Race, alterity and affect: rethinking climate change-induced migration and displacement.
18-19 June 2013, Durham University
Announcement/Call for Papers
Andrew Baldwin (Durham University) and Katherine E. Russo (Universitá degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale)
As policy and scholarly debates about climate change and migration gather pace, to date very few interventions have addressed how such debates are shaped by notions of race and alterity. The imperative to address the lacuna is further emphasised by the twinned observations that climate change is expected to amplify the incidence of environmental/natural disasters i.e., landslides, extreme weathers events and droughts, and that narratives of disaster very often contain explicit and/or implicit racist sentiment. Such a context suggests that now is a propitious moment to begin a concerted interrogation of these themes.
The aim of this workshop is thus to bring deabtes about climate change and migration broadly defined into dialogue with contemporary critical race theory and postcolonial theory. Recent interventions (Baldwin, 2012; Baldwin forthcoming) have suggested that racialisation in the context of debates about climate change and migration unfolds through at least three interrelated tropes: naturalisation, the loss of political status, and ambiguity. This work also argues that given its historiographical emphasis, theories of the postcolonial appear to be insufficient for properly theorising the alterity of the climate change migrant, since the discourse on climate change and migration is written is almost exclusively in the future-conditional tense. In contrast, others (Farbotko, 2010) have very productively embraced theories of the postcolonial to interpret issues of climate change and mobility.
Thus one of the aims of this workshop is to consider how critical race theory and theories of the postcolonial might be usefully reinterpreted to address the future-conditionality of climate change and migration discourse. At this stage, we are particularly interested in innovative research proposals by post-graduate scholars.
Topics that might be addressed in the workshop include but are not limited to:
- race and affect
- xenophobic and nationalist reactions to environmental disaster
- environmental change, ethnicity and internal displacement
- critical race theory, climate change and migration/displacement
- postcolonial theory, climate change and migration/displacement
- ecocritique
- climate change and cultural media/arts
- environmental change, states of emergency and the suspension of citizenship rights
- ontologies of difference and the future-conditional disaster risk reduction/disaster risk management, climate change and difference
Keynote Speakers:
David Theo Goldberg (University of California, Irvine)
Uma Kothari (Manchester University)
Confirmed Speakers:
- Arun Saldanha (Lancaster)
- Nigel Clark (Lancaster)
- Lars Jensen (Roskilde University)
- Ranabair Sammadar (Calcutta Research Centre)
- Graham Huggan (Leeds)
- Michael Krzyzanowski (University of Aberdeen, Scotland)
- Katherine Russo (Orientale, Napoli)
- Andrew Baldwin (Durham)
- Carol Farbotko (University of Wollongong, Australia)
- Julian Reid (Lapland)
- Silja Klepp (Centre for Sustainability Studies, Bremen)
- Johannes Herbeck (Centre for Sustainability Studies, Bremen)
Partners: COST Action IS1101 Climate change and migration; Institute for Advanced Studies (Durham University); Universitá degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale
Registration: This is an open event, although space is limited. If you wish to register for this workshop please notify Ellie Whittles, e.c.whittles@durham.ac.uk by the new registration deadline 17 May.