Migration & Marginalities
10 September 2015 | University of Brighton
Confirmed Plenary speakers:
Iain Chambers (Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale")
Maja Malus (MKC Maribor; Bulkan Curtains)
This one day, interdisciplinary symposium will bring together scholars, postgraduate students, practitioners and activists, to explore current discourses of migration in Britain and Europe. Across Europe, the public discourses of migration continue to trade on anxiety and fear. Much of this debate seems wearying familiar: populist politicians rehearse familiar anti-immigration rhetoric, while EU states co-operate to target so-called "irregular" migrants and the figure of Sangatte resurfaces in the popular press like some reanimated pop-cultural remake. At the same time, European migration appears to display new contours and patterns that such repetitions seem unable to record. Figures suggest that 2014 has seen a dramatic spike in Mediterranean fatalities as ever-greater numbers of African migrants attempt the perilous passage to Europe. Migration within Europe has also changed, as the EU expansion has combined with the calamitous collapse of finance capital.
Is it possible to reconcile these continuities with the seeming novelty of Europe’s migration? Does the apparent familiarity of these debates reveal or mask the shifting realities of migration in contemporary Europe? Furthermore, what differences or similarities can we trace from state to state? And are the discourses surrounding migration in Europe particular to the continent or simply evidence of a planetary trend?
**Apologies for any cross-posting; please circulate to your networks**