Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment annual conference 8-9 June, London
This year’s annual conference of Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment will look at new developments in the national and global context in relation to regimes of bordering and racialisation. Our theme is the new world dis/order, as rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, the continuing mainstreaming of the far right, the increased violence of migration control – most notably Trump’s ICE onslaught in the US, but spreading globally – and the turbulence of wars across the globe combine to create increased uncertainty and precarity everywhere. Our opening session on Monday evening sets out the current context of geopolitical turbulence and a mainstreamed far right. Our panels on Tuesday detail the specific challenges faced by activists and scholars responding to the bordering and exclusion of migrants and minoritised people in Britain and elsewhere.
REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-hostile-environment-in-the-new-world-disorder-tickets-1989170995996?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
LOCATION: Room MAL 532, fifth floor of Birkbeck main building, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL. Tickets available for Monday and for Tuesday.
PROGRAMME
Monday 8 June 6-8 pm
The new world dis/order: Setting the local and global context
What is the context of the new world dis/order impacting on global mobility and global bordering? What are the contours of the global political economy? How is this shaping the global rise of authoritarianism? How is this manifesting in the UK?
Don Flynn to chair and introduce
Speakers:
Shirin Rai, SOAS, on her new book Depletion: the human cost of care.
Daniel Trilling on his new book If We Tolerate This: How the British establshment made the far right respectable.
Tuesday 9 June
9:30 arrive (no catering, café open on ground floor)
10-11:30 panel 1:
Authoritarian bordering: The Hostile Environment globally and locally
What are the key issues in migration policy in the UK and globally? What are the main trends in bordering – in the formal and informal policing of borders, in the state imagination of the figure of the migrant, and in policies of care, regulation, incarceration and exclusion for migrants? What are some threats and opportunities?
Professor Eleanore Kofman, Middlesex, to chair and introduce
Speakers:
Dr Laura Loyola-Hernández, Leeds
11:30-12:15 groups discussion
12:15 lunch
1:45-3:00 panel 2:
A new politics of belonging
As routes to settlement and nationality are reduced and authoritarianism reconfigures citizenship, how is the politics of belonging changing in the contemporary moment?
Giorgia Dona, University of East London, to chair and introduce
Speakers:
Professor Leah Bassel, Coventry, on the reconfiguration of citizenship
Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, UEL, on the new politics of autochthony
3:15-4 small groups
4-5 Final plenary:
How to renew the struggle against the Hostile Environment
Reflecting on the day and the key take-homes.
Speakers: Professor Floya Anthias, Roehampton; Professor Nando Sigona, IRiS Birmingham; Dr Ben Gidley, Birkbeck
Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment 