34rd Annual PGSG Preconference to the 2022 AAG Annual Meeting

The AAG Political Geography Specialty Group is pleased to announce the 34th Annual Preconference, which will be held virtually on Friday February 18th, 2022. Due to uncertainties regarding event scheduling with the local host and participant travel concerns, as well as cost and technology constraints that preclude a hybrid option, the Preconference will be held virtually this year. We hope this decision accommodates broader participation and provides certainty in the midst of changing conditions. We plan to return to an in-person Preconference in 2023 at the University of Colorado Boulder (details below).

34rd PRECONFERENCE DATE: Friday, February 18, 2022

TIME: start time 10 am EST 

PAPER PRESENTERS: Paper titles and abstracts of 250 words or less are due December 15, 2021. Please submit them with 2022 PAPER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION in the subject line to: aag.pgsg@gmail.com. Please use the template here to prepare your abstract.

REGISTRATION: Registration will take place online using the AAG’s registration software. Details on how to register will be posted soon. As with our past Preconferences, there will be a nominal $20 registration fee for tenure-track faculty. This fee will be charged online when registering and will go toward supporting the use of AAG’s conferencing software and student awards. There is no fee to register for student, post-doc, and non-TT attendees.

BREAK OUT ROOMS/“Coffee hour”: PGSG will coordinate several “break out” rooms during the Preconference. More details will follow.

PGSG ORGANIZERS: Kara E. Dempsey (dempseyke@appstate.edu) and Meredith DeBoom (DEBOOM@mailbox.sc.edu)

INQUIRIES: All inquiries should be directed to the PGSG organizers (Kara and Meredith) individually or at: aag.pgsg@gmail.com

Why a virtual Preconference on Friday, February 18, 2022:

This summer we arranged Preconference booking at a university in Manhattan. However, the host university’s reservation policies remain in flux due to Covid-19 restrictions and they are unable to officially confirm our reservations. We also secured an alternative site at the AAG conference center, but the internet and technology costs for the PGSG were cost prohibitive (for either an in-person only or hybrid event). Additionally, while international travel restrictions have recently relaxed, we are also concerned about potential new international travel bans in winter due to Covid-19.

Date: The AAG asked that the virtual Preconference not be held on our original date (2/24/22) because the AAG plans to test the software we will be using that day. The PGSG Board selected to change the date to the Friday (2/18/22) before the AAG conference to accommodate participants with care responsibilities and to minimize conflicts due to AAG travel and teaching. We recognize it will be difficult to hold a virtual Preconference on a weekday across numerous time zones, but we do hope you will join us in continuing the PGSG tradition of excellent Preconferences.

*We plan return to an in-person Preconference in 2023 at the University of Colorado Boulder on Wednesday, March 22^nd, 2023. (The 2023 AAG Conference is scheduled in Denver March 23-27, 2023.)

The Political Geography Specialty Group (PGSG) of the American Association of Geographers expresses concern over the recent erosion of academic freedom in France. We are particularly dismayed by public, personal attacks on the prominent political geographer Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary. Professor Amilhat Szary is a former board member of the PGSG and is currently the head of the Pacte Social Science Research Center at Grenoble Alpes University.

The PGSG denounces the personal attacks against Professor Amilhat Szary and stands in solidarity with all French academics who are targeted for supposed “Islamo-leftist” beliefs.

For more information on the situation in France, these resources are available:

In English:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/12/academics-french-republic-macron-islamo-leftism

https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/220321/how-islamophobia-row-erupted-french-political-sciences-school

In French:

https://www.liberation.fr/politique/islamophobie-ou-islamo-gauchisme-lindignation-a-geometrie-variable-de-frederique-vidal-20210318_DP6TUSG6RVE5ZEBXSXVYW2BS74/

https://academia.hypotheses.org/31564

Additionally, there is a petition available for concerned academics to sign, this petition has not been endorsed by the PGSG:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc46U844ETt0fBsq-6v9n1pcaVIx_U8LLMiU16VpMo5NwgU_w/

Feminist Visualization 2021: Mobility, Sovereignty, Borders 

February 26-April 9, 2021 

Feminist Visualization 2021: Mobility, Sovereignty, Borders is a series of events and a data visualization challenge that invites students, researchers, activists, and the public to build knowledge and skills in feminist visualization and to utilize those skills to create visualizations that help us see and understand the shifting geographies of sovereignty and border enforcement in new ways.  

A panel and series of skills building workshops will take place alongside a challenge that invites participates to utilize data from a National Science Foundation funded project (award #1853652 led by Jill Williams and Kate Coddington) to understand, communicate, and critically reflect upon the use of public information campaigns as a strategy of border governance.  This series of events aims to build knowledge and community among those interested in feminist approaches to data visualization and mapping, while simultaneously catalyzing the development of new visualizations.  Cash prizes will be awarded in five categories inspired by our commitment to feminist praxis.   

All events will take place via zoom between February 26 and April 1, with challenge submissions due on April 9^th.  The kick-off panel entitled “Feminist Mapping: Past, Present, Futures”, will take place on February 26 at 1pmMT/3pmEST and feature Selene Yang, Amber Bosse, LaToya Gray, and Meghan Kelly.  For more information and to register for panels/workshops and/or to participate, please visit https://femvizchallenge2021.weebly.com  Registration is required in order to gain access to zoom links and challenge-related resources.  Please email Jill at JillMWilliams@arizona.edu or kcoddington@albany.edu with questions. 

Call for abstracts: RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 31 August – 3 September 2021 London, UK

Rethinking borders in terms of absences

Panel convenors: Maarja Kaaristo (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) and Francesco Visentin (University of Udine, Italy)

Format: Papers session, in-person if possible. A decision on this will be made and communicated in April 2021.

Despite all the conceptual innovations, derived from the various turns (be it spatial, sensory, material and many others), research on space and place mostly – and unsurprisingly – focuses on what is present in a particular space at a particular time. However, not only are there absences in every presence, but also presences in every absence and considering absences therefore often means, paradoxically, having to discuss presences. Absence can be a powerful signifier, a tool for making spaces and places familiar or desirable, as well as a way of building both intangible and tangible barriers and borders. This panel seeks to address these themes by paying attention to what is absent in terms of the various materialities, spatialities, mobilities and narratives of borderscapes. We will think about presences and absences in terms of the human and non-human animal bodies and numerous materialities and their related geographical, historical, sociological and cultural contexts. As such, absences become meaningful, affective, emotional, and experiential. We will discuss the various border spaces and places in terms of the interplay of presences and absences of a variety of materialities, elements, rules, transgressive acts, narrations, representations, discourses, policies, ideas, values, policies, plans, skills, and practices.

We welcome papers including but not limited to:

–       Border as a dynamic between presence and absence of individuals and groups
–       What kind of political, social, and cultural borders can various absences and presences reveal
–       Border as a place, space, location, locale or landscape
–       Bordering practices and the tangible and intangible absences and presences
–       Absences that make, constitute or signify borders
–       The absent borders and the borders of absence

Please send an abstract of max. 250 words, with author names and affiliations and paper title to francesco.visentin@uniud.it and m.kaaristo@mmu.ac.uk by 1 March. Please don’t hesitate to email us if you have any questions.
More information about the conference can be found here: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/

References
•       Callon, M. and Law, J. (2004) Introduction: absence-presence, circulation, and encountering in complex space. Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 22(1): 3-11
•       Degnen, C. (2013). ‘Knowing’, absence, and presence: the spatial and temporal depth of relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31(3), 554-570
•       DeSilvey C., Edensor, T. (2013). Reckoning with ruins. Progress in Human Geography, 37(4), 465–485
•       Edensor, T. (2013). Vital urban materiality and its multiple absences: The building stone of central Manchester. cultural geographies, 20(4), 447-465.
•       Bille, M., Hastrup, F. & Flohr Sorensen, T. (Eds.) An anthropology of absence. Materializations of transcendence and loss. New York, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London: Springer
•       Frers, L. (2013). The matter of absence. cultural geographies, 20(4), 431-445.
•       Goulding, C., Saren, M., & Pressey, A. (2018). ‘Presence’ and ‘absence’ in themed heritage. Annals of Tourism Research, 71, 25-38.
•       Vanolo, A. (2019). Scenes from an urban outside: Personal accounts of emotions, absences and planetary urbanism. City, 23(3), 388-401.
•       Wylie, J. (2009). Landscape, absence and the geographies of love. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34(3), 275-289.

RGS-IBG annual conference, Aug. 31^st – Sept. 3^rd, 2021  

CfP for a session

Exploring borders with Zoom and Co.? The new virtuality of border research

Session organisers: Kristine Beurskens¹, Judith Miggelbrink² and Nona Renner¹

¹Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig, Germany

²Technical University Dresden, Germany

“Very unique concerns arise along tension-laden international borders and because of them, researchers find themselves increasingly navigating uncharted terrains.” (O’Leary et al 2013, p.1)

With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the field for border researchers took a whole new direction. With increasing travel restrictions, quarantine regulations and in the end, border closures, not only the object of study in many cases underwent substantial changes, but also getting to borders and moving across was mostly made impossible.

