"Creating Commons in an Era of Precarity: A Multi/Trans-Disciplinary Conference on Migration and Asia"
8-11 June 2021 | CAPI (University of Victoria) και UCRC
Keynote Presentation | Reproduction-driven labour migration from China - Biao Xiang | 2021 Hung lecture (This talk was recorded online 8 June 2021)
Conference website: Creating Commons in an Era of Precarity: International Conference Crossing Multi / Transdisciplinary Boundaries
This conference is a joint project between the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives at the University of Victoria and the University of Crete Research Center for the Humanities, the Social and Education Sciences, (UCRC).
Purpose
The purpose is three-fold: to bring together researchers, activists, and particularly graduate students, to share current scholarship while giving space for new knowledge creation; provide opportunities for participants from around the world to network and build alliances; to cross intellectual and physical boundaries to ensure multi/trans disciplinary approaches to knowledge creation.
Background
With more than five years of intensive precarious migration into Greece, much has been learnt regarding the plight of people fleeing settings of war, environmental disasters and poverty. Facing continued economic vulnerability and being the first point of entry for many migrants wishing to reach Europe, Greece has faced particular challenges. Migration, however, is not isolated to Europe; much of the 70 million mobile people throughout the world are located on other continents/regions, including East, Southeast and South Asia. Understanding the conditions of permanent temporariness and precarity facing migrants, both in Europe and Asia is essential to build new approaches to understanding migration. We are interested in how migrants can be viewed as the protagonist, a mobile actor displaying resilience or responses to precarious lifeways, and taking actions contributing to the creation of a “mobile commons,” forging new pathways.
This conference, which will bring 40+ international participants together virtually, is designed not only to showcase expertise in areas of global migration – such as a socioeconomic, political, human rights and social justice issues, but to offer highlight the methodological and theoretical complexities of today’s migrant.
Themes
Key themes include an examination of the connections and common pathways among migrants; the active role of the migrant, both historically and currently, during times of movement as well as temporary settlement; questions related to border security and surveillance and the maintenance and transformations in precarity, the place of new technologies that enable even greater sophistication of policing but also greater opportunity for migrant to migrant connection; and diverse initiatives in the areas of policy advocacy, activism and mobilization as they pertain to the experience of temporariness and strategies to overcome them.
The event will offer a rare opportunity for migration experts from Greece (and other parts of Europe), Canada and parts of Asia to share knowledge, experiences, and strategies as they relate to this complex and pressing global issue.
