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6th MESEA Conference
The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas

June 25–28, 2008, Leiden University, The Netherlands

  Call for Papers

"MIGRATION MATTERS: IMMIGRATION, HOMELANDS, AND BORDER CROSSINGS IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS"

Largely driven by economics, migration today is a global and globalizing phenomenon that renders national borders obsolete and calls into question the viability of nation states and national identities. Yet precisely because it undermines national structures, migration also has contributed to the reinvention of the historically highly problematic concept of “homelands” and the reconstruction of increasingly impenetrable borders. It is, moreover, in local situations and contexts that the impact of global migration is experienced, debated, and contested most directly and urgently. This conference, then, aims to focus on the ways in which migration matters locally as well as transnationally and globally, in the realms of politics and culture, history and sociology, economics and law, language, literature and the arts in Europe and the Americas. The following list of topics is meant to be suggestive rather than restrictive:

► Migration and the reinvention of (national and transnational, real and imaginary) “homelands” and/or the reconstruction of (external and internal, national, ethnic and racial, cultural and mental, political and economic) borders

► Global migrations and fluid geographies in terms of physical mappings and shifting populations

► Migration and national/ethnic/cultural/aesthetic border crossings

► Migration and modernization

► Immigration debates in various national contexts

► Images of the host countries in countries/continents of migratory origin

► Immigration restrictions and human rights; legal and extra-legal status of immigrants

► Circulation and impact of migrant peoples and cultures in specific rural and urban spaces; cultural diversity in local societies

► New immigrant literatures as world and/or national literature; representation in and impact on regional cultures, literatures, media, and arts

► Macrosociological analyses of migration and globalization processes; rethinking the sociology of literature

► Cultural production (literature, film, visual art, performance, music, blog-culture, web-art) by or about migrants

► Migration and the reinvention of religious identities

► Emerging identities/identity fashioning; ethnic refashioning: conflict and/or reconciliation

► Historical case studies of migrancy and diaspora; evolving diaspora cultures

► Migration and gender

► Migration and race/racialization

► Forced migration and historical/contemporary slavery or bonded labor

 ►Migration and linguistic diversity

►Immigration and educational reformation(s)
   
  Please submit three hard copies of a 300-word abstract (including a maximum of five keywords) or full panel proposals (including a description of the panel, chair, respondents, and individual abstracts) as well as an electronic copy to MESEA’s Program Director, Yiorgos Kalogeras, Department of English, Aristotle University, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece by November 15, 2007: (kalogera_at_enl.auth.gr). Inter/transnational and inter/transdisciplinary proposals and panels will be given preference. Note that MESEA will award two Young Scholars Excellence Awards.
For more information: http://www.mesea.org

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Received on Fri Mar 09 2007 - 00:53:06 EST