In parallel to emerging debates on the impact of COVID-19 on bordering processes, many border researchers worldwide had to deal with these changes in their current research. Personal exchanges in the field, close observations, go-alongs and all other kinds of interactive forms of researching came to a halt. Soon enough the floor went open for virtual methods. Sometimes alternatives were adopted in trying to finish what had begun in other modes, sometimes new research plans were developed altogether. But what does this do to border research as we know it?

With this session we aim to engage in a debate on research on bordering processes in pandemic times.

–          How did our border research methods change with the pandemic times?

–          How do the changed field and the pandemic situation interact with our perceptions, the creation of knowledge, the exploration of bordering processes?

–          How do we do border research, if half of the field is suddenly unreachable or complicated to explore?

–          What consequences does the shift in methods, and the related involuntary creation of combined methods approaches have, especially regarding the interpretation and analysis of data?

–          Are there also benefits in applying new/virtual approaches to borders?

–          What does the pandemic do with borderlands and its inhabitants and how does this affect our research? What new aspects of sensibility are necessary in approaching borderland inhabitants in these times?

–          In what way is our positioning as researchers of borders changing under the current situation?

For this session, we invite contributions with various perspectives and from all points of the research process – be it first considerations of alternative methods, work-in-progress or more experienced contributions on virtual border research.

Please send abstracts (max. 250 words) by Feb. 28 ^th 2021 to Kristine Beurskens (k_beurskens@leibniz-ifl.de), Judith Miggelbrink (judith.miggelbrink@tu-dresden.de) and Nona Renner (n_renner@leibniz-ifl.de) and we will get back to you until March 5^th 2021 the latest, so you will still have time to meet the general deadline on March 12^th 2021 in case we cannot accommodate your paper in our session.

The ‘New Cold War’ and the Return of Geopolitics  

Virtual presented paper session  

 Jeffrey Whyte, Politics, University of Manchester

Vera Smirnova, Geography, Kansas State University

As the ‘war on terror’ recedes from view, scholars (Bergesen & Suter 2018; Guzzini 2012) have noted an apparent ‘return of geopolitics’ in connection to the so-called ‘new Cold War’ (Osnos et al 2017). While official narratives surrounding the war on terror typically minimised its geopolitical dimensions, Russia’s recent forays into its ‘near abroad’ (Toal 2017) have by contrast reanimated overt geopolitical discourses. Meanwhile the Trump administration has left a legacy of heightened tensions with China and Iran. These developments have all been marked by renewed interest in geopolitical theory and practice, notably in the United States and Russia.

Popular accounts of the new Cold War have stressed novel innovations like cyber- and information warfare, yet these developments also draw upon and rescript ‘old’ geopolitical narratives (Toal 1996). For example, recent socially-mediated popular movements – such as the ‘colour revolutions’, Hong Kong protests, the Capitol Hill riot in Washington DC, and opposition protests across Russia – have been variously identified by political leaders as the machinations of geopolitical rivals. This has led to renewed concern over domestic subversion and the new Cold War’s internal front. While these and other geopolitical concerns may never have truly left, this session seeks papers exploring their contemporary return to popular political and foreign policy imaginations. We especially invite critical geopolitical perspective on topics including, but not limited to:

Popular and everyday geopolitics

Space and territoriality

Geopolitical theory, practice, and history

Geographic knowledge production and the Global East

Race and gender in geopolitics

Resource conflicts and the Global South

Ethno-nationalism, domestic terrorism and internal subversion

Border wars and conflicts

Civil society and protest movements

Conspiracy theory and geopolitics

Cyber and information warfare

Geopolitics of climate change

 Please email abstracts of 250 words to jeffrey.whyte@manchester.ac.uk and verasmirnova@ksu.edu by February 28.

 Works Cited  

 Bergesen, A. & Suter, C. [eds] (2018). The Return of Geopolitics. Zurich: World Society Foundation.

Guzzini, S. [ed] (2012). The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Osnos, E. et al (2017) Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War, The New Yorker, 24 February.

Toal, G. (2017). Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Toal, G. (1996). Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. University of Minnesota Press.

CFP for the RGS/IBG 2021 conference:

The Border as Speculative Infrastructure: between probabilities and possibilities

Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by 1 March 2021 to Nishat Awan: n.n.awan@tudelft.nl

In this session we are interested in exploring the different ways in which border infrastructures are produced and resisted through speculative reasoning. Shaviro notes that ‘extrapolation is grounded in probabilistic reasoning’ whereas speculation is ‘concerned with possibilities’ (2019). Yet, as Amoore has shown border control and security regimes move between these two modes so that ‘decisions are taken on the basis of future possibilities, however improbable or unlikely’ (2013) – what Shaviro calls ‘improbable possibilities’ (2019).

