The conference approaches the interconnection between the production of knowledge and migration by placing a particular emphasis on the struggles that centre on peoples’ mobilities and their ‘correct’ quantification, categorization and interpretation. The conference proposes to apply the notion of moral economies in order to make these conflicts intelligible.
Date: 02.-04.12.2020
Time: TBA
Event title: The Moral Economies of Knowledge Production on Migration: Conflicts, Values, Positionalities
Event type: Konferenz, Call for Papers
Organiser category: Other
Organiser: Research Group “The Production of Knowledge on Migration”, Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), University of Osnabrueck, Germany in cooperation with IMISCOE’s Standing Committee “Reflexive Migration Studies”.
Location:: University of Osnabrück, Germany
In current research about migration, there is a growing interest in the ways in which knowledge shapes migration and the experiences and apparatuses connected to it. Researchers, thus, draw attention to the categories, technologies, and data that inform border and migration policies (and vice versa). They point to the ways in which different mobilities come to be categorized, ordered and made legible to the state. They explore how the production of mobile subjects such as “the expat” or “the illegal migrant” is interconnected with specific imaginations of nations, societies or empires. Or they guide the view to the structures and assumptions that shape the politics of expertise in migration studies and related fields. Our conference approaches the interconnection between the production of knowledge and migration by placing a particular emphasis on the struggles that centre on peoples’ mobilities and their ‘correct’ quantification, categorization and interpretation. In order to make these conflicts intelligible, we propose to apply the notion of moral economies as it has been discussed in different disciplines recently.
Using the notion of moral economies, we aim to systematically reflect the moral positions that guide the production of knowledge on migration as well as the different political and societal contexts in which this production takes place. A moral economies perspective takes different positionalities, value systems, and worldviews into consideration when making sense of conflicts in, between and across various fields and groups, be they humanitarian actors, academic researchers, migrants, activists or political experts. We use the term moral economies as shorthand for a perspective that considers both the socioeconomic situatedness of actors and their value systems. When the British historian E.P. Thompson first developed the concept based on the protests against rising food prices in 18th century Britain, he was interested in the values that guided these (mostly rural) struggles. Thompson argued that the protests were not mere “rebellions of the belly” but that they were caused by a clash between traditional local notions of justice and a new capitalist logic.
We invite papers from a range of disciplines that investigate the following topics:
Delineating the Field: (Co-)Producers and Production Sites
Spatializing the Knowledge on Migration: Geographies and Imagined Geographies
Ordering Migration: Categorizations and (E)valuations
Navigating the Academic and Political Landscape: Of Truths and Values
Submissions should include a paper title, an abstract of up to 500 words, and a short biographical note. Please submit proposals by the 15th of March 2020 to Matthias Land (matland@uni-osnabrueck.de).
