Welcoming Migrants in the City: Interrogating Urban Policy and Civic Action (Appel à communications)

International conference
 

Welcoming Migrants in the City: Interrogating Urban Policy and Civic Action

Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, May 12th-13th, 2022

The languages of the conference will be English and French.

Proposals of approximately 500 words, as well as a short biography (5-10 lines) should be sent before January 10th 2022 to Welcomingmigrants2022@univ-tlse2.fr.
A text and, if possible, slides offering a visual outline of the presentation, should be sent by April 30th.

The organizers will offer funding for travel expenses for the junior researchers that request it.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Michel Agier (EHESS, IRD), Susan Bibler Coutin (University of California at Irvine), Thomas Lacroix (CNRS – Migrinter)

Given the global tightening of national immigration regimes, compounded by the Covid-19 sanitary crisis, the fate of migrants stranded in their trajectories or trapped in unauthorized or precarious legal status has become an increasingly urgent issue for the towns and cities that host them, whether willingly or not. The breakdown in national asylum regimes and the decline of religious practices of solidarity has left civil society and local governments to construct fragmented, palliative measures to manage critical situations (Agier 2018, Rabben 2016). Although media coverage and political discourses frequently highlight overburdened administrations and popular expressions of rejection, confrontation with migrants can also lead to tolerance, accommodation, or even embrace of foreign populations’ presence. In some cases, local actors invoke notions of hospitality, welcome, or sanctuary in their efforts to defend migrants’ rights and promote their access to services. Many examples of solidarity from civil society have emerged in order to mitigate the dysfunction of governmental action, either because institutional actors do not have sufficient competence in managing migration, or because the State is itself the source of administrative rejection. In some cases, local actors refer to the notions of sanctuary, welcome, or hospitality in their efforts to defend the rights of migrants and to promote their access to services. Other local experiments in migrant protection are undertaken without a specific rhetoric, but they nonetheless represent ideological stances based in distinct historical, institutional, and philosophical contexts. [download full text here]

Program & organizing committee:
Lionel Arnaud (Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier)
Etienne Ciapin (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès)
Laurent Faret (Université de Paris)
Annalisa Lendaro (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès)
Stephanie Lima (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès)
Samuel Malby (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès)
Hasnia-Sonia Missaoui (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès)
Hilary Sanders (Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès)

Télécharger l'appel à communications complet en français et en anglais