[URBANTH-L]ANN: Migration Matters Conference (Leiden, Netherlands)

[Angela Jancius]

Conference Announcement

The program of 6th MESEA Conference "Migration Matters" Leiden, The
Netherlands, June 25-28, 2008 has been posted on the MESEA website:
www.mesea.org . The program contains more than 250 papers and four
plenary lectures.

Conference Abstract
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 extralegal 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)

At Leiden University a lot of research is done on migration. For an
overview of researchers and their work see: http://
www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/migration/