[URBANTH-L] CFP: Childhood and Migration: Interdisciplinary Conference (Philadelphia)

[Angela Jancius]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Childhood & Migration: Interdisciplinary Conference 2008 

Philadelphia, PA, USA 

http://globalchild.rutgers.edu/

Friday, June 20th , and Saturday, June 21st , 2008

Call for Participation (issued September 2007)

Announcing our Keynote Speaker: Prof. Jacqueline Bhabha, Jeremiah Smith
Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, the Executive Director of the
Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies.

Emerging Perspectives on Children in Migratory Circumstances

The Working Group on Childhood and Migration (see
_http://globalchild.rutgers.edu/_) will hold its first conference in
June of 2008 in Philadelphia, with support from the U.S. National
Science Foundation, Drexel University, and Rutgers University, Camden.
At this inauguaral conference, we welcome researchers and policy
advocates from all disciplines and all areas of the world whose work
focuses on the ways that increased migration affects children and the
cultural, legal, educational, medical, and psychological perception of
childhood. Please submit a 200 to 300 word abstract for an individual
paper proposal in the body of an email to _rrr at drexel.edu_ by December
15th . Notification of acceptance will be by January 10th . Conference
website is available at:
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~dtd28/GlobalChild/index1.htm
<http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~dtd28/GlobalChild/index1.htm>  

The way that world migration affects children's lives is complex and
multi-faceted. Studies of children in migratory circumstances cross
multiple areas of the world and multiple areas of concern for
researchers, policy makers and direct service workers. Moreover, larger
public concerns alter children's lives, concerns like immigration visa
policies, media representations of child labor, and changing educational
systems. Migratory familes also undergo unique private concerns over
problems like the quality of substitute care and communication with
loved ones across long distances. Holistic or at least less partial
glimpses of these children's lives therefore must cross-cut the
disciplines of law, political science, sociology, anthropology,
demography, psychology, education, economics, communication, humanities
and the arts. And yet, within academe researchers tend to communicate
only with those in the same discipline or in the same geographical
region. Thus, the June 2008 conference will provide a venue to share
data, methodologies, and theories regardless of discipline, with a focus
directly on how children fare under conditions of migration.
Additionally, we want to create cross-disciplinary synergy by bringing
together junior and senior research-active faculty internationally
committed to developing new research avenues on childhood and migration.

To frame our approach to child-centered understanding of childhood and
migration, we consider childhood to be centrally important to grasping
the effect that increased (and increasingly visible) world migration has
on social and household reproduction. As a result, the following
questions are important in guiding researchers abstracts for the
conference:

--Are children's development and maturation processes significantly
affected by migration experiences, and if so, how deleterious or
beneficial are they? Is a migration-associated childhood now something
normative, and what does that kind of childhood look like?

--How are children's rights and the notion of children as citizens
affected by transnationalism, or by movement of parents and children in
and out of various national legal systems?

--What are the emotional consequences of family separation across
migratory families, especially for children?

--What are children's perspectives on migration, how are they to be
elicited, how well can they be elicited and represented, and what can
these perspectives tell us about socialization and processes of
maturation in transnational families?

--How is migration shaping any given culture group's notions of
childhood, and how are cultural notions of childhood shaping migration?

--What are general and specific manifestations of notions of childhood
under global economic change? For example, how do remittances affect
expectations for children's scholastic achievement? How do remittances
which elevate families into higher classes affect children's social
development? How are attitudes toward child labor changing with
increased international migration?

--How do media and policy makers represent children in migration and how
do discourses about immigrant children and migrant parents affect their
lives and experiences?

--What can we do to generate better quantitative and qualitative data on
the effects that migration has on children? What are the numbers of
migrant children and how are they best defined as children in their own
rights?

The conference will run two days, Friday, June 20^th , and Saturday,
June 21^st , at Drexel University in downtown Philadelphia. Philadelphia
is accessible from Philadelphia International (PHL), Newark
International (EWR) and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. (BWI) airports.
Philadelphia is two hours from New York City and Washington D.C. by
train. Limited funding for travel and/or accomodations in Philadelphia
is available for graduate students and international scholars (please
indicate your interest with your abstract submission). We anticipate
publishing selected papers in a conference volume.

Conference includes buffet breakfasts, and a lunch and a dinner on one
day. Conference pre-registration fees will be U.S. $30.00 for tenure and
tenure-track professors and U.S. $20.00 for all others. For
pre-registration rate, please register by February 1, 2007. Registration
on site will be $40.00.

Contact Rachel Reynolds _rrr at drexel.edu_ phone 215-895-0498, or Cati Coe
_ccoe at camden.rutgers.edu_ phone 856-225-6455, for more information. 
Conference website is available at:
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~dtd28/GlobalChild/index1.htm
<http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~dtd28/GlobalChild/index1.htm>  

Rachel R. Reynolds 
Assistant Professor 
Director of Graduate Programs 
Department of Culture & Communication 
Drexel University 
3141 Chestnut Street 
Philadelphia, PA 19104 
(215) 895-0498 
rrr at drexel.edu