Source: EHESS, Deadline: 07.05.2007.

Monday 3 September 2007 / Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Call for papers

In the last decades, European countries have been involved in a restriction of migratory flows. A common practice has been to confine aliens in specific places assigned for their temporary residency. Detention centres, retention areas at the airports, reception centres for asylum seekers are a few examples among different forms of administrative confinement for assistance and/or security purposes. These places shape ambiguous control apparatuses, but at the same time, they are spaces for living, raising issues of management, everyday living conditions, disciplinary practices and day-to-day relationships between managers and residents or detainees. In Europe, places and structures of confinement are specific to each national context and administrative, socio-political and legal traditions. However, being somehow involved in the delimitation of European borders and implying several regional processes, be they formal (Schengen convention, SIS and Eurodac databases) or informal (migration flows), such apparatuses and practices also involve transnational logics, global issues and new forms of political life.

The aim of the conference is to enhance the dialogue between scholars working on these issues across Europe. It provides a context for young researchers to present their work. It seeks to encourage discussions around a set of questions concerning field practices and research agendas. What practices are implemented across Europe in order to deal with « unwanted » aliens?

Which physical, moral, symbolical frontiers are at stake? What is the « real life » of these places that are both spaces of separation and transitory places of circulation? Three topics will be privileged:

Confinement apparatuses: Institutions dealing with the administration of aliens and the management of confinement spaces. Institutional treatment, practices, discourses of different agents. What forms of political life can be developed? Conditions of existence: social life and sociability. Political forms of these spaces.

Floating populations: Confinement experiences and subjectification processes. Identity and identification issues. Tactics and strategies to weaken, resist, or subvert confinement.

Methodological matters: Spaces closed for the observer. When doing fieldwork implies to work for/with NGOs and humanitarian associations. How is the “ethnographic relationship” built? How to do research while working with an NGO or even the State?
Papers will be divided into sessions according to topics. Panels will welcome papers of 25 minutes each, followed by an open discussion introduced by a discussant.

How to apply?
An attachment (word/rtf file) comprising a 350 word abstract, title of the paper, e-mail
 ddress and institutional affiliation should be submitted before May 7, 2007 to the following addresses: carokobe@yahoo.com and cmakaremi@yahoo.fr. Participants will be notified by May 15 and at that time a draft program will be published.

The travel expenses of some paper presenters will be funded by the EHESS according to standard rates. Others might need to find additional funding. Please submit your funding request along with your proposal.