— CALL FOR PAPERS —
American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, New Orleans
April 10-14, 2018
Session title:
Migration management and border securitization: intergovernmental organizations and the governance of cross-border migrants
Organizers:
Josh Watkins, Texas A&M
Kira Williams, Wilfrid Laurier University
Abstract:
Geographers have produced an extensive, and growing, literature exploring the rise and administration of border securitization and externalization. This literature shows how individual nation-states, supranational organizations, and multilateral organizations have sought to deter undesired migrants and asylum seekers. Relatedly, an interdisciplinary literature has emerged, organized around the phrase “migration management”, to analyze how intergovernmental organizations like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have sought to govern international migration through both discourse and material practice. Too often studies fail to consider the intersectionality of these literatures. This session therefore aims to better understand the intersection between global migration management and border securitization, particularly the role and agency of intergovernmental organizations (IGO). An IGO is an organization composed primarily of sovereign states or other IGOs and usually have an establishing document, such as a treaty. Examples could include UN organizations, the European Union, or Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for example.
The session seeks to explore and explain the logics, projects, means, and outcomes of intergovernmental organizations’ governance of migration and borders.
Papers may focus on:
Migration management and border securitization;
Intergovernmental organizations involved in migration management and border securitization and their discourses or material practices;
The governmentality and/or global governance of migration and forced migration;
Documented or undocumented migrants;
Refugees, internally displaced peoples, or asylum seekers;
Any border, waterway, or world region;
Discursive and/or non-discursive mechanisms of power and governance;
Theoretical models and explanations, empirical studies, or combinations of both.
This session is sponsored by the Cultural Geography, Legal Geography, Political Geography, and Population Geography Specialty Groups.
Please send your proposed title and abstract of no more than 200 words to jrwatkins@tamu.edu by Sunday 15 October 2017. We will finalize decisions by Thursday 19 October 2017.