 The probabilistic and possibilistic modes of reasoning operate as apparatuses (Barad 2007) and are required for the production, management and apprehension of borders. In border areas, they result in particular kinds of infrastructure, such as walls, drones and heat sensors that are directly concerned with border control, or those that operate more systemically in the management of borders such as nested legal regimes and speculative development.

Topics to be explored could include but are not limited:

• the use of technologies such as remote sensing, drones, heat sensors, motion detectors etc. and the ways in which they deploy calculative and probabilistic reasoning, sifting through data and algorithmically producing ‘truths’. In contrast to these, ‘ground truths’ are often positioned in opposition, operating in proximity rather than at a distance.
• infrastructural development deployed in border areas to produce governable people and securitised places. Here speculative finance and speculative models of development come together to produce plans to be enacted in a distant future-to-come – plans that are often postponed or abandoned halfway.

• security and legal regimes that manage border flows and often operate between possibilistic and probabilistic modes of reasoning but are also considered forms of systemic arbitrariness.

We invite papers that explore these conditions and their underlying modes of reasoning, from probabilities to possibilities, including any forms of resistance, subversion or ‘living-with’ the border as speculative infrastructure.

 Amoore, Louise. The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.

Shaviro, Steve. ‘Defining Speculation: Speculative Fiction, Speculative Philosophy, and Speculative Finance’. ALIENOCENE, no. 6 (December 2019). https://alienocene.com/2019/12/23/defining-speculation/.

CFP –  RGS-IBG, Annual International Conference, London, August 31 – September 03, 2021.

Interrogating the dynamic relationship between trafficking, anti-trafficking, borders, and borderings, and their implications.

Conveners: Ayushman Bhagat (Tel Aviv University, Israel); Sallie Yea (La Trobe University, Australia).

Discussant: Nina Laurie (University of St Andrews, UK).

Format: Paper Session (in-person/virtual/hybrid – a decision about whether these in-person elements can proceed will be taken by early April 2021).

Sponsorship: Development Geography Research Group (DevGRG).

Deadline for submissions: Saturday, February 20, 2021.

 Critical (anti-) trafficking studies highlight that while most of the anti-traffickers (activists, politicians, CSR and NGO members, celebrities, consultants, and even some academics) position ‘Human Trafficking’ as a threat to the state borders, they seldom question the consequences of the strict enforcement of border control measures (Andrijasevic, 2003; Anderson, Sharma and Wright, 2011; Ham, Segrave and Pickering, 2013; O’Connell Davidson, 2015). They demand stringent border controls, restrictive immigration practices, greater migrant policing and surveillance to (a) pre-emptively protect people from human trafficking, (b) make it difficult for traffickers to move people across borders, (c) protect the state from ‘illegal immigrants’. The current pandemic lends further support to this bordering logic through the extension of discourses of security and threat.

Despite strict enforcement of border control measures, anti-traffickers still claim that ‘Human Trafficking’ is on the rise. Rather than critically scrutinising the state’s labour and immigration policies towards addressing exploitation in a variety of labour relations, they argue that traffickers are adjusting their business models to adapt to these new bordering practices and are recruiting their victims through diverse communication technologies. Whilst these concerns over the rise in trafficking during large scale events are not new (see: Montgomery, 2011; Finkel and Finkel, 2015), the rhetoric often diverts the attention from state policies that often legitimise the precarious situation of migrant workers (Sharma, 2018; Pattanaik, 2020). Hence, incorporating borders and bordering practices as an analytic to critically interrogate (anti-) trafficking could offer new insights on the (re)production of contingent forms, sites, agents and practices of exploitation, oppression and rightlessness.

