International Conference: London – City of Paradox, 3-5 April 2012

London – City of Paradox
An international conference at the University of East London
Docklands Campus, London E16 2RD. 3-5 April 2012
http://www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

The 2012 Olympic Games have focused attention on London. Official representations of the Games stress the city’s inclusiveness and its history of bringing together the peoples and cultures of the world.

Although these themes are important, last year’s riots remind us that London is a city of exclusion as well as inclusion. How do we evaluate these different accounts? How to understand the city in all its complexity?

This conference examines London as a city which has both encouraged and discouraged migration and settlement – which has stimulated cultural heterogeneity and homogeneity. It considers how powerful institutions have shaped discourses of nation and empire as well as of internationalism and diversity. It examines the multiple contradictions associated with the past and the present – London, City of Paradox.

Presentations are organised around six themes:

Contending histories  

London and the world 

Race, racism and the city
East London 

Imaging and performing       

City and spectacle

Contributions to the conference will draw on academic perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, and on the work of community activists and cultural practitioners. There will be plenary sessions, discussion groups, parallel panels and workshops. There will also be opportunities to meet local NGOs, to participate in guided walks in East London and to engage with the work of local artists and activists. Speakers include:

Claire Alexander, Floya Anthias, Rob Berkeley, Penny Bernstock, Haim Bresheeth, Charlotte Brunsdon, Craig Calhoun, Matt Cook, Sukhwant Daliwal, Cigden Eisen, Gillian Evans, David Feldman, Alexander Geppert, Ben Gidley, Paul Gilroy, Don Georgiou, Vassil Girginov, David Glover, Aletha Holborough, David Howe, Keith Khan-Harris, Michael Keith, Roshini Kempadoo, Yosefa Loshitzky, Philip Marfleet, John Marriott, Mica Nava, Ann Phoenix, Gavin Poynter, Nirmal Puwar, Mike Raco, Laura Rascaroli, Michael Rustin, Nicola Samson, Saskia Sassen, Ashwani Sharma, Sanjay Sharma, Debra Shaw, Corinne Squire, Helen Taylor, Ansar Ahmed Ulla, Judith Walkowitz, Vron Ware, Georgie Wemyss, Andrew Whitehead, Jerry White, Sarah Wise, Jane Wills, Nira Yuval-Davis

Regular conference fee £60; concessions (unwaged, students, seniors) £30. Daily rate £25
(available only on the day); concessions £12. Enquiries to Dr Masi Fathi: m.fathi@uel.ac.uk.

Register at: http://uel-iis-b.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/booking/

UEL Docklands Campus is adjacent to Cyprus Station, Docklands Light Railway:
http://www.uel.ac.uk/campuses/docklands.htm

Organised by CMRB: www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/ in co-operation with Runnymede Trust, Iniva – Institute of International Visual Arts, London East Research Institute, Raphael Samuel History Centre, Centre for Cultural Studies Research, Centre for Narrative Research, Matrix East Research Lab, and the Centre for Performance Studies

Event: Intersectionality and the Spaces of Belonging

CMRB

Details taken from the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) website at the University of East London:

Intersectionality and the Spaces of Belonging

28-29 June 2012 Bangor University, UK

Keynote Speakers:
Prof. Nira Yuval-Davis, Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, University of East London, UK.   Nira Yuval-Davis will speak on the subject of her recent book, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations.
Prof. Jie-Hyun Lim, Director of the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea/ Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.  Jie-Hyun Lim will speak on his current research project, ‘A transnational history of victimhood nationalism: national mourning and global accountability’. Dr Gurminder K. Bhambra, Director of the Social Theory Centre, University of Warwick, UK .  Gurminder K. Bhambra will speak on her current research on early African-American sociologists and their conceptions of identity, inequality, and social theory.

