Panel organizers: Anitta Kynsilehto (NSR, Tampere University) and Bruno Lefort (Tapri, Tampere University)
Desperate attempts of people fleeing wars and manifold violence in the European immediate proximity have made headlines over the years, and increasingly so since the year 2015. The attempts to get across the Mediterranean and further on to a place where a dignified life could be built have become part of the daily imageries of people located in nearer and farther sites of the actual maritime area both inside and outside the EU territory. Under an ever growing political and media attention, these mobilities have staged encounters between people on the move and local communities in their countries of arrival. While the former put their energy in finding a way to go on with their lives, amid new, often precarious contexts – not to mention the insecurity of their condition or their administrative struggles, the latter also face the encounter with alterity. From these encounters, come out not only intolerance and xenophobia but also an increasing variety of practices of solidarity.
In this workshop, we are interested in these practices at the inner and outer edges of the European territory, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. We seek to bring together migratory contexts where forced and more voluntary forms of mobilities come together, and where new spaces of sometimes unexpected solidarities may be formed. How do these encounters and solidarity practices open up alternative territories of experience and existence? In exploring these key questions, we intend to grasp the dynamics of recomposition of attitudes toward identity and alterity, sameness and difference in a moving world, to ultimately shed light on the reinvention of our contemporary societies.
We welcome traditional academic presentations as well as communications of a more creative kind.
Language: English