17th International Border Crossings Student Conference

Call for Papers

The Border Crossings Network and the Department of Sociology, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest invite paper submissions for the 17th International “Border Crossings” Student Conference, which will take place between 11-14 April 2019 in Bucharest. The conference is open to BA students, BA graduates, MA students, MA graduates, PhD candidates in anthropology and related disciplines. Applicants are expected to submit a paper abstract of around 250 words, their academic status and institutional affiliation by March 10th 2019 to the following address: conference@politice.ro. Successful applicants will be notified by March 18th 2019. -- CONFERENCE SESSIONS AND PAPER PRESENTATIONS The conference sessions will take place on Friday, April 12th and Saturday, April 13th at the Department of Sociology, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest. Paper presentations should last no more than 15 minutes (plus 5 minutes for discussion). Power-point and multimedia presentations are welcome. Students are highly encouraged to submit ethnographic film to be screened during the conference. The conference language is English. CONFERENCE COSTS AND LOGISTICS There is no conference fee. Travel and accommodation costs should be covered by the participants themselves. Participants are expected to make their own arrangements for the accommodation. Support will be offered by the organising committee. A bus for the conference participants will run from Thessaloniki to Bucharest on April 11th and from Bucharest to Thessaloniki on April 14th. CONFERENCE THEME In recent years the increasing freedom of flows, permeability of borders, decreasing role of the nation state are met with sweeping counter reactions: the establishment of populist, far-right leaders and governments, a crackdown on civil rights, a wave of nationalistic policies limiting mobility and paving the way for xenophobia and discrimination: Brexit, the erection of Hungary-Serbia border fence, the USA-Mexico border wall, as well as other attempts to limit refugee access to the countries of the Global North. People are rendered mobile or immobile by a wide range of forces and social actors. The politics of urban space sometimes betray claims to a homogeneous public space, such as the decision of Italian towns to forbid ‘ethnic’ foods in the city centres. Various other means of marginalisation and exclusion occur, rendering people immobile, or, on the contrary, pushing them to become mobile. Mobility creates interconnectedness of different localities; those who leave create bridges that often contribute to the recreation of place through remittances, food, building houses etc. Processes of identification and belonging, cultural and social integration, creation and erasure of boundaries and borders, (re)creation of places and connections have inspired us to interrogate these topics as part of a wider range of anthropological inquiries. This year’s Border Crossings conference invites presentations that deal with, but not limited to, the following topics: • Placemaking, cultural landscapes, place and space, ways of dwelling; • Cultural heritage (tangible and intangible): politics of heritage, memory and commemoration, commoditisation of heritage, impact of tourism; • Collective identities: forms of belonging, affiliation, ethnicity, the new faces of the nation state; models of diversity and integration, minority politics, gender politics, images of otherness; • Mobility: migration, refugees, pilgrimage, tourism; technologies and infrastructures of mobility; transnational families and households, diasporas; • Borders: borderscapes, borders as bounded spaces, encounters with otherness, experiences of liminality, the crossing of borders; • Food: food and nationalism, food as a source of place-making, taste as a marker of distinction and difference, food in movement, migrant cuisines; • Environment: cultural ecology, socio-ecological resilience, spatial justice, ethnographies of the anthropocene, narratives and practices of sustainability and conservation; • Material culture: houses and housing, dwelling and “curating” homes, travelling objects, mutual processes of value creation between people and things.