RC15 - Political and Cultural Geography

On October, the International Workshop happened in Belgrade University, at the Security Studies faculty. 

Amazing papers, warmest local organization, a visit to the Serbian Parliament...a really international event and a great conviviality with our colleagues of RC41. 

Looking forward to the Seventh!

Please see our magnific agenda 

Key dates 20 MAY 2019: Call for Panels Opens 10 JUL 2019: Open Panel Proposal Submission Deadline 07 AUG 2019: Call for Papers Opens 10 OCT 2019: Proposal Submission Deadline: Papers and Closed Panels

The RC15 and the Research Group Space and Power (University Complutense of Madrid) organizes this workshop in Puebla (México). All welcome!

Register on Eventbrite: https://www...

Freedom of Movement: Exploring a Path from Armed Conflict, Persecution, and Forced Migration to Conflict Resolution, Human Rights, and Development

9^th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS)

Hosted by

the Conflict Resolution Studies Department of Menno Simons College, a College of the Canadian Mennonite University located at the University of Winnipeg

in

Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA

Home of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

12–14 May 2016

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state; and, (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his or her own, and to return to his or her country. Unfortunately, people in situations of persecution, armed conflict, and displacement are prevented from exercising their right to freedom of movement. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates in the 2014 Global Trends Report that war, conflict, and persecution have displaced some 60 million people worldwide, resulting in the highest level since records have been kept. Of these people, 20 million are displaced across borders, with more than half of this refugee population comprised of children. Since its inception in 2011, the Syrian crisis has produced a total of 11 million internally displaced people and refugees. New waves of “boat people,” displaced by violence, are crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and entire oceans to seek asylum, safety, and freedom. Many perish on their dangerous journeys, and others who arrive at their destinations are refused entry or detained.

Much of the responsibility falls on the world’s developing countries, who host nine out of ten refugees. Neighbouring countries, governments, and humanitarian organizations struggle to deal with the social, economic, and political ramifications of these situations. The minority who are resettled face numerous integration issues.

The 2016 CARFMS Annual Conference will gather a diverse group of stakeholders such as academics, researchers, students, government officials, lawyers and lawmakers, community organizations, and practitioners (including from non-governmental organizations) to discuss the question: What strategies can host states, origin states, the international community, private citizens, and civil society undertake to fulfill their collective responsibility to address these escalating global forced migration crises? From interdisciplinary perspectives and diverse regional backgrounds, we invite participants to explore, examine, and recommend theories, policies, and practical responses to the theme of freedom of movement in the context of:

• Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding;
• Human Rights;
• Development; and,
• Methodology and Knowledge Production.

We welcome proposals for individual papers, organized panels and roundtables, film screenings, video documentaries and news media clippings, or poster/photo exhibits around these broad sub-themes. 

1.        Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding

Conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding have the potential to engage people across grassroots to top-level leadership in working towards peaceful relationships and communities. This sub-theme explores and analyzes the interests, motivations, and practices of conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding in addressing social justice and positive peace for refugees and other migrants. How do we commit to conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding practices that address the right to seek asylum in situations of war, armed conflict and persecution? How do structural factors and other root causes (systemic or institutionalized discrimination, cultural imperialism, power-based systems) impact migration and resettlement? How do governments, NGOs, and other actors participate in the different roles, structures, and processes that support or impede freedom of movement? What role can refugees and diaspora communities play in conflict resolution activities that will contribute to post-conflict development, security, and transitional justice? Can freedom of movement and the right to asylum be strategies for conflict transformation? 

2.        Human Rights

Freedom of movement and asylum are fundamental human rights. This sub-theme explores both the actualization and denial of these rights. How are various human rights instruments used to facilitate movement? Who are the actors (individuals, organizations, communities, and governments) who enable movement? What legal and regulatory frameworks can and have been implemented to respect the right to freedom of movement? What restrictions (legal, judicial, administrative or otherwise) serve to prohibit, complicate, or reduce movement and asylum? How does freedom of movement interact with other human rights? Where is the intersection between the human right of freedom of movement and the refugee’s right to non-refoulement? 

