Organizer: the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Regional Office New Delhi, the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies (MWF) and ICAS:MP
About the Symposium
- When: 15-17 July 2024
- Mode of Symposium: Digital
Who can submit proposals?
- Early career researchers from South Asia, Germany, and Europe who work on topics related to India, South Asia, Germany and Europe.
- Doctoral students and postdocs, who completed their doctoral defence no more than two years ago, are eligible to apply
Date and format
- The symposium will be organised as an online event from 15 – 17 July 2024 featuring presentations, knowledge sharing sessions, virtual networking and a public panel discussion by experts/chairs.
The ECR symposium is a virtual event organized jointly by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Regional Office New Delhi, the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies (MWF) and ICAS:MP Metamorphosis of the Political – with the aim to provide a unique platform to early career researchers to showcase their research work in fields of humanities and social sciences.
The topic of the symposium Cross-Border Mobility is a term witnessing and gaining rapid momentum in our society in recent times. This collaborative symposium is dedicated to creating opportunities and synergies for young and budding researchers to not only share their research approaches but also to promote knowledge exchange and collaboration within the research community. During the symposium the selected early career researchers can present their research work to an international audience and discuss with experts.
The symposium addresses a wide spectrum of inter- and multidisciplinary topics of cross-border mobility with the focus on five distinct fields of inquiry:
- Refugees and Irregular Migration
- Law and Migration
- Narratives of Migration
- Migration and Education
- Labour Migration (incl. Health)
Refugees and Irregular Migration
The term “refugees” often evokes images of overcrowded camps and widespread precarity, the problematic conditions suffered by migrants in transit or before the commencement of integration processes as well as of perceived dangers as highlighted by media. Yet, refugees often cross borders as individuals rather than as part of large groups, and traverse varying routes and status of legality over
the course of their migration. Such irregular migration produces very different social dynamics as well as pressures on migrants.
The gap persists between the applicable legal rules and procedures in solving the problems migrants face in their daily lives. Multiple factors, such as differences in languages and cultures, education standards, laws and legal structures, social security measures, etc, may cause these problems. The obstacles are even more evident in the case of refugees and asylum seekers who have been forced to flee their home countries on account of war, conflicts, and persecution. The migrants are more vulnerable to being victims of crimes, including hate crimes and racism. Migrant integration through restorative justice may help solve some of the issues by addressing the harm and trauma experienced by migrants. However, more research and exploration are necessary to address the structural issues faced by migrants, including those with refugee backgrounds, including the barriers and challenges and solutions, thereby making the transition to host societies easier, more inclusive, and more participatory. This panel seeks to understand cross-border mobility by distinguishing between regular and irregular migration, emphasizing the different modes of mobility inherent in types of migration.
Law and Migration
Cross-border mobility is a global phenomenon intensely shaped by legal structures, including by international law and its agencies, but pronouncedly by national legal systems. Legal structures produce many of the barriers to mobility that need to be navigated by migrants – and prevent many aspiring migrants from exercising mobility. They also shape migrants’ lives during transit and their livelihoods in the destination countries. Finally, they determine the chances for onward mobility, whether to other destinations or back to migrants’ countries of origin. Questions of national and international law in a global phenomenon produce a host of intricacies that jar with the increase in global connectivity through information exchange and transport facilities. Laws and regulations may also play a pivotal role in facilitating the emigration of citizens, serving not only as a supportive framework but also as a mechanism to actively encourage migration. For example, numerous countries currently implement emigration policies designed to promote the relocation of their citizens to foreign labour markets. These policies not only facilitate the movement of individuals across borders but also establish a significant safety net, thereby contributing to the welfare of the emigrating populace. This panel seeks to understand cross-border mobility by examining the ways in which different legal frameworks constrain, enable and channel migration.
Narratives of Migration
Cross-border mobility is frequently deciphered primarily as a policy problem. Less attention is paid to the migrants’ side of this story. The experiences of migrants, in turn, constitute an invaluable source
even to the exercise of policy, indicating areas in which the actual navigation of legal and policy structures deviates from their paper form considered by planners engaged in sketching out “desirable”
forms of migration. Another question is how migration impacts on the cultural, religious, and gender identity of the migrants and on the society into which they migrate. These processes of implicit and explicit negotiation, transformation and hybridization are often narrated in postcolonial fiction, such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia, but also in Naomi Munaweera’s Island of a Thousand Mirrors or, on a symbolic level, Shehaan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Literature on migration often documents changes in what it means to be a nation, questioning notions of purity and deconstructing traditions by opening a third space in which community and identity are creatively being renegotiated. Therefore, this panel seeks to understand cross-border mobility as a chance for renewal as represented in narratives of migration in history, literature/the arts, and media reportage.
Migration and Education
Global cross-border mobility contributes to realizing the aims of education and aspirations of not only nations but also has greater scope for the global sustainable development. Migration, resulting in enhanced human capital and capabilities through education and skilling initiatives, plays a crucial role in shaping people’s aspirations for migration. At the same time, cross-border mobility for purposes of education is shaped and at times hampered by structures of certification as much as other bureaucratic means, producing global inequalities within and between the countries through the selective recognition of prior educational qualifications, among many other problems. Lastly, educational migration comprises different pulls and pressures on states seeking to handle it, often linked to the question of onward or return migration. In the economic globalized era, the Genenal Agreement of Traded Services (GATS) also deals with trade in education services under the four modes, cross-border online education, consumption abroad by international students, commercial presence of foreign education institutions and movement of natural persons, like teachers and researchers. There is a divergence of costs and benefits associated with trade, mobility and education for the Global North and Global South countries and their effects on political economy are debated within different theoretical contexts. Therefore, this session serves to examine and discuss the foreign trade, education, mobility of students and putting forth the policy for sustainable education and
development.
Labour Migration (including health)
Labour and health-related migration constitute yet another major set of push- and pull-factors for migration. As opposed to panels primarily studying the act of cross-border mobility, and its navigation
by migrants, this panel highlights issues arising from the economic and livelihood contexts of migrants in their countries of origin – and at their destinations. There are challenges of uneven development at
the global level facilitating migration pressures mainly from the Global South countries to the Global North countries. For example, Indian high- skilled or white-collar workers migrate to the United States
for better living and working conditions and the blue-collar workers go to the Middle East countries for higher wages in terms of foreign exchange, leading to higher inflow of remittances. The migrants have vulnerability and sustainability issues in the destination countries, like lower social security including health services. Issues of labour and access to health facilities affect all migrants, whatever their origin. Yet, the chances for participation differ strongly, producing a complex web of concerns for migrants as well as for nation-states and international agencies regulating migration. This panel serves
to examine these differences faced by labour migrants both in their countries of origin as well as destinations, with a particular regard of India, South Asia, Germany, and Europe
Application
To participate with your entry submission, please take the following survey by clicking on the link below:
Click Here to Register
- The submitted proposals will be selected and shortlisted by an expert committee.
- Selected candidates for presentation during the symposium will be informed by 10 June 2024.
- Application deadline: 20 May 2024
Contact
ni.baum@daad.de