Conference Programme (PDF, 1019KB) - Trinity College Dublin

plenary and keynote sessions
wednesday 30 june 16:30-18:00 OPENING PLENARY SESSION
Anna Triandafyllidou, European University Institute, Italy Synge, Level 2
What is new in ‘new’ migrations? And how can we distinguish between ‘old’ and ‘new’ migrations? Anna
proposes to distinguish between four periods in the last 60 years of European migration: the immediate post-
World War II phase until 1974: the time of labour migrations across Europe; the reduced migration period
between 1974 and 1989 – the period of family reunification and family formation; the post-1989 period – the
‘re-connection’ of Europe; and the post-2004 period – the united Europe, globalization and securitization
period. The presentation discusses the features that define each of these periods and explain their
continuities and differences in relation to the overall geopolitical and economic context. In the second part
of the lecture, Anna will also consider seven different migration pathways, notably labour migrations; family
reunification/formation; co-ethnic (settler)migration; circular, temporary and seasonal migration (including
intra-EU mobility); irregular migration; and asylum. She will examine how each pathway has changed across
the four phases and in particular how it has been shaped and by which factors during the last years (the 4th
and newest phase in European migrations). The presentation will conclude with highlighting the conceptual
and policy-related issues arising in this new phase of migration in Europe and points to the need for forwardlooking
research and policy.
thursday 1 july 09:30-11:00 SPECIAL KEYNOTE SESSIONS
“Longing and Belonging—Migrant Women’s Activism” Emmet, Level 2
Umut Erel, The Open University, UK
Migrant women are laying claim to citizenship practices. Though marginalized from the nation as legal or
cultural outsiders, they create new meanings of belonging. Through the life-stories of migrant women in
Britain and Germany, the presentation explores how these emerging subjects create new, counter-hegemonic
citizenship practices across boundaries of class, gender, ethnicity and nation. Just consider the following
examples: Birgul, a Turkish medical doctor in Germany successfully takes legal action to be allowed to open
a surgery. She argues that the law foresees provision of medical services to the ‘population’ that is inclusive
of Turkish-speaking women, rather than the nationally bounded citizens. Pinar, a single mother carefully
builds a cross-ethnic family of choice. While she wants her daughter to learn the Turkish language and
cultural practices, cultural pluralism is the core value she wants to transmit to her daughter. Selin challenges
community leaders’ lack of democratic accountability. She incisively critiques that the British multicultural
system’s reliance on community organizations reproduces intra-community power relations of gender, class
and ethnicity. These women’s lives, both through their actions and as life-stories, help us to understand and
theorise the active dimension of migrant women’s citizenship in terms of their social and political activism.
Umut’s paper explores this through the lens of a politics of belonging, emphasising that belonging is actively
negotiated. For many of the migrant women in her research, their social activism is an important instantiation
of claiming belonging, because or despite not being recognized as legitimate participants shaping the
societies they live in.
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