3.        Development

Improving the livelihoods of people migrating due to war, armed conflict, and persecution is imperative. This sub-theme invites contributions that examine innovative strategies for improved livelihoods through economic, social, environmental, and political change in situations of war, armed conflict and persecution. Creating safe and sustainable environments, meeting human needs, and addressing social justice issues are keys to freedom of movement. In situations of short- and long-term displacement, what strategies ensure the timely provision of sufficient, nutritional, and culturally-appropriate food? In protracted displacements, what key strategies enhance skills and develop vocations and small businesses to provide opportunities for young people, increase family income, and build resilience? Considering that the vast majority of migrants are women and children, how do gender considerations inform development planning and implementation? What practices result in meaningful engagement in the decision-making processes that impact the lives of refugees and forced migrants while ensuring peaceful co-existence with host communities? 

4.        Methodology and Knowledge Production

Research in the contexts of migration, war, armed conflict, extreme violence, and serious human rights violations, and development poses particular epistemological, methodological, and ethical questions. This sub-theme explores how knowledge is created, under what structural constraints, and for what purposes. How can non-academics, including forced migrants themselves, overcome structural and epistemological barriers to contributing to research and scholarship? What are the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary research in this area? To what extent do standard research methods need to be adapted to the particular political and practical contexts of war, armed conflict, development, and migration? Is there a need for greater cross-pollination of ideas across conflict studies, development studies, and migration studies? What are the particular ethical challenges of research with forced migrants, and how can these be addressed?

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

Individuals wishing to present a paper, organized panels and roundtables, film and video documentaries and news media clippings/exhibits, or poster/photo exhibits must submit a 250-word abstract and 100-word biography.

Organized panel proposals or roundtables must include a general title, a 250-word abstract and a title of each paper, as well as 100-word biography of each presenter forming the panel or roundtable.

Please submit your abstract directly online: http://tinyurl.com/ox6oeo2 by September 1, 2015. Earlier submissions are welcome.

We invite filmmakers or producers to submit video documentaries as well as those who wish to present materials in support of their organizations and/or causes, that are directly related to refugees and other forced migrants, to request space on our conference display tables. Please submit a brief outline of your organization and what materials you wish to have included on your display table and whether you will have someone available to answer conference participants’ questions regarding your organization and/or your cause and/or campaign.

More information about the conference can be found on the CARFMS/ACERMF website:http://carfms.org/conferences/9th-annual-conference/. Please keep checking back for updates.

For more information, please contact:

Michele Millard
Centre for Refugee Studies
CARFMS Secretariat
Tel: 416-736-2100 ext. 30391
Email: mmillard@yorku.ca
www.yorku.ca/crs
www.refugeeresearch.net

21-25 Beijing, China.

The call for session proposals for the 33rd International Geographic Congress (IGC) in Beijing 2016 is now open.

Unlike IGU regional conferences, this is a MAIN IGU congress held every four years. For more details of the IGC, please look at: http://igc2016.csp.escience.cn/dct/page/70032

Due to its significance as a main congress, your active participation would be highly encouraged. Although currently working hard to collect papers for the 2015 IGU Moscow Regional Conference, the IGU Commission on Political Geography (CPG) needs YOUR SUPPORT for the organization of sessions on political geographic subjects to be discussed in BEIJING 2016.

The deadline for session proposal is APRIL 15TH. This is much earlier than those for regional conferences, but in order to have substantial (i.e. not nominal) sessions for CPG, we need to start to prepare NOW. Your understanding and support for this great event would be greatly appreciated.

If interested, you can submit a session proposal form (see the attached) directly to the Local Organizing Committee or with the sponsorship of an IGU Commission. For IGU-CPG, please contact the co-chairs:

Takashi Yamazaki at yamataka@lit.osaka-cu.ac.jp and/or Virginie Mamadouh at v.d.mamadouh@uva.nl

If you have any questions, please contact us. Thank you very much and hope to see you in Beijing.

Best regards, Takashi Yamazaki Virginie Mamadouh

See attached document for more information.

Event: EUGEO 2015 - Convergences and Divergencies of Geography in Europe
Date: 30th August - 2nd September
Venue: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Session: New and emerging electoral geographies: methods, patterns, movements

Session organizers:
Martin Šimon, Institute of Sociology, CAS

Balázs Szabó, Geographical Institute, RCAES HAS

The party-structure of European countries has changed significantly for the last decades. New cleavages have emerged both in the Western democracies and post-socialist countries. The processes of globalisation, the new waves of immigration, and the economic crisis have had strong effects on the election results in the western part of Europe. The Eastern European party-structure, which originally developed in the early 1990s after the change of regime, has been modified since then due to the new cleavages caused by the EU enlargement and the economic reforms. These changes created a flux of changes in electoral landscape in Europe and thus provides a rich material to be analysed.

