Call
for Papers
(P10) Temporalities of
Migration, Mobility and Displacement
ASA2016:
Footprints and Futures: the Time of Anthropology
Durham University, 4-7 July
2016
http://www.theasa.org/conferences/asa16/index.shtml
Convenors:
Fiorenza Picozza (King's College)
Stefano Portelli (University of Rome)
Short
Abstract
The panel addresses the temporal
dimension of mobility and displacement,
interrogating different variations of speed as both
results of power relations and of strategies
deployed by those displaced, specifically exploring
the ethnographic limits and demands of capturing the
dimension of temporality.
Long Abstract
Studies of migration, mobility
and displacement often lack focus on the link
between the management of space and the management
of time (Griffiths et al 2013). Beyond its
spatiality, power is exercised as a temporal force
on mobile/displaced bodies, most notably in the
experience of waiting (Khosravi 2014). Regimes of
asylum, detention and deportation act on migrant
bodies as temporal power, decelerating circulation
and disassociating the body from its productivity
(Papadopoulos et al 2008). Migrants and refugees
spend months, years, sometimes entire lives, in
secluded or marginal spaces, liminal to the economic
and political order. However, transnational
migration is not the sole context in which the
relationship between power, the state and the
production of temporalities can be analysed; forced
expulsions from urban environments, such as those
produced by gentrification and urban renewal, also
posit questions regarding the exclusion from space
and from the perceived "normal" flow of time (Kern
2015). Yet, the very spaces of spatial exclusion,
such as camps or the new "planned" neighbourhoods
can harbour new practices that challenge and subvert
both the space and time of seclusion they aimed to
enforce.
With the aim of bringing time
"back in" in the anthropology of spatial practices,
this panel opens a space for discussion on the
temporalities of mobility and displacement, with a
particular focus on the challenges of capturing
temporality within ethnographic description. We
particularly welcome papers that ethnographically
enquire into how power channels, disrupt, decelerate
or speed up circulation; but also into the
strategies deployed by those displaced in order to
produce contesting temporalities.
--
Fiorenza Picozza
PhD Candidate
Department of Geography
King's College London,
Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
