12/05/2021 – Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies: Lessons from Borderlands

The Seminar Series on Forced Migration which will be given by Prof. Nergis Canefe (York University), titled “Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies: Lessons from Borderlands”. The event is scheduled for Wednesday, May 12, 2021 starting at 5pm CET (Vienna time)/11am CST (Toronto time) and will be held online. Everyone is welcome and please find the registration here.

The Seminar Series on Forced Migration is part of Europe-Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (CRG); and is hosted at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna.

The Seminar Series brings speakers from different disciplines to discuss topics ranging from changing regimes and forms of governance of migrants/refugees; the solidarity networks and demands for social justice as entangled with increasing inequalities, austerity politics, and racism; the institutional components regulating and managing different forms of displacement; incorporation and exclusion of refugees and migrants from labor markets and protection regimes along the lines of gender, race, religion, and work.

Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies: Lessons from Borderlands

This paper is an exploration of forced migration studies seen from the lens of de-colonial theory and invites us to consider shifting the geographies of reason habitually marking the field.  Starting with a foundational critique of moralism and privilege marking canonized understandings of migration, precarity, displacement and dispossession, it will unpack the complexity of an existential political commitment to redefining forced migration not from the core/recipient states and societies but from borderlands. This work will thus contribute to a long and rich—yet also troubled and deeply contested—conversation between postcolonial studies and forced migration studies.