There has been a recent surge of scholarship from human geography, sociology, history, architecture, and cultural studies that focuses on migration as a social, political, cultural and material process. This area of research on migration examines migrants’ transnational spatial practices, social and political identities and relationships with the state. Central to this research has been a recognition that at the heart of migration lies a fundamental transformation in spaces and places that are linked to the social and cultural meanings of home and belonging.

Migration brings about a material change in the places and locations through which notions of identity, individual expressions and belonging are transformed. Through the movement of people, for instance, cities, homes and localities become re-narrated through migrants’ stories, photographs, music, artwork and films. Cities in particular, as places of origin and (re)settlement become key sites of migrants’ experiences of ‘home’(s). The experience of Europe over the past fifty years is a good example; urban spaces have increasingly become contested locations where the spatial and material nature of identities are negotiated – Muslim/Christian, European/non-European, first/second generation of migrants. Much migration research, moreover, connects home and nation by investigating migrants’ connections with past, present or imagined ‘homelands’. Home can now also be described as translocal, transnational and diasporic – shaped by consumption, remittances and social networks. The domestic spaces inhabited by migrants are especially important for their roles in constructing attitudes and behaviours towards ‘others’ when strangers share living spaces in the city. Home can even be redefined through its ‘socio-technical’ differences across national spaces. This conference offers an opportunity to bring these social, spatial, material and technological facets of migration together – to consider migrants’ identities and experiences of homes and cities, and the material, aural and visual landscapes of mobility and movement.

 

 

Performing cultures of migration

Narrating and representing migration I

Narrating and representing migration II

The Materiality of Home and Belonging I

The Materiality of Home and Belonging II

Narrating, Experiencing and Changing City Spaces I

Narrating, Experiencing and Changing City Spaces II

Marginal and contested urban spaces