Module 3: Mobility/Migration

Bern, April 25/26, 2008

Organizer: Prof. Hans-Rudolf Wicker, UniBe

This module will deal with social mobility and migration, two topics of increasing importance both to social anthropology and to other disciplines due to a rapidly modernizing world that is tending towards the expansion and intensification of transnational fields.

While early research mainly dealt with the "wherefore" of mobility and migration and the search for their causes, contemporary research increasingly focuses on the "who" and "how" of these two topics: which groups are mobile in national and transnational fields, and what resources do they generate in order to realize opportunities for mobility? Due to the fact that today we perceive mobility as being influenced by both the "subjective" and the "societal", researchers attentions have been directed not only at mobile individuals but also at the way in which societies direct (either through braking or accelerating) and control mobility through national regulations and, furthermore, at the collective interests hidden within states respective migration policies.

By necessity, mobility and migration research is committed to a point of view of perspective because it is important to realize that neither mobility-seeking individuals nor states of origin or host states articulate their own attitudes in an "objective" way and, thus, represent diverging interests and positions.
It follows, then, that this research must address such tensions as derived from this divergence.

Participants are encouraged not to allow themselves to be impeded in their choice of topics for papers by the broad spectrum that mobility and migration research presents us with. Contributions are very welcome that are based on own research conducted in the First, Second, or Third World and that focuses, in a broad sense, on aspects of mobility and migration.

Invited Guests:
Prof. Dr. Janine Dahinden, Université Neuchâtel
Prof. Dr. Nicholas de Genova, Columbia University, University of Warwick

Suggested reading:
Dahinden, Janine (2005): Prishtina – Schlieren. Albanische Migrationsnetzwerke im transnationalen Raum. Zürich, Seismo
De Genova, Nicholas (2002): Migrant "illegality" and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419–447.
Han, Petrus (2000): Soziologie der Migration. Stuttgart: Lucius &Lucius.
Joppke, Christian & Ewa Morawska (eds.) (2003): Toward Assimilation and Citizenship. Immigrants in liberal Nation-States. Houndmills: Palgrave/MacMillan
Stalker, Peter (1994): The Work of Strangers. A Survey of international Labour Migration. Geneva, IOM.
Wicker, Hans-Rudolf (2003): Migration, Migrationspolitik und Migrationsforschung. In Wicker et al. (eds): Migration und die Schweiz, S. 12–62. Zürich: Seismo.
Wicker, Hans-Rudolf (2004): Foreigner’s policy, differentiated citizenship rights, and naturalisation. In Tsantsa 9: 6–17.