CGT News

Reconceptualizing Migration: Economies, Societies, Bio-Politics

CGT conference April 2009

Migration is one of the most controversial and consequential aspects of the current era of globalization. While the mobility of goods and capital has been promoted, the movement of human beings across borders is looked upon with concern and even hostility. Nation states, confronting the exigencies of an interconnected and unstable world, resort to a bewildering array of strategies to manage their populations and citizenry both domestically and abroad. Migrant flows and patterns change as people react to and shape the economic and social dynamics that they face. Local communities create new governance structures that are often at odds with those of their nation-state. Reconceptualizing Migration: Economies, Societies, and Bio-politics will provide an opportunity to explore such processes and their implications.

The increased mobility of capital, goods, and people in an interdependent world means that economic crises exert a destabilizing force. Increasingly common economic and financial crises have spawned sudden and large international movements of people, or what may be termed "shock migration." Structural changes do not simply facilitate and precipitate international flows of people. Internal migration, such as the dramatic movements experienced in China, also are produced. In addition to discussing the empirical manifestations of these economic changes on migration, their societal, governance, and ethical implications will also be explored. Complicating the governance of these migrations is the fracturing of the territorial border of the nation-state; new governance regimes for the control of immigration flows emerge at the global and subnational scale. The national border becomes only one type of socio-spatial institution for regulating migrants. Along with this multiscalar governance, the immigrant herself becomes a point for controlling migration. A new bio-politics emerges for the governance of the migrant's bio-power and her body. In exploring these diverse subjects, Reconceptualizing Migration will provide a forum for reflecting on the empirical manifestations, governance issues, and ethical implications of global migration in an increasingly fragile world.

RECONCEPTUALIZING MIGRATION: ECONOMIES, SPACES, AND BIOPOLITICS

Thursday, April 2 - Friday, April 3
JG 106
Columbia University

Thursday, April 2nd

1:00 - 1:30 pm
Conference welcome and introductory remarks
Conference Organizers

1:30 - 3:30 pm
Panel 1: Migration Patterns, Causes, and Consequences in a Fragile World
Chair and Discussant, Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology and Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University

David Jacobson, Professor, School of Global Studies, Arizona State University

Nicholas Van Hear, COMPAS, Oxford University

José Antonio Ocampo, Professor of Professional Practice, SIPA, Columbia University

4:00 - 6:00 pm
Panel 2: Immigrants and the Rescaling of Governance during Times of Economic and Political Crises
Discussant, Monica Varsanyi, Associate Professor, Government, John Jay College

Stephanie Buechler, Research Associate, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona

Ayse Caglar, Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University

Christina Gabriel, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Carleton University

Demetrios Papademetriou, President and Board Member, Migration Policy Institute

Friday, April 3rd

9:00 am
Morning coffee/ breakfast

9:30 am - 12:00 pm
Panel 3: Internal Migration: Economic, Social, and Political Aspects of the Chinese Case
Chair, Katharina Pistor, Professor, Columbia Law School

Discussant, Carl Riskin, Professor, Department of Economics, Queens College of the City University of New York and Senior Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Athar Hussain, Professor and Director of Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics

C. Cindy Fan, Professor, Department of Geography, U.C.L.A.

Feng Wang, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

Yao Lu, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm Lunch break

1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Panel 4: Bio-politics and Migration: Global and National Management of Migrant Labor
Chair, Anush Kapadia, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University

Svati P. Shah, Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Women's Studies, Duke University

Ahmed Kanna, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Urban and Global Studies, Trinity College

Sandro Mezzadra, Associate Professor at the Department of Politics, Institutions and History of the University of Bologna

4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Panel 5: Bio-politics and Migration: Security
Chair, Ayça Çubukçu, Post-doctoral fellow, Committee on Global Thought

Didier Bigo, Professor of International Relations, Sciences-Po, Paris

Nicholas De Genova, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Latino Studies, Columbia University

Michael Willenbuecher, translator, anthropologist, performer, and activist with the anti-racist network Kanak Attak, Berlin

For panelist bios, see http://cgt.columbia.edu/about/news/2009/03/10/reconceptualizing_migration_panelist_bios/

This event is free and open to the public, though registration is strongly encouraged. See links below:

Migration Patterns, Causes, and Consequences in a Fragile World
https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=31196&REGISTER_SESSION_NAME=6eb8fca3c08e66fbcf6ec5958ed76332&state=init&

Immigrants and the Rescaling of Governance during Times of Economic and Political Crises
https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=31197&REGISTER_SESSION_NAME=02a068b7858e6649ffb92e9cc4d8c4b5&state=init&

Internal Migration: Economic, Social, and Political Aspects of the Chinese Case
https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=31198&REGISTER_SESSION_NAME=fa58c9a008eea6662055538168dcb482&state=init&

Bio-politics and Migration: Global and National Management of Migrant Labor
https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=31200&REGISTER_SESSION_NAME=64e062eef2353cb54a0d212100cd7449&state=init&

Bio-politics and Migration: Security
https://calendar.columbia.edu/sundial/webapi/register.php?eventID=31200&REGISTER_SESSION_NAME=64e062eef2353cb54a0d212100cd7449&state=init&