Migration and Labour Working Group: Roundtables
Labour is one of the crucial relations that migrant subjects establish with their new homelands and, in many cases, is one of the most profound drivers shaping their trajectories and experiences. Labour is not always thematised as such in migrant narratives: however, it is often there, in the foreground or in the background, as a…
Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 6: ‘Automation’
In current times, it would be impossible to discuss the topics of migration and labour without acknowledging the role played by machines and technology in human lives and in both processes. Furthermore, the debate around the Anthropocene (see Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us, 2016) lead…
Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 5: ‘Torture’
For many migrants, the migration process is tainted with violence. This violence affects the body as much as the psyche of the migrants. Whether this violence manifests itself during the migration, pre-migration or post-migration stages, the question of labour appears to complicate the adjustment of migrant populations to their host destinations. Forced labour, exhausting job…
Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 4: ‘Body’
The body is constantly in motion and change (Spinoza, Deleuze, Massumi); the body is in itself a border between the individual and the environment. The body can be also conceptualized as porous and dynamic, affecting and being affected by other bodies and objects in the world through movement and touch. The aim of this roundtable…
Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 3: ‘Estrangement’
‘Estrangement’ or ‘defamiliarisation’ is a term coined by the theorist of Russian formalism Viktor Shklovskii, who in his famous essay ‘Art as Device’ (1916) argued that art is a device for making people look at the world anew. While the word ‘estrangement’ in Russian indicates the transformation of something familiar into strange, it also carries…
Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 2: ‘Autobiography’
The autobiographical mode is one of the forms privileged by narratives focusing on labour and migration. This is due to the fact that a ‘testimonial’ aspect is often embedded in these narratives, whose audiences usually expect to be presented with the – more or less ordinary – true stories of those who have experienced migration,…
Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 1: ‘Definitions’
Defining a field of studies is always a paradoxical task. It is often needed as a preliminary action to ensure the accessibility and verifiability of research methods and findings. At the same time, destabilising what is fixed and crossing borders is at the heart of critical inquiry. This is all the more true in the…
Projet OBERT 