CFP AAG 2016: Transnationalizing Migration Management?

CFP AAG 2016: Transnationalizing Migration Management?   

AAG annual meeting, San Francisco, March 29 – April 2, 2016

Organizers

Malene H. Jacobsen and Leif Johnson (University of Kentucky)

Session Overview

Although international migration by its very nature involves flows across territorial borders, the geographical imagination of migration management remains thoroughly embedded within the nation-state. Building on the recent work of Mountz & Loyd (2014) and Collyer & King (2015), this session asks the question of what it means to theorize migration management through a transnational lens. This session is aimed broadly at scholars interested in spaces of bordering and migration management practices in the context of cross border governance. We invite submissions that explore the spatial aspects of migration management across different scales.

The session seeks to engage in the following questions but is also open to others: How do national/transnational understandings of migration management differ and/or converge? How is the concept of transnationalism related to other concepts in migration studies like the international, (im)mobility, flows, networks, globalization, extraterritoriality, offshoring, assemblage, etc.? To what extent is the transnationalization of migration management a historically novel trend/phenomenon? How is the phenomenon related to changes within the nation-state itself or other forces (market pressures, neoliberalization, etc.)? How can transnational migration management practices/strategies be studied empirically and unpacked conceptually? What kinds of political possibilities does the transnationalization of migration management enable or foreclose?

Possible empirical topics might include:

  • The spatiality of borders and migration management
  • Geographies of the institutions and agencies engaged in transnational migration management
  • The roles of international agencies and humanitarian organizations in controlling/facilitating mobility
  • Cross-border policing and policies
  • Bi- and multilateral agreements between countries
  • Socioeconomic development in border regions
  • The role of development aid in migration management
  • Migration management as an area of expertise, intervention, and specialist domain of knowledge, logics, personnel, methods, and politics
  • The humanitarian-migration management nexus
  • Managerial practices such as refugee resettlement, deterrence, confinement, deportation, and ‘voluntary’ return

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to Malene H. Jacobsen (malene.jacobsen@uky.edu) and Leif Johnson (leif.johnson@uky.edu) by Monday, October 19th, 2015. Selected abstracts will be accepted by October 21st. All participants must provide AAG PINs by October 28th.