borders intertwined with risks and forms of violence? How
do migrants interpret and navigate such potential fortune and misfortune?
Please send abstracts to Matan Kaminer (<[log in to unmask]>) by no later
than 10 April, 2016.
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