Dear all,

this a kind reminder about the approaching deadline for the Call for Papers (below), January 12, 2019.

You are welcome to submit papers to my session  “Mobilities, Transport, Tourism and Travel” or to any relevant session.

Feel free to share this call.

Best wishes,

Olga Hannonen, PhD

Post-doctoral Researcher, Karelian Institute

Lecturer, Business School

University of Eastern Finland

Mobile & WhatsApp: +358-505-772-006

 

P.O. Box 111

Joensuu 80101, Finland

Twitter: @olgahannonen

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/olgahannonen

 

 

Call for Papers

Reinventing Mobilities and Borders: Cross-disciplinary Conversations

February 21-22, 2019

Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu.

Organizers: Driss Habti, [log in to unmask] and Tuulikki Kurki, [log in to unmask],

Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland.

 

We are pleased to announce Reinventing Mobilities and Borders: Cross-disciplinary Conversations, a symposium to be held at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and organized by Karelian Institute. The symposium welcomes scholars from the Social Sciences and Humanities working in Mobilities and Borders research. The deadline for abstract submission is January 12, 2019.

 

The symposium aims to provide a forum for interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and expertise between a wide range of disciplines and researchers studying the issues that are broadly related to traditional as well as new emerging areas of mobilities and borders research. The symposium aims to promote discussion to forge a collective path forward for multidisciplinary research and scholarship and address new research questions and current local and global concerns. It seeks to address theoretical, empirical, political, and ethical questions in relation to mobilities and borders that are mutually constitutive but appear uneven, complex, and precarious in the twenty-first century. The following themes are discussed: how mobilities/immobility, borders and bordering, and border-crossings as multi-level practices are shaped and reshaped by various structures and drivers in addition to global flows of people, products, and technologies. The symposium also discusses the experiences of mobilities/immobility and borders and bordering that are enlivened and revived in memory, imaginaries and literary works resulting in empowerment or various forms of inequality. Through mobilisation of different means such as forms of capitals and new technologies, moving people often with family members hope to reach individual or collective goals and aspirations, or regain the momentum of dignified self-realisation and/or preferred way of life.

 

Keynote speakers Professor Professor Anssi Paasi (University of Oulu) will address the utopia of the borderless world and the problem of ethics; Professor Laura Assmuth (UEF) will provide cross-disciplinary approach on translocal families in East and Northern Europe; Professor Östen Wahlbeck (University of Helsinki) will address the issues of transferability and mobilisability of transnational resources; Professor James Scott (UEF) will discuss borders and securitization of identity; and Jopi Nyman (UEF) will approach Anglophone literary mobilities in the Mediterranean.

We call for research papers that critically study current questions in the fields of mobilities and border studies in various intersecting domains. These domains could include for example (a) individuals’ life-worlds, personal experiences and strategies, (b) institutional structures, policies (local, national and beyond), legal frameworks and humanitarian work, (c) media and public discourses, and (d) academic engagement and intervention.

 

Please, submit your research abstract of maximum 200 words to the organizer of the panels in which you wish to participate no later than January 12, 2019. We plan to publish a volume by an international publisher which has shown interest in our symposium. We note that the selected participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.

The symposium is supported by the research project Traumatized Borders: Reviving Subversive Narrative of B/Order and Other, funded by the Academy of Finland, the University of Eastern Finland.

 

Panels:

1. Mobility, Encounters, Networks, and Media

Organizer: Olga Davydova-Minguet, Karelian Institute, UEF, [log in to unmask]

Today, media do not only determine our situation, but rather have become “our situation” (Hedge 2016, 2), and mobilities are mediated and mediatized. This workshop seeks to explore the interconnectedness of mobilities and media/mediation in Finnish context. How mediated networks enhance or hinder mobilities? How connectivity and connectedness impact on the integration (and where)? How mobilities are represented in traditional and “new” media? What are the theoretical concepts that help us grasp contemporary mediated and mediatized mobilities? Papers addressing these and related themes are welcome to this workshop.

