“Getting Stuck… Moving On…”
Migration is a process that often entails moments, situations or places in which people can feel ‘stuck’ or ‘suspended’ in their lives. These vary temporally and spatially.
Feelings of discontent, fears of insecurity, or a sense of haplessness or hopelessness can prompt people to move within or across borders, often at great financial and psychological costs. When in the destination country, migrants can feel ‘trapped’, including working and/or getting trapped in low-paid and low-skilled jobs, or when experiencing various forms of exclusion and discrimination that inhibit their mobility and life chances. At the same time, migration is almost always about ‘moving on’. Whatever the degree of hardship, migrants often exercise a considerable amount of agency in order to deal with and ‘move on’ from challenging situations that they may find themselves in their lives. This may involve coming back, migrating further, changing employment, studying, or employing other strategies and tactics to defy the existing circumstances.
The 2019 Migration and Mobilities Research Network Annual Conference will explore these twin themes of ‘getting stuck’ and ‘moving on’. Drawing on a diverse range of research and case studies, the Conference will examine the interrelations of structure and agency, space and time in both the ‘traditional’ forms and sites of confinement (e.g., ghettos, camps, places of detention, prisons and other places of exception), and more broadly within conceived social, political and economic contexts, which enable and sustain the processes of being ‘stuck’, the states of ‘stuckness’, and the acts of ‘moving on’ as part of everyday life mobility.
When: 9 and 10 May
Where: Craiglockhart Campus
Cost: Free but requires registration
To book your slot at the event, click here.
A detailed programme for this event, including speakers and timings, can be found here.