University of Helsinki
MIGRATION, COSMOPOLITANISM AND EVERYDAY LIFE
Session chairs: Pierluca Birindelli (University of Helsinki) and Sylvain Beck (GEMASS, Paris Sorbonne University)
In this stream, we call for abstracts that aim to establish new understandings of cross-border mobilities and liminalities, along with the inequalities and other unintended consequences they may produce. Indeed, when actors leave their comfort zone, their usual living area, occupational niche or educational environment and migrate to new place, they have to adapt to new norms and customs. The stage of moving from one locality to another can be described as a rite de passage (van Gennep 1909), where actors become separated from their previous setting, go through a transition process and become aggregated with their new surroundings. These rites de passage can also be understood as a liminal period in which actors are ‘neither here nor there’, feeling ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner 1979: 236), caught between the old and the new.
Questions of interest within this stream are, amongst others, whether it is possible to shed sociological light upon the liminal condition experienced by an immigrant (or expatriate) in a global world? Is it possible to point out and study the liminal spaces that facilitate encounters with alterity in the midst of the diversity of daily life in today’s global cities?
We welcome both methodological and theoretical papers discussing (im)mobilities, experiences of separation versus attachment, and actors’ adaptations to living within transnational contexts.
Key concepts: Globalization, cosmopolitanism, mobility, liminality, transnationalism.