Call for papers - Nexus thinking and migration: locality, neoliberalism, and mobility
RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2016, 30th August-2nd September, London
Taulant Guma and Rhys Dafydd Jones and, Department of Geography and Earth Science, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK SY23 4HL
The recent emergence of ‘nexus’ thinking has led to much discussion on exchange and collaboration particularly in relation to food, water, energy, and environmental security. This session provides contemplation of how nexus thinking (Rees, 2013, Leck et al., 2015) can bring new understandings of migration and migration-related issues. While there has been some attention to the environment-migration nexus (Kniveton et al., 2009) and the migration-development nexus (Nyberg-Sørensen, 2002), there is a need for more comprehensive analysis of broader neoliberal manifestations, and their groundings in particular localities.
Over the last decades, neliberalism as an economic, political and cultural process has given rise to discourses, policies and practices that have significantly shaped migration phenomena and the localities in which migrants live. On the one hand, as cities and localities compete globally to attract capital, migrant labour (both skilled and unskilled) has become crucial not only in economic terms but also culturally; 'cultural and ethnic diversity' is being treated as desirable and marketable by employers, policy-makers and planners. On the other hand, the rise and consolidation of neoliberal states (Wacquant 2009) and neoliberal governmentality (Fergusson and Gupta 2002) have led to policies that prioritise entry and support for ‘the brightest and the best’ while restricting the rights of and reducing social security for ‘economic migrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’ who are increasingly deemed ‘undesirable’. This in turn has implications for social cohesion, civil society and governance in localities.
Adopting nexus approaches allows for a more contextual analysis and critical reflection of these issues and how they interplay. In this session, we wish to invite papers and encourage discussion on how collaboration between work on localities, neoliberalism, and mobility can provide new insights and develop our understandings of migration phenomena. We welcome papers which address one or more of the following themes:
• Neoliberalism, globalisation and geographies of im/mobility
• Neoliberal discourses, governmentality and migration
• Counter-topographies and narratives of neoliberalism and migration;
• Migration and place-making
• Participation, cohesion, and local communities;
• Governance and nexus thinking;
• Nexus methodologies - opportunities and limitations for migration research.
Abstract of no more than 250 words should be sent to Taulant Guma ([log in to unmask]) and Rhys Dafydd Jones ([log in to unmask]) by the 8th of February 2016.
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