Each March, the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs hosts its signature international and interdisciplinary conference, which examines a pressing global issue.  Our multi-day program brings scholars and practitioners from around the world to Vermont for intense discussion with Middlebury faculty and students, while it also uses videoconferencing to enable in-language discussion of the conference theme between Middlebury students in Vermont and students at our schools abroad.

Seventh Annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference

“Migration, Displacement, and Belonging: Challenging the Paradigms”

March 7-9, 2019

Call for Papers

This conference explores how migratory flows construct, reshape, and challenge the way individuals think about themselves and the communities to which they belong. When people experience insecurity or lack opportunities where they live, they search for a better life. Political, economic, or environmental hardships due to war, persecution, hostile environments, or poverty lead many to cross geographical and social boundaries, often at risk to their lives. Yet, whether migration is forced or voluntary, the journey to a new destination can be fraught with danger or new insecurities.

The complicated dynamics of migration critically highlights the fluidity of boundaries. Instead of privileging the nation state as the key site of identity formation, we ask, how does belonging to multiple worlds and localities influence how individuals conceive of themselves and the communities to which they belong? How do stories of displacement and belonging affect an individual’s ability and desire to integrate into their host societies? What does home mean to individuals and communities with deep and complicated migratory histories?

We invite papers from any discipline that interrogate the complicated contexts of reception by looking at the interaction between migration policies, laws, cultural production, and practices developed at local, regional, national, and international levels around the globe. Who decides who gets to belong economically, socially, or culturally? What are the markers of membership (land, religion, culture and values, or language), and who defines and determines their parameters? What forms of backlash emerge from host societies that view new and old migrants as “others” who threaten nativist identities and values? How does this resistance to newcomers reflect past and current efforts of empire building? Migratory flows also raise important questions about choice and motivation: Despite hardships or uncertainties, why do some people move while others stay behind?

We seek papers that explore these issues by challenging existing approaches (e.g., push-pull binaries, nation state analyses) situated in the field of migration studies. Presenters may want to address these questions within the following themes:

• Migration and changing/fluid borders
• Multiple longings and belongings
• Transformation and assimilation
• Shifting boundaries of race, ethnicity, and gender among migrants
• Exiles, refugees, and the right of return
• Migration and minority politics or inter-relationships among migrant groups
• Migration and cultural production: specifically, migrants’ narratives about displacement and belonging

Those interested in presenting at the conference should send an abstract (no more than 250 words) and a CV by October 6, 2018, to mayer@middlebury.edu. The selection process is competitive. All presentations must be in English. Funds are available to support travel and lodging of all participants. The conference will take place on the campus of Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont, USA.

Organizing Committee:

Tamar Mayer, Professor of Geography, Director of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, mayer@middlebury.edu

Darién J. Davis, Professor of History and Department Chair, davis@middlebury.edu

Trinh Tran, Assistant Professor of Sociology, trinht@middlebury.edu