 While critical engagements with borders and borderings are central to the geography, ‘human trafficking’ related concerns are increasingly reflected in the discussions over unfreedom/exploitation (Strauss and McGrath, 2017), stigma (Richardson and Laurie, 2019; Yea, 2020a), citizenship (Richardson, Poudel and Laurie, 2009), technology (Mendel and Sharapov, 2016), agency (Esson, 2020), development (McGrath and Watson, 2018) and immigration (Aradau, 2008; FitzGerald, 2016). Hence, following a call to study “Geographies of trafficking” (Laurie et al., 2015), and “Critical geographies of anti-trafficking” (Yea, 2020b) this session aims to bring together scholars to further interrogate the dynamic relationship between borders, borderings, trafficking, and anti-trafficking, and their implications. Through this, we aim to explore some of these questions:

1. How to conceptualise the dynamic relationship between trafficking, anti-trafficking, borders, and borderings in ways that advance the interest of precarious workers?
2. How do people on the move navigate their international mobility and labour projects amidst the borders and borderings produced by (anti-) trafficking discourse?
3. What insights from critical border/labour/migration/security studies are helpful to analyze the geographies of trafficking and critical geographies of anti-trafficking?
4. How do anti-trafficking, anti-migration and anti-labour policies divert attention from the state’s responsibility and employer’s accountability towards the protection of migrant workers from exploitation, and legitimise their exploitation, oppression and rightlessness?
5. Pathways to avoid ‘methodological nationalism’ and ‘methodological individualism’ in the research of (anti-) trafficking and borders.

 The aim here is to advance the call of studying “Geographies of trafficking” and “Critical geographies of anti-trafficking” through the lenses of borders and borderings. Hence, we invite contributions seeking to advance geographical perspectives on Human Trafficking; identify new conceptual, methodological, theoretical, and empirical arenas within this multi-disciplinary field of study. Please send your title, abstract (of approx. 250 words) and expressions of interest to Ayushman Bhagat <ayushmanb@mail.tau.ac.il>; and Sallie Yea  <S.Yea@latrobe.edu.au> by February 20, 2021.

ASYFAIR CONFERENCE 2021 Call for Papers: Adjudicating Refugee Claims in Practice – Advocacy and Experience at Asylum Appeals

Conference Dates: 30 June – 3 July 2021

 Location: Online (Zoom) hosted by the ASYFAIR project at the University of Exeter (UK)

Deadline for abstract submission: 26 February 2021

Immigration judges are tasked with the highly challenging job of deciding an asylum claim in an imperfect informational environment where evidence, expertise, testimonies and even the ability to reason intuitively about country of origin conditions and particular cases can be highly constrained. If this was not challenging enough, asylum appeal caseloads increased markedly across Europe in 2017 and 2018, putting strain on the capacities of Europe’s judiciary to deal with the challenges of adjudication effectively. The policy context is continuously evolving, the linguistic challenges are manifold, the political environment is often problematic, and the stakes are high in terms of the personal safety of refugees and the integrity of European countries’ claims to uphold their international obligations to people forced to migrate to find safety.

The conference will take place 30 June – 3 July 2021 and will be fully online (via Zoom).

Paper contributions are warmly invited to the virtual ASYFAIR Project Conference on the socio-legal aspects of asylum adjudication in Europe (and other nations in the Global North and South). We welcome papers on any aspect of the adjudication of asylum appeals, including from Law, Socio-Legal Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, or any other relevant field. We particularly encourage participation by experts by experience (e.g. refugees, lawyers, interpreters, judges, activists, volunteers, etc.).

Papers could focus on a range of topics on asylum appeals including (but not limited to):

Decision-making  

Communication and Narrative  

Discretion and Rule-following  

Judgecraft and Training for Asylum Appeals  

Legal and Court Procedure  

The Spatio-Temporal Environment of the Hearing and Court  

Legal Geography  

Behaviour and Emotions at Court  

Intersectionality  

Access to Justice  

Trauma, Violence and Vulnerability  

Technology in Asylum Appeal Processes  

Complexities Introduced by the COVID-19 Pandemic  

Materiality and Justice  

Evidence (including Country of Origin Information and Witness Statements)  

Legal Representation and Advice  

Language, Interpretation and Translation 

Conducting Research at Court (especially Qualitative and Ethnographic Methods)  

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words, 3-4 keywords and a short biography (100 words) to ASYFAIR at asyfair@exeter.ac.uk no later than 26 February 2021.

We will consider submissions for panels, if the panel organisers provide abstracts and details of all presenters (3-4) in the proposed panel. We will also consider pre-recorded presentations for the conference.

Please also see the conference website on https://asyfair.com/output/events/asyfair-conference-2021/.

Please do not hesitate to contact Nick Gill (n.m.gill@exeter.ac.uk) and Nicole Hoellerer (n.hoellerer@exeter.ac.uk) for any further questions.

 REFUGEES WELCOME: We welcome contributions by former and current asylum seekers who have experience with asylum appeals at courts in European countries. If you would like to participate in the conference and share your experiences and you would like to discuss doing so, please do not hesitate to contact us by emailing ASYFAIR at asyfair@exeter.ac.uk. Further information on audio/visual participation for refugees will be made available in Spring 2021.