University of Oxford
7th October 2020
UPDATE: Registrations have now closed.
THEME
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The ‘Everyday Spaces of Encounter and Migrant Participation in Urban Life’ graduate symposium aims to create a discussion forum between doctoral students, early-career researchers and non-academic practitioners interested in issues of migration, with a particular focus on belonging, identity, participation and interaction within the city. The symposium is purposefully inter- and multi-disciplinary, hoping to bring together researchers from many disciplines to look at closely related topics and allow for integrating knowledge and methods from one discipline to another. Therefore, the symposium welcomes contributions from development studies, human geography, urban studies, sociology, education, anthropology and beyond.
Since the 1990s, scholars from sociology, geography, and political philosophy among other disciplines have noted that public spaces in cities have become increasingly inhospitable to the distinct ‘other’, debating whether the spatial component of interaction between strangers is (in)capable of mediating social and cultural dissimilarities (cf. Sennett, Amin, Massey, Appadurai and others). This symposium aims to unpack concepts of encounter and interaction with others in the hope of building pathways between disciplines and approaches. Within this context, daily life becomes a point of enquiry and a practical challenge. Looking at everyday spaces and the quotidian as a sphere of interaction, managing diversity, contestations of identity and belonging that emerge as key concepts are as conflicted as the situations they tend to describe.
The symposium aims to explore these tensions by considering the following questions:
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Where, why and how are ‘meaningful’ everyday interactions and encounters taking place between migrants and ‘established’ inhabitants of cities?
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How do gendered, age-related or linguistic dynamics impact on these encounters?
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What is the role of translocal networks and ‘transient spaces’ in encouraging participation?
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How do migrants themselves define, shape and appropriate space?
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What is the role of the nation-state, the local government and grassroots organisations in facilitating the inclusion and integration of migrants in host communities?
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What is the role of identity and belonging in migrants’ participation in urban life?
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How are migration and urban studies scholars incorporating innovative and/or reflexive methods to study these questions?
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How can interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches both shape the field of migration and urban studies and promote migrants’ participation in the city?
PROGRAMME
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Booklet of abstracts here
10.00 Room opens
10.20 Opening remarks
10.30 - 11.30 Keynote
Social exclusion, symbolic boundaries and convivial labour in East London’s context of ongoing immigration
Susanne Wessendorf, Associate Professorial Research Fellow
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
11:30 - 11:45 Short Break
11.45 - 13.45 Panel 1: Creating everyday spaces of encounter
Chair: Lucy Hunt, University of Oxford
Sarah Anderson, Gunhild Setten (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), ‘“Locked in encounter”: Including refugees through Norwegian outdoor recreation?’
Iren Eylül Karaoglu, Pompeu Fabra University, ‘Intercultural City Program and public space: a content analysis on problematizations of the Barcelona Intercultural City Program’
Jeni Vine, University of Sheffield, ‘History, relationships and social cohesion’
Julia Borowicz, University College London (UCL), ‘Spaces of encounter and refuge: New models of affirmative and dignified integration in Berlin’
13.45 - 14.30 Lunch Break
14.30 - 16.30 Panel 2: Engaging in everyday spaces of encounter
Chair: Debbie Hopkins, Associate Professor, University of Oxford
Nandita Dutta, University College London (UCL), ‘“Migration is Beautiful”: Everyday encounters at the beauty salon’
Nadine El Khayat, University of Sheffield, ‘The limits and potential of everyday migrant urban encounters on Beirut’s seafront’
Neha Arora, University of Oxford, ‘“City is for the rich”: Urban identity as explored through everyday lived experiences of migrant workers in Panaji, Goa’
Luise Vormittag, University of the Arts London, ‘Walking the Elephant’
16:30 - 16:45 Short Break
16.45 - 17.45 Workshop: Reflexive and innovative methods (presenters only)
Chair: Andreas Papallas, University of Oxford
Lefkos Kyriacou, Associate Researcher, University of Cambridge
Sonja Marzi, Fellow in Qualitative Methods, LSE
17.45 - 18.00 Short Break
18.00 - 19.30 Roundtable discussion: ‘Moving towards the future of interaction and participation: Inter- and multidisciplinary perspectives’
Moderator: Idalina Baptista, Associate Professor, University of Oxford
Discussants: Mette Louise Berg, Professor, UCL
Irit Katz, Lecturer, University of Cambridge
19.30 - 19.40 Concluding remarks
19.40 - 21.00 Drinks reception / networking (for presenters)
ABOUT
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The ‘Everyday Spaces of Encounter and Migrant Participation in Urban Life’ Graduate Symposium is organised by DPhil students at the Department of Education and Department for Continuing Education of the University of Oxford, with the financial support of the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership.
KEYNOTE
Susanne Wessendorf is a Social Anthropologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Since completing her DPhil at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, she has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and held a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham.
Her work has investigated the interrelationship of transnationalism and integration among the second generation, and more recently, social relations in a superdiverse urban context. Susanne has conducted pioneering research in the emergent field of superdiversity. She has undertaken in-depth ethnographic fieldwork over long periods in complex urban settings, accumulating a range of experiences in working with people of different age groups, ethnic, national and class backgrounds. She has been granted funding from a variety of funding bodies, ranging from research councils, to charitable trusts and the European Commission. Susanne is co-editor (with Steven Vertovec) of ‘The Multiculturalim Backlash’ (Routledge 2010), and author of ‘Second-Generation Transnationalism and Roots Migration (Ashgate 2012) and ‘Commonplace Diversity. Social Relations in a Super-diverse context’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
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ORGANISERS
Lucy Hunt is an ESRC Scholar and 2nd Year DPhil Student at the Department of Education. Her research explores the social and contextual factors which impact young refugees’ participation in post-compulsory education in Northern Greece, and the resultant impact on decision-making processes.
Andreas Papallas is an A.G. Leventis Foundation Scholar and 1st Year Student in the DPhil in Sustainable Urban Development. His research looks at the role of urban policy in managing diversity between migrant and local communities and the spatial principles of inclusion and integration of migrants in Cypriot society.
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