Overview:
Current debates on gender, nation, sexuality, religion and other categories of social divisions and belonging often address the relations between these categories with the term ‘intersectionality’: intersecting in an infinite variety of ways, each of these categories helps construct all the others. What we are, what we suffer, what we belong to, or what we long to be, is multifaceted and contradictory. Our longings, or aversions, are related to our belongings in but complicated and ambiguous ways, and what social group or category we belong to does not determine our political or cultural values, goals or dreams. And yet: the former inform the latter, if only to the extent that we do not wish to remain tomorrow what we are today. Nor do our positionings, situatedness and belongings simply add up to an ‘identity’ (a being so and not other) – as if my hold of ‘ethnicity no. 7’ plus ‘gender no. 2’ plus ‘citizenship in state no. 11’ etcetera could ever equate to exactly what ‘I am’: ‘citizenship in state no. 11’ does not mean the same depending on whether I am of this or that sex, or sexuality, or age, or ethnicity. These intersections complicate, perhaps thwart, any efforts to ground the cultural and political projects, coalitions, emancipation that we long for in the spaces (physical, virtual, rhetorical) we belong to. The organisers welcome critical contributions on all aspects of ‘spaces of belonging’ under the perspective of the concept of intersectionality. Theoretically informed contributions from scholars in all disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, broadly conceived, are invited, as well as from social and community activists or artists. Key themes of interest to the conference include, but are in no way limited to:

• Citizenship, cultural and state membership • Nation, race, ethnicity, nationality • Indigeneity •         Diasporas •  Religion •  Cosmopolitanism and human rights • Longing and the non-space of utopia • Majority-minority relations • Class and belonging •  Sex, gender and sexuality • Standpoints, dialogues and politics of recognition •   Virtual spaces of belonging • Belonging, feeling, intimacy •  Belonging and equality •   Age-spaces and ability-spaces

Abstract Submission:

Please submit, by January 22nd 2012, a proposal of between 300-500 words, including title and references, prepared for blind review, alongside a brief biographical note (max. 100 words), in separate electronic files to berg@bangor.ac.uk<mailto:berg@bangor.ac.uk>

Contacts for questions:

Prof. Howard Davis  h.h.davis@bangor.ac.uk

Dr. Sally Baker :s.baker@bangor.ac.uk

Dr. Marcel Stoetzler:m.stoetzler@bangor.ac.uk

Dr. Robin Mann:  r.mann@bangor.ac.uk

A conference website containing programme and registration details will be launched in January 2012. The conference is sponsored by the Belonging and Ethnicity Research Group (BERG), the Bangor University School of Social Sciences and the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research Data and Methods (WISERD).

Refugee Studies Centre 30th Anniversary Conference – Call for Papers

 

Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford 30th Anniversary Conference: ‘Understanding Global Refugee Policy’

Call for Papers

The Refugee Studies Centre’s 30th Anniversary Conference will take place on 6-7 December 2012, focusing on the theme ‘Understanding Global Refugee Policy’. This conference aims to examine and theorise the policy-making processes relating to refugees and forced migration at the global level. Critical reflection upon the processes through which global public policy on refugees, internally displaced persons, statelessness, human trafficking, and other areas of forced migration is made is intended to offer new and valuable insights for scholars, policy makers and practitioners.

This conference therefore provides a forum for a critical discussion on ‘Understanding Global Refugee Policy’ by bringing together academics, policy makers, practitioners, advocates and displaced people to engage in a debate on how we might begin to make sense of and conceptualise the global refugee policy process. It seeks to explore the nature, content and implications of ‘global refugee policy’ with questions such as: What is ‘global refugee policy’? How can we theorise global refugee policy? What factors explain variation both in the motivations for policies, and in outcomes? To what extent do the diverse interests and priorities of key stakeholders shape global refugee policy, and to what effect?

The conference invites contributions that explore any aspect of the policy-making process: emergence, negotiation, development, implementation, and outcomes, examining global policy at the multilateral, regional, bilateral, or transnational levels. It invites reflections from politics, law, history, anthropology, and sociology, and seeks to involve contributors with case specific studies in addition to those with a broad focus on regional, bilateral, international and global policy-making processes. Papers might fall within one or more of the following categories:

Reflections

In order to lay the foundations for a critical academic understanding of global refugee policy processes, the conference invites reflection pieces on the experience of working on or within regional, bilateral, international and global refugee policy. Such reflections may explore the intersection between and across these different levels of policy making and implementation.

Case Studies

Papers might revisit important ‘moments’ or processes in which attempts to develop global refugee or forced migration policies have emerged, such as in relation to the Global Consultations, CIREFCA, the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, Australia’s “Pacific Solution”, the EU Asylum Qualification Directive, or the role of international actors in influencing national refugee legislation, for example.

Theories of Process

Papers might focus on conceptualising, theorising and critiquing aspects of the policy process in particular areas of refugee or forced migration policy. They may seek to explain variation in outcomes or they may aim to conceptualise how power, interests and ideas shape policy and its relationship to practice, or to examine how particular actors play particular roles in different stages of the policy process.

