14th ESA Conference – RS19 – Europe and Beyond: Boundaries, Barriers and Belonging – Manchester, 20-23 August 2019

21 Déc 14th ESA Conference – RS19 – Europe and Beyond: Boundaries, Barriers and Belonging – Manchester, 20-23 August 2019

RS 19 Visual and Filmic Sociology proposes to study the conference theme from an image (still or motion) and sound approach. Papers can be based on images borrowed from other authors, media, movies, etc. However RS 19 expects sociologists participating in the sessions to analyse and comment on their own images from project to completion.

The following themes are privileged, without others being excluded.

• Issues of borders and international migration are rarely approached based on class membership: what about social inequalities in the context of borders and differentiated capacities to cross them? Do possibilities to surmount the barriers of integration differ? In what manner? What are the responsibilities, too often ignored, of the politically, economically and ideologically dominant classes in the countries of departure? What are the historic and economic links with arrival countries? On what basis “expatriates” and “migrants” differ?
• For geographers and politicians, borders are abstractions. For police, military, travellers and migrants, borders are physical realities. How can this dual nature of borders be shown in images? As barriers, borders feed the imagination of travellers or novelists and even more that of potential emigrants. How to tell through images (photographs, films) shared or not representations of these borders-barriers?
• Nowadays, many political discourses value inward-looking attitudes. However, these discourses consider “migrants” as a repelling group of undifferentiated people searching for welfare assistance or even being terrorists. How can we visually catch the long-known link between economic crisis and xenophobia? On another hand, how do we question another kind of dominant approach: the one of poor people who have no other resources than charity.

Submission deadline: 1 February 2019

Submit your abstract to: https://www.conftool.pro/esa2019/