 

2. Migration, Mobilities and Internationalization: Explaining the Difference Between ‘Lessons from Finland’ and ‘Lessons for Finland’

Organizer: David Hoffman, Higher Education Institute, University of Jyväskylä, [log in to unmask]

Despite a valorized global reputation for excellence in education; scholars, policy makers, practitioners and stakeholders inside Finland’s higher education system are increasingly challenged when it comes to adapting to the challenges of migration, mobilities and internationalization. This is particularly evident concerning conventional and overly narrow definitions of short-term ‘academic mobility’ that gained popularity in internationalization policy and practice in late 20th century. However, two decades into the 21st century research, it is a fair question to ask: are policy-making and practice regarding internationalization are actually informed by rapidly evolving transdisciplinary research? Have ideas about internationalization and ‘academic mobility’ evolved alongside the state-of-the-art knowledge concerning migration, mobilities and increasingly shifting borders? Or have Finland’s internationalization efforts ironically become disconnected from key findings produced on the very campuses that Ministries, government agencies and strategic management units in HEIs are trying to ‘internationalize’? While this is not a challenge limited to Finland or Europe, this workshop invites contributions that critically spotlight unresolved challenges unique to Finland’s higher education system and better understanding them comparatively and with respect to state-of-the-art scholarship and practice.

 

3. The Everyday Life of Transnational Families in the Era of Precarization

Organizer: Pirjo Pöllänen, Department of Social Sciences, UEF, [log in to unmask]

Precarization refers to the processes of hollowing out of the welfare states and public structures of societies. Precarization is also connected to the lives of migrants in many ways. It refers to the individual´s unstable, unsecure and fragile position in society. During the process of migration one’s position in surrounding societies is flexible and varying. In this workshop, we are paying attention to the precarization through the prisms of transnational families in a different contexts. How are the everyday lives of transnational families constructed in the era of precarization? How is the precarious situation of transnational families made live-able and bearable? The source of precarization of the transnational family can be diverse: a geopolitical situation, the position in labour market or the unstable societal peace in sending or/and receiving country.

 

4. Mobilities in Literary Works: Themes and Perspectives

Organizer: Pekka Kilpeläinen, Department of English Language and Culture, [log in to unmask]

This panel discusses the various ways in which literary works project experiences of mobility. This includes, but is not limited to, migration as a response to political or personal crises, involuntary migration, and traveling for work or pleasure. Of particular interest are the ways in which mobility is intertwined with identities and disproportionate relations of power across the axes of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class. The concepts of home and homelessness – in the senses of searching, leaving, and returning – as well as borders, bordercrossings, transnationality, and transculturation are also significant in our readings of literary representations of mobility. Contributions in all varieties of literary analyses of and theoretical approaches to mobilities in literature are welcome in the panel.

 

5. Ethnographies and Narratives of Mobilities and Borders

Organizer: Saija Kaskinen, Karelian Institute, UEF, [log in to unmask]

The highly diversified term, Ethnography denotes an approach or an investigative process that produces meanings and perspectives of human condition, interaction, and agency under the most varying circumstances

imaginable. In the present global context of movement where terms such as state sovereignty, flow, migration, refugee crisis, multi-cultural, transcultural, hybrid, and fragmented are ubiquitous, the relevance of mobility combined with the ongoing significance of borders and boundary constructions, will increasingly affect people’s everyday life. We welcome reflections on the different effects of movements that address the relationships between mobility and immobility, entrapment, localization and transnational connection, and narratives of experiences and imaginaries of migration, rootedness, and sense of belonging.

 

6. Mobilities, Transport, Tourism and Travel

Organizer: Olga Hannonen, Karelian Institute, UEF, [log in to unmask]

Mobility is an integral feature of contemporary societies and travel is increasingly becoming a necessity for social life. In addition to derived demand, people are increasingly on the move due to the freedom of choice to do so. This has resulted in the growth of leisure and lifestyles related consumption and its expansion across borders. Travel across borders has formed new forms of mobility, which are fluid and flexible in nature and vary from short-term visits to semi-permanent relocation and seasonal migration. Borders both produce and challenge mobility, acting attractions, barriers and modifiers of tourism landscapes. The workshop invites papers devoted to contemporary issues related to travel across borders, which concern, but are not limited to the issues of connectivity and accessibility of cross-border mobilities, reasoning and outcomes, modes and ways of travel, and mobility regimes. The workshop welcomes both empirical and theoretical contributions.