Call for Participation: 20th IMISCOE Annual Conference, Warsaw 3-6 July 2023: "Historicizing Mediterranean Migration Research: The Role of Memory and Historical Narrative"

Coordinators: Ricard Zapata-Barrero and Carmen Geha, GRITIM-UPF and EuroMedMig

Current migration research can be better informed through the history and past of migration and alterity perception in the Mediterranean area. In this workshop, we ask: How can an understanding of history better inform research on Mediterranean migration? How can history shed light on our current and future agenda on migration research? These initial questions guide our proposal for this EuroMedMig Workshop.  At present, the study of migration has been overshadowed by a state-centric and national approach, marginalizing the role of other actors and skewing awareness of shared histories. Our proposal seeks to bring forward much of the untold history through memories and dynamic flows of migration and mobility across the Mediterranean. In doing so, we illustrate a research agenda incorporating colonial and postcolonial history as a major pillar of understanding the present and theorizing for the future. There is also the need for a new epistemology nurtured by historicism, which addresses questions related to an epistemology of ignorance, Euro-centrism, and Western-centrism.

This Workshop seeks to discuss current challenges by filling the following gaps in research:

1. Definitions: Mediterranean migration governance cannot be addressed without first reviewing the definitions that we use of ‘Mediterranean’ and human (im-mobilities) in the region.
2. Representation: The historical narrative of Mediterranean migration has a direct impact on public representation. Behind the Mediterranean, there is a migration narrative that often reflects current and past power hierarchies. Historically, uneven power relations within and between Mediterranean societies are silencing other potential voices. Mediterranean Migration research must also face collective oblivion of the influence of colonialism on the current power relations inhabiting Mediterranean societies. There is a need to shape the history of the Mediterranean as a history of migrations, through cultural events and museums.
3. Structures: political structures are founded on the past and the Mediterranean past is the history of Mediterranean relations cutting and locking, building bridges, and opening up to greater or lesser human mobility. Current discriminations and structural racism have an inalienable historical foundation that we cannot ignore.
4. Pedagogy: education systems are failing to play their part towards building change, since most Mediterranean school curricula are not conducive to empowering citizens to be critical of historical narratives and also national narratives, without a Mediterranean dimension. The incorporation of intercultural, intersectional lenses and historical narratives in the curricula of the city’s schools can provide fundamental tools to increase the city’s inclusivity, as well as the planning of pedagogical and socializing actions outside formal education.

Submit an expression of interest including scholar name, affiliations, and working titles of presentations to:

Carmen Geha, senior researcher, GRITIM-UPF: [email protected] (cc: [email protected] and [email protected])