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted to:

Heidi El-Megrisi:  rsc-conference@qeh.ox.ac.uk  by 1 July 2012 at the latest.

Conference: `London: City of Paradox’

Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees & Belonging (CMRB)

London – City of Paradox:   An international conference at the University of East London, 3-5 April 2012

Further details : http://www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/documents/LondonCityofParadoxNotice.pdf

Organised by CMRB, in co-operation with Runnymede Trust, Iniva, London East Research Institute, Raphael Samuel History Centre, Centre for Cultural Studies Research, Matrix East Research Lab, and the Centre for Performance Studies.

The Olympic Games have focused attention on London. “Official” approaches towards the Games stress the city’s inclusiveness – a history and contemporary reality in which London brings together the peoples and cultures of the world.
This is an important part of London’s stories past and present – but only a part. Recent riots have summoned other histories – of tension and conflict, of exclusion as well as inclusion – highlighting current issues of security, surveillance and the criminalisation of young Londoners. How do we evaluate these different accounts? How to understand the city in all its complexity?
This conference examines London as a site of inclusion and exclusion – a city which has both encouraged and discouraged migration and settlement, and which has stimulated both cultural heterogeneity and homogeneity. It will provide opportunities to consider how powerful institutions have shaped discourses of nation and empire, of internationalism and globalism. It will examine multiple contradictions associated with the past and the present – London, City of Paradox.

Holistic approach

The conference embraces a multi-disciplinary perspective, drawing on insights from Urban Studies, History, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Development Studies, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Migration Studies and Refugee Studies. It will also address key issues in cultural production, especially in relation to public representation of cultural diversity. Participants come from academic networks and Third Sector organisations undertaking community initiatives, especially in the arts.

The organisers have identified a number of themes:

• contending histories: London as an object of historical study; London in the national narrative; “peoples’ ” histories; London, gender and history; history and community today; “official” history and the Olympic project

• London and the world: colonialism, neo-colonialism and the metropolitan city; commerce, slavery and empire; London and the neo-liberal networks; global city: London and the cities of the South

• race, racism and the city: “hidden” and “invisible” populations; inclusion and exclusion; geographies of community; immigration, work and settlement; refuge and asylum; citizenship, multiculturalism, “cohesion” and integration today

• East London: the East End in narratives of London and nation; East London and the maritime networks; the East End as refuge; East End, gender and sexuality; resistance and radicalism; regeneration and the “new” East End

• imaging and performing London: visual cultures yesterday and today – film, photography, multimedia, performance

• city and spectacle: London and the Olympic cities – global spectacle and local reality. Documenting the Olympics then and now (UEL holds the Library and Archive of the British Olympic Association, including materials on the 1948 London Olympics).

Conference format

The conference will take place from 3 to 5 April 2012 at the Docklands Campus of the University of East London. It will include plenary sessions, discussion groups and parallel panels and workshops.

All participants will have opportunities to listen to experts and activists, and to participate in collective thinking and analysis. In this way the conference will include best practices of academic and non-academic workshops. There will also be opportunities to perform, to meet local NGOs, go for walks in East London and to observe exhibitions by local artists, scholars and activists.
Among many who have already agreed to take part in the conference are (in alphabetical order):

Claire Alexander, Floya Anthias, Rob Berkeley, Penny Bernstock, Avtar Brah, Craig Calhoun, Mary Chamberlain, Matt Cook, David Feldman, Ben Gidley, David Gilbert, Paul Gilroy, Vassil Girginov, Michael Keith, Roshini Kempadoo, Yosefa Loshitzky, Philip Marfleet, Doreen Massey, Mica Nava, Ann Phoenix, Gavin Poynter, Mike Raco, Michael Rustin, Nicola Samson, Saskia Sassen, Corinne Squire, Helen Taylor, Judith Walkowitz, Vron Ware, Georgie Wemyss, Jane Wills, Jerry White and Nira Yuval-Davis.

Regular conference fee £60; concessions (unwaged, students, seniors) £30.
Refreshments included.

(You are encouraged to register for the whole conference,
facilitating active engagement in discussion groups.)

Daily rate available at the conference £25; concessions £12.
Register at: http://uel-iis-b.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/booking/

All enquiries please contact Masi Fathi: m.fathi@uel.ac.uk

UEL Docklands Campus is adjacent to Cyprus Station, Docklands Light Railway: http://www.uel.ac.uk/campuses/docklands.htm

CMRB, University of East London, Docklands Campus, London, E16 2RD
http://ww.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/