For the session of electoral geography we kindly invite researchers dealing with: A) analyses of spatial differences in election results in different countries, regions or cities, and participants of comparative studies of different territorial levels; B) analysis of the impact that the new social movements and the rapid development of communication technologies (the new media) make on the election results; C) spatial features of electoral base of new political parties like populist, pirate, Eurosceptic, anti-globalist parties. The aim of the session is to provide a state-of-art report of a new and emerging research in electoral geography and related fields in Europe, therefore papers dealing with multi-country perspective are encouraged to participate.

We welcome papers that address the issues outlined above.

If interested please visit http://eugeo2015.com/registration for details, registration and abstract submission (max. 250 word)!

Abstract submission deadline is 31st January 2015.

In case of any question, please don’t hesitate to contact Balázs Szabó (szabo.balazs@csfk.mta.hu)

MIDAS – Museum Interdisciplinary Studies is launching a call for papers for issue 6 for publication in Autumn 2015. This issue will include a thematic dossier under the theme “Museums, Discourse and Power” with Paulo Simões Rodrigues (University of Évora), and Laurajane Smith (Australian National University) as guest editors.

All accepted articles will undergo a double peer-review. Articles should not exceed 6 000 words (without bibliography) or ca. 40 000 characters (with spaces). It must follow the classical structure of an academic paper. Articles should include abstract, keywords and the biography of the author(s). More information at: http://midas.revues.org/390?lang=en

Deadline: March 31st, 2015.
Send your text to: revistamidas@gmail.com

Museums, Discourse and Power

Throughout their History, museums have established discourses about the cultural significance of their collections through the selection, reception, classification, cataloguing, and exhibition of objects. These discourses were - and still are - determinant for the creation of collective memories as well as for establishing the ways in which societies deal with the past in the present. They also contribute actively to shape social, moral, political and ideological values. By doing so, museums were and are not only institutions of power but also instruments of power. With the theme “Museums, Discourse and Power”, we intend to gather and publish a group of articles about the relation between Museums and Power, and about the relevance of that relation in the past as well as for contemporary societies.
Themes Priority will be given to articles, which approach the theme according to the following topics:

• Museums and Globalization;

• Museums and Post-Colonialism;

• Museums and National Identities;

• Museums and Immigrations, Emigrations and Migrations;

• Museums and Cultural and Heritage Politics;

• Museums and Propaganda;

• Museums and Education;

• Museums and their Communities;

• Museums from the Point of View of their Users (includes visitor studies, community, critiques, etc.);

• Museums, Art and Historiography;

• Museums, Art and Gender;

• Museums and Patronage;

• Museums and Communication;

• Museums and Technology.

CFP for the Panel New and emerging electoral geographies: methods, patterns, movements
In EUROREG 2015

Proposed by: Martin Šimon (martin.simon@soc.cas.cz) and Balázs Szabó.

The party-structure of European countries has changed significantly for the last decades. New cleavages have emerged both in the Western democracies and post-socialist countries. The processes of globalisation, the new waves of immigration, and the economic crisis have had strong effects on the election results in the western part of Europe. The Eastern European party-structure, which originally developed in the early 1990s after the change of regime, has been modified since then due to the new cleavages caused by the EU enlargement and the economic reforms. These changes created a flux of changes in electoral landscape in Europe and thus provides a rich material to be analysed.

For the session of electoral geography we kindly invite researchers dealing with:
A) analyses of spatial differences in election results in different countries, regions or cities, and participants of comparative studies of different territorial levels;
B) analysis of the impact that the new social movements and the rapid development of communication technologies (the new media) make on the election results;
C) spatial features of electoral base of new political parties like populist, pirate, Eurosceptic, anti-globalist parties. The aim of the session is to provide a state-of-art report of a new and emerging research in electoral geography and related fields in Europe, therefore papers dealing with multi-country perspective are encouraged to participate.

Other sessions are listed in this page. Note that the deadline to submit abstracts is Jan 31, 2015.