DIIS seminar: Fejring af bogen “Nations Unbound”

TID: Fredag den 24. oktober kl. 14-17

STED: DIIS, Danish Institute for International Studies, Main auditorium, Gl. Kalkbrænderi Vej 51A, 2100 København Ø.

TILMELDING: Participation is free of charge, but registration is required. Please use the online registrationform no later than Thursday, 23 October 2014 at 12.00 noon.

Celebrating ‘Nations Unbound’: The Transnational Paradigm in Current Migration Research

In the pioneering 1994 publication “Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Dilemmas and the Deterritorialized Nation-State”, Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc argued in favor of a transnational paradigm for the study of migration.

The book provided a global perspective on migration that highlighted that international migrants confront structures of unequal power and discrimination by living their lives across state borders.

The familial, economic, political and social networks migrants are able to cross enable a simultaneous settlement in a new land while remaining connected to family and other relations left behind. The notion of transnational migration challenged conventional thinking around migration, nationalism, citizenship, gender and class, and had a huge impact on international migration research.

Since then there has been a rapid growth in multi-disciplinary scholarship concerned with transnational relations of different kinds, and various agencies including the World Bank and non-governmental organizations have begun to celebrate transnational migrants as heroes of development.

This celebratory tone nevertheless largely neglects to address the global perspective on unequal power offered by the initial paradigm.

This public seminar aims to assess the usefulness, limitations, and challenges of the initial transnational migration paradigm in the current historical conjuncture.

Special attention is paid to the new condition of toughened migration and border control regimes, new forms of precarity and restrictions on the right to settle, as well as the emergence of new directionalities (routes and destinations) of international migration.

During the seminar presentations are given by two of the US-based authors followed by comments from three EU-based migration scholars.

Speakers:

• Ninna Glick Schiller, Emerita, University of Manchester
• Linda Basch, Harvard University Advanced Leadership Fellow, President Emerita, National Council for Research on Women/Gender
• Thomas Faist, Professor, Universität Bielefeld
• Maja Povrzanovic Frykman, Professor, Malmö University
• Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, Senior Researcher, DIIS

The seminar will be in English and live streamed on www.diis.dk

Further information