‘Migration, Affect and Political Space’: An International Political Sociology and Geography Seminar, Goldsmiths College London, 9 October 2019

Organised by Dr Martina Tazzioli (Goldsmiths College, London) and Dr Angharad Closs Stephens (Swansea University).

Against a backdrop of heightened attention to borders and those who cross them, as well as to the emotions, moods and gestures of political life, this seminar seeks to address the politics of migration and affect together. It arises from our suspicion that current practices of governance––of sorting, categorising, counting and expelling lives, need to be addressed alongside questions about the politics of knowledge and the poetics of style. This seminar will bring together debates, contributions and methodological approaches in International Political Sociology and Geography and explore different ways of addressing questions about affect (as the capacity to move and be moved, as well as ways of orienting ourselves in the world) together with migration (addressing movement, boundaries, mobilization, crossings and borders).

In mobilizing affect and migration as analytical lenses, we are interested in developing other entry points for responding to ‘populist’ times – of heightened racism, far-right nationalism, the fortification of borders and the purification of ideas about identity and citizenship: how we might respond to these urgent times beyond a language of catastrophe and without reproducing some of the sovereign terms, categories and dreams that are currently being energized? How, in taking affect and migration as opening provocations, might we uncover alternative entry points to thinking political space, collective movements and ways of writing about politics? Given the limits of returning to organize around the categories of ‘the people’, ‘class’, and ‘identity’, what other understandings of collective formations, political movements and political space might we develop?

Speakers:

Claudia Aradau, Angharad Closs Stephens, Jason Dittmer, Jef Huysmans, Debbie Lisle, Rahul Rao, Martina Tazzioli

Chairs: Brenna Bhandar; David Brenner; Sanjay Seth

Spaces are limited. To register, please follow this link:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/migration-affect-and-political-space-an-international-political-sociology-and-geography-seminar-tickets-71642186709

This event is primarily aimed at PhD candidates and early career scholars but all are welcome.

If you register then later find you are unable to attend, we kindly ask that you let us know so that we may give your place to someone else. Contact: Dr Angharad Closs Stephens (a.c.stephens@swansea.ac.uk) and Dr Martina Tazzioli (martina.tazzioli@gold.ac.uk).

This event is being funded by the Centre for Postcolonial Studies (Goldsmiths College); Political Economy Research Centre (Goldsmiths College); Doing IPS Research Hub; and the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership.