Semi-Plenaries

organised by the Local Organising Committee (Elisa Pieri, Catherine Walker)

Michael Keith | University of Oxford, UK

Title
The Metropolis and Contemporary Life: The Times and Spaces of the Interdisciplinary in the Cities of Tomorrow

Abstract
The call for research that is interdisciplinary can at times both obscure the challenges and mask the opportunities of academic work across different disciplinary foundations, paradigms, ethical challenges and normative analysis of 21st century city life. In this talk, Michael Keith considers how emergent cities might reconfigure both the foundations of conventional professional expertise in city contexts and open up new ways of seeing, thinking and organising academic research and engaged practice in the contemporary city.

Biographical Note
Michael Keith is Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, co-ordinator of Urban Transformations (the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s portfolio of investments and research on cities), co-Director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities and the Director of the PEAK Urban Research programme. Michael’s research focuses on migration related processes of urban change. His most recent work is the monograph China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change (2014). He is currently completing (with Les Back and John Solomos) a book entitled Power, Identity and Representation: Race, Governance and Mobilisation in British Society. Michael also has substantial experience working on racism and the criminal justice system in the community and voluntary sector and as a politician. He is a co-founder and chair of the Rich Mix Cultural Foundation, a major cross cultural arts centre in East London, and has served as leader of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, chair of the Thames Gateway London Partnership and a commissioner on the UK Government’s Commission on Integration and Cohesion.

organised by the ESA Executive Committee (Monica Massari, Lena Näre)

The rise of populist movements and anti-immigration parties across Europe during the past decade has led to a growing normalisation of right-wing policies and offensive rhetoric centred around a “politics of fear” that is entrenching new social divides of gender, class, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation and body. As a consequence, policies, programs, slogans and practices still considered as extreme, xenophobic and racist in the 1990s have become more acceptable as normal expressions of dialogue and social life, while hate speech and the dissemination of strongly stereotyped narratives about the nature of the “other” have fostered racial resentment and anti-immigration views and acts. This rhetoric – also fuelled by the discourses of crisis related to refugee movements in Europe, economic austerity, poverty and unemployment – has been displaying its consequences not only in formal but also in everyday life spheres where the mechanisms of othering are mostly incorporated.  

This Semi-Plenary invites papers that focus on the ways in which populist political discourses addressing issues related to identity, citizenship and belonging currently affect and/or determine the various manifestations of racism in the everyday life across Europe and how this is experienced by individuals, groups and communities mostly affected.

Miranda Christou | University of Cyprus, Cyprus

Title
The Appropriation of ‘Difference’ by the Extreme Right

Abstract
In this paper, I argue that the growing success of the extreme right in mainstreaming its ideology is based on upending the meaning of ‘racism’ in ways that produce a differend (Lyotard, 1983). More specifically, I examine how extreme right-wing rhetoric appropriates the use of ‘difference’, ‘freedom’ and ‘oppression’ in order to turn accusations of racism into an incommensurable language game. This rhetorical method allows them to position themselves as the champions of pluralistic democratic ideals while pushing for policies that directly undermine these values. The paper is based on a study of the right-wing, nationalist party ELAM in Cyprus. ELAM is closely associated with Golden Dawn in Greece and has gained parliamentary presence for the first time in 2016. The study is located within larger debates about citizenship, the rise of ethno-nationalism and its appeal to youth (Pilkington, 2016; Miller-Idriss, 2018). Data collection took place between September 2016 and December 2017 and includes: a) 48 interviews (ELAM leadership, ‘Youth Front’ members and ‘Women’s Front’ members); b) observations of public events and demonstrations and, c) data from internet sources (website, social media). Analysis was conducted with the use of the Discourse-Historical Approach (Wodak, 2001; Reisigl & Wodak 2005). The paper ties these data to examples from other extreme right-wing parties that belong to the Alliance for Peace and Freedom (e.g. Golden Dawn and Forza Nuova) and the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom (e.g. FPӦ and RN). The paper points out how the language of ‘diversity’ has been colonized by the extreme right and concludes that the differend of ‘difference’ exposed the vulnerabilities of postmodern discourse which celebrated ‘diversity’ over ‘equality’ (Flecha 1999).

Biographical Note
Miranda Christou is an Assistant Professor in Sociology of Education at the University of Cyprus. Her research interests focus on questions of nationalism, globalization and the expansion of youth extreme right-wing movements. She has worked on multiple European projects such as: “INCLUD-ed: Strategies for Inclusion and Social Cohesion in Europe from Education” (FP6, ΙP, Integrated Project, 2006-2011) and “SOLIDUS: Solidarity in European Societies: Empowerment, Social Justice and Citizenship” (Horizon2020-Euro-Society-2014, Euro 3-European societies after the crisis, 2015-2018). She has published her work in various journals including Current Sociology, Qualitative Inquiry and British Journal of Sociology of Education. She was co-editor (with Spyros Spyrou) of the book Children and Borders (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).

Christian Fuchs | University of Westminster, UK

Title
Towards a Critical Theory of Nationalism and Contemporary Authoritarian Capitalism

Abstract
This presentation asks: How can we critically theorise nationalism and right-wing authoritarianism today?
In the first part, a criticism of using the notion of “populism” for characterising contemporary far right movements is given and a criticism of the two most-cited books on nationalism is presented: Ernest Gellner’s “Nations and Nationalism” and Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities”.
In the second part, an alternative theoretical approach is presented that focuses on foundations of a critical theory of authoritarianism, nationalism and authoritarian capitalism. It advances a critical concept of nationalism grounded in the works of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Eric J. Hobsbawm. The approach of Rosa Luxemburg as critical theorist of nationalism is discussed in relation to the approaches of Otto Bauer and Lenin.
In the third part, a typology of how nationalist ideology is communicated in the public sphere is presented.
The fourth part presents an analysis of the communication of nationalism in four case studies:
1) Donald Trump’s use of Twitter in the US Presidential Election 2016;
2) user-comments on Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’s Facebook-pages in the 2016 Brexit Referendum;
3) the use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the German Bundestags-election 2017 by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its supporters;
4) user-comments on Facebook posting made by the leaders of the Freedom Party (FPÖ: Heinz Christian Strache) and the Conservative Party (ÖVP: Sebastian Kurz) during the 2017 Austrian general election.
The analysis shows the inherent connection of nationalism, hierarchic leadership, the friend/enemy-scheme, militarism, and patriarchy in contemporary authoritarian ideology.

Biographical Note
Christian Fuchs is a Professor at the University of Westminster. He is the Co-Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) and co-editor of the open access journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique (http://www.triple-c.at). He is a former chair and current board member of ESA RN18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research and was a member of the ESA Executive Committee from 2015-2017, where he was the chair of conference committee planning the 2017 Athens conference. His research focuses on critical sociology and the political economy and critical theory of communication. He is author of books such as Critical Theory of Communication (2016), Reading Marx in the Information Age (2016), Social Media: A Critical Introduction (2nd edition 2017), Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter (2018), and Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (2019, forthcoming).

Farzana Shain | Keele University, UK

Title
Generation 9/11: British Muslim Girls Talk About Their Past, Present And Future Lives

Abstract
Media and policy attention surrounding Muslim girls and young women in Britain has been heavily dominated since 9/11, by a focus on ‘extremism’ and ‘security’ at the expense of other factors that may shape their lives. The literature on the perceived radicalisation of young Muslims (Field, 2011, ISD, 2015) has grown exponentially in the last decade, as has critical terrorism research (Brown, 2008, Spalek and Lambert 2008, McGhee, 2008, Jackson 2009, Lynch 2013). Yet, there are many and varied issues facing young British Muslims from questions of cultural belonging to schooling and employment/unemployment. For example, despite high rates of participation in further and higher education, 71% of Muslim women are not in employment and according to the British Social Mobility Commission (2016), Muslim Pakistani and Bangladeshi women who do work, earn less than their counterparts from other ethnic minority groups. This paper reports the findings of Leverhulme Trust funded research (2017-2019) exploring British Muslim girls’ accounts of growing up and being educated in the shadow of 9/11. Drawing empirically on in-depth interviews and focus groups and theoretically on feminist and postcolonial approaches (Brah and Phoenix 2004, Mirza 2012), the paper explores the strategies that the young women draw on to navigate a range of competing pressures. The analysis offers insights into the cultural, political and economic factors that underpin the interaction of gender/race/religion/class and education in the era in which Muslims are identified primarily through the lens of the ‘war on terror’.

Biographical Note
Farzana Shain is Professor of Sociology of Education at Keele University, England. Her research includes work on education policy and politics, inequalities, education and the ‘war on terror’ and children and young people’s political engagement and activism. Her books include The Schooling and Identity of Asian Girls and The New Folk Devils: Muslim Boys and Education in England. She is one of the Executive Editors of the British Journal of Sociology of Education and is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2017-2019), researching ‘Muslim girls’ accounts of their past, present and future lives’.

organised by RN06 and RN18

With the emergence of new information and communication technologies, a vast share of the work is increasingly conducted and also surveilled digitally. Virtual and digital labour and new information and communication technologies may have clear benefits for society at large, and particularly for employers and consumers. However, they also have high social and ecological costs, which are often inconspicuous and invisible, bringing new risks for the body, mind and health of working people. The interdisciplinary Semi-Plenary will shed light on local, national and global boundaries, barriers and belonging of phenomena such as the gig economy, precarity 4.0, cybertariat, the quantified self in the workplace, and discuss resistance, alternatives and political potentials in digital capitalism and beyond. Regarding (1) boundaries, (2) barriers and (3) belonging in digital capitalism, important questions that will be addressed are as follows:

1) Digital Labour Boundaries: The ways in which digital capitalism is able to externalise social and ecological costs through the global division of digital labour, creating simultaneously inner colonies of primitive accumulation.

2) Digital Labour Barriers: How different working contexts and conditions in digital capitalism shape feelings of autonomy, flexibility and reputation on the one hand, and precariousness, overwork and dissatisfaction on the other.

3) Digital Labour Belonging: How digital workers experience working conditions and how this implicates political realities of class, race and gender, as well the potentials for solidarity, participation and democracy in digital capitalism.

Phoebe Moore | University of Leicester, UK

Title
Artificial Intelligence and Humans as Resource

Abstract
Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) has reached hyped levels simultaneous to concern for human intelligence, as we face seeming intractable social issues caused by decades of technological developments in human resources and algorithmic and surveillant management practices with accelerated integration of the role of technology into workplaces, accompanied by shifts and experimentation in modes and relations of production. From the 1950s, humans have asked to what extent humans should or can compare our minds to machines. Earlier views on AI, so-called ‘GOFAI’, were representationalist, where researchers considered domains of experience to be fixed and context-free, where principles that determine behaviour are systematic. However, this line of reasoning relies on a transcendentalist ontology. This paper argues that the flaws in AI research have been ontological, where human’s bodies and affective labour have not been considered relevant for intelligence and work. How affective resources will be acknowledged within AI practices is yet to be seen.

Biographical Note
Phoebe V Moore is an Associate Professor in Political Economy and Technology at the University of Leicester School of Business, Division of Management and Organisation. Her research looks at the impact of technology on work from a critical perspective. Moore’s most recent book The Quantified Self in Precarity looks at quantification through wearable tracking and algorithmic decision-making as a set of management techniques, with evidence of creative new controls of affective labour and various forms of worker resistance to corporeal capitalism arising. In 2018-19, Moore published one report for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) workers’ bureau, ACTRAV, and will publish one further paper for the European Union agency for Safety and Health (EU-OSHA) on the risks that digitalization and artificial intelligence pose for workers. Previously, she was funded by the British Academy / Leverhulme (2015-2017) to carry out a research project looking at digital tracking in office work in the Netherlands. Alongside her Associate Professorship, in Autumn 2018, Moore is carrying out a research fellowship at the WZB in Berlin working closely with two research groups on artificial intelligence and quantification at the Weizenbaum Institute.

Jamie Woodcock | University of Oxford, UK

Title
Digital Workerism: Tracing the Recomposition of Workers’ Struggle in Digital Labour Capitalism

Abstract
The rise of digital labour capitalism has become a key part of contemporary debates on how work is changing, the future of work/ers, resistance, and organising. Workerism took up many of these questions in the context of the factory – particularly through the Italian Operaismo – connecting the experience of the workplace with a broader struggle against capitalism. There are, of course, many differences between those factories and the new digital workplaces in which many workers find themselves today. However, the methods of workers’ inquiry and the theories of class composition remain a useful legacy from Operaismo, providing tools and a framework to make sense of and intervene within work today. However, these require sharpening and updating in a digital context. This talk discusses the challenges and opportunities for a “digital workerism”, understood as both a method of research and organising. It takes the case study of Uber to discuss how technology can be used against workers, as well as repurposed for their struggles. By developing an analysis of the technical, social, and political recomposition taking place on the platform, it is possible to move beyond determinist readings of technology, to place different technologies within the social relations that are emerging. In particular, the talk focuses on how these new forms of workers’ struggles can be circulated. Through this, the talk argues for a “digital workerism” that develops a critical understanding of how the workplace is becoming a key site for the struggles of digital labour capitalism.

Biographical Note
Dr Jamie Woodcock is a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He is the author of Marx at the Arcade (Haymarket, 2019) about videogames, and Working The Phones (Pluto, 2017), a study of a call centre in the UK – both inspired by the workers' inquiry. His research focuses on labour, work, the gig economy, platforms, resistance, organising, and videogames. He is on the editorial board of Notes from Below and Historical Materialism. 

organised by RN33

Contemporary societies are transforming by opening up to globalization, migration, neo-liberal economies, multi-cultural families, new life styles and flexible gender relations, refugee mobilities, colonial and post-colonial relations, advanced technologies of reproduction and communication, sexualities and LGBT-rights, racism, sexism and ethnic diversities. What was exotic yesterday because it was remote is now present in the hearts of many European societies. Former colonies are independent states participating in global academic and sociological communities. Feminists and gender researchers are increasingly working to provide new forms of reflexivity, gender perspectives and analyzing today’s global and transnational relations with relevant tools, including those of established and new feminisms, gender theories and sociology in general.

In this Semi-Plenary we invite to global dialogues concerning the future of gender research and how new challenges can contribute to expand horizons among feminist and gender oriented sociologists. We invite scholars to propose papers related to following areas where gender research is expanding and developing:

• gender research as multi-dimensional across the individual, interactional and macro-areas of social life,
• intersectional theories to consider how multiple systems of inequalities affect the opportunities, rewards and disadvantages to particular groups as well as how systems of inequality can be co-constitutive
• research on lived experiences of those who identify as trans and genderqueer, shedding light on the problematic nature of considering gender as a strict binary.
   

Elisabetta Ruspini & Rassa Ghaffari | University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy

Title
Millennial Feminisms Between Eastern And Western Cultures. The Case Of Iran

Abstract
The paper aims to analyse the relationship between Millennials and Feminism today, with a specific focus on the Iranian case. The paper will have two parts. The first one will explain who the Millennials are and their standpoints about feminism and gender equality. This will be done through a scientific literature review and a secondary analysis of existing data. On the one hand, Millennials are generally regarded as the most open-minded and interconnected generation in history, and the most supportive of gender equality and LGBT rights (Taylor, Keeter, 2010; Rainer, Rainer, 2011). The Internet has facilitated the creation of transnational, multicultural and multireligious networks (Messina-Dysert, Radford Ruether, 2014; Llewellyn, 2015; Ruspini, Bonifacio, Corradi, 2018). On the other hand, progress in gender equality seems to have led some Millennials to dismiss the feminist movement, supporting women’s rights and gender equality but not identifying themselves as feminists (GenForward, 2018). The second part will explore the development of feminism discourses and practices in Iran, a challenging example of the tension between Eastern and Western cultures. The analysis is based on a thoughtful examination of the scientific literature and in-depth interviews with Millennials men and women, activists and scholars in Iran. The internal debate between secular and Islamic feminisms is a key point not only for the Iranian society but also for the Muslim ones, more generally, and offers a unique opportunity to discuss the development of the concept and its multiple meanings, stances and effects (Vanzan, 2005; Tohidi, 2016).

Biographical Note
Elisabetta Ruspini is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Research from the University of Trento. She is a Board Member of the European Sociological Association Research Network 33 ‘Women’s and Gender Studies’. She is the Scientific Coordinator of “ABCD-Centro Interdipartimentale per gli Studi di Genere/ABCD-Interdepartmental Center for Gender Studies”, University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research interests include: The Social Construction of Gender; Gender Stereotypes and Gender Roles; Gender and the Generation Turnover; Family Change; New Forms of Parenthood; Men and Masculinities; Social Inequalities; Gender and Poverty; Economic Socialization; Gender and Religion; Future Studies. She has published extensively and contributed papers to several national and international conferences/seminars/workshops on gender, generational and family issues. Among her recent publications: (with G. Bonifacio and C. Corradi, eds.) Women and Religion. Contemporary and Future Challenges in the Global Era, Bristol, 2018; Diversity in Family Life. Gender, Relationships and Social Change, Bristol, 2013.

Rassa Ghaffari is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca with a thesis on the representations of gender roles among two generations in Iran. She has been visiting researcher at the Faculty of Oriental Cultures and Languages, University of Oslo, and holds a master’s degree in African and Asian studies. Her research interests include youth studies, generation studies and Iranian culture and society. She was awarded the Cesare Bonacossa scholarship for a field research in 2014 and the Marina Chiola award for the best master’s thesis on gender issues in 2015.

Katarina Giritli Nygren & Angelika Sjöstedt Landén | Mid Sweden University, Sweden

Title
Feminists Responses to Anti-Gender Mobilization – Feminism Against Conservative Threats

Abstract
Our aim with this presentation is to discuss how gender studies and feminism address the diverse contemporary forms of anti-genderism and the growing resistance to pluralistic and inclusive understanding of gender and sexuality. We give examples from the work done in a pilot project (2017) funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences where we did an inventory of feminist initiatives resisting and challenging anti-gender agendas across Europe. The experiences from this project show the differences in challenges facing feminist activists and gender scholars on local levels. It reveals similarities and differences that need to be addressed on a transnational level and with solidarity with the variety of feminist- and anti-racist struggles led by a curiosity of the different conditions that anti-gender initiatives create. How do we account for this while doing solidarity that can cut across regimes of oppression? What are the conditions of possibility for doing border-crossing scholarly cooperation? What are the ways in which we can challenge the different kinds of brick walls that we experience in institutional, national and other contexts, and that we need to get up against for doing transnational cooperation?
We want to emphasize the centrality of collective practices in the production of feminist knowledge and theoretical concepts, providing solid and unique models of activist scholarship. We therefore also think that it is necessary to unsettle binary conceptions of politics as either global or local, central or peripheral and instead try to work to identify how to create chains of equivalence among various feminist struggles.

Biographical Note
Katarina Giritli Nygren is a Professor in Sociology and Director of the Forum for Gender Studies at Mid Sweden University. Her current research addresses different forms of governance relationships with a focus on spatial processes of inclusion and exclusion in terms of gender, class, and ethnicity in different contexts. In her most recent research, she argues for feminist and intersectional analyses of the shifting governmentalities of neoliberal welfare states to elucidate the movement from a welfare to a punitive state with an increased focus on risks and national security.

Angelika Sjöstedt Landén is a PhD in Ethnology and Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Mid Sweden University. She is the director of the human resources undergraduate programme. She has published articles, book chapters, co-edited books and editorials concerning intersectional studies of work life and gender equality policy as well as studies of rural morality and rural resilience including centre and periphery relations. Her work often aims at linking feminist and critical theory with research fields more rarely addressed with such perspectives.

organised by RN35

The right of asylum is among the most contested political issues of our times. This Semi-Plenary aims to contextualize these debates historically and in relation to ongoing global political and economic transformations. Asylum systems have always been heavily intertwined with changing geopolitical formations, orders of belonging, and global inequalities. The Geneva Convention is an outstanding example: drafted in the aftermath of WWII and later adapted to the political context of the Cold War, it clearly bears the mark of its time. Over the past decades, asylum systems have been developed into repressive regimes of detention and deportation throughout the global North. Other legal pathways have likewise been closed for vast parts of the global population after the end of guestworker regimes in the 1970s. Against this backdrop, new forms of resistance have emerged on the side of refugees and of civil society. These movements remain vulnerable and marginalized, but mark an important starting point for reinstating discourses on shared and universal humanity. 

This Semi-Plenary addresses both, the dynamics of contemporary asylum politics and practices of resistance and solidarity. It raises the following questions: How has the political category of "refugee" developed over time? How is it linked with global political and economic developments? What are the implications of the strengthening of the far-right? What position does the European Union develop regarding what have once been considered human rights? What are possible futures of asylum systems? What perspectives are there for building a transnational movement that counters current political trends?

Julia Dahlvik | University of Applied Sciences FH Campus Wien, Austria

Title
On Governing Protection-Seeking People in Europe

Abstract
In this contribution, I first provide a brief overview on how the political category of “refugee” has developed over time and what are its linkages with global political and economic developments. While in the 1980s and 90s the distinctions between economic and political migrants already became increasingly problematic, some scholars agree that today people move between different categories and that the Geneva Convention is inadequate for dealing with today’s situation (Castles 2007, Westra et al. 2015).
In the second part I argue that to understand the logics of today’s asylum system we have to consider the often overlooked level of state administration, where asylum politics are realized on a daily basis. Public officials not only implement policies but also contribute to them by making use of their discretion in implementing public programs and by attributing political meaning to their actions (Lipsky 2010, Fassin 2015). Also judges, when they determine refugee status, ideologically tend to follow either the national or the cosmopolitan paradigm, linked to the concepts of national or universal solidarity respectively (Morris 2010). In this part I will provide some insights from my institutional ethnography in the Austrian asylum authority.
I conclude by exploring the question whether continuous reforms of the asylum system are the best way to deal with the current situation or whether a radical change is necessary. Considering e.g. extreme differences in countries’ recognition rates, which role does the European Union really play in this human rights issue? And which effects do recent attacks on fundamental legal instruments such as the ECHR have?

Biographical Note
Julia Dahlvik earned her PhD in Sociology in 2014 at the University of Vienna, Austria, and currently works at the University of Applied Sciences FH Campus Wien. Her research focuses on migration and asylum, law and society, and organisations. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Stanford and the University of Amsterdam and has been teaching at different Austrian universities. She is a founding member and co-speaker of the Law & Society section of the Austrian Sociological Association and has co-organised annual conferences on migration and integration research in Austria for several years. Julia’s book Inside Asylum Bureaucracy: Organizing Refugee Status Determination in Austria, based on her award-winning dissertation, was recently published with Springer Open Access in the IMISCOE Research Series. Julia has edited and published numerous books and articles; her work has been published in Migration Studies and Urban Research & Practice among others.

Dimitris Parsanoglou | Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

Title
Volunteering for Refugees and the Repositioning of State Sovereignty and Civil Society: The Case of Greece

Abstract
In this presentation, I will focus on Greece and more specifically on the ways in which both state sovereignty and governance have been challenged by solidarity initiatives in unprecedented intensity. Since the beginning of the ‘refugee crisis’, particularly since the spring of 2015, multiple new actors have been playing a substantial role throughout the country wherever emergency conditions occurred. My main research question is to examine the interactions between these different actors and the possible impact of their involvement on the governance of mobility in all its instances, both during and after the ‘refugee crisis’. In other words, I examine to what extent solidarity towards refugees has shifted both the scope of state sovereignty and the limits of citizenship.
My analysis will be based on empirical material gathered from semi-structured in-depth interviews with volunteers and activists who have been working with refugees in different settings in Lesbos and in Athens, as well as with representatives of relevant authorities, e.g. Ministry for Migration Policy, Hellenic Asylum Service etc.
My approach is three-fold: first, I will propose a typology of actors that have been present in the broad field of the ‘management of refugee crisis’. Secondly, I will highlight the motivations, the content and the effects of enacted solidarity both on volunteers and activists themselves and on the socio-political context within which they are acting. Finally, I will analyse the repercussions of the ‘intrusion’ of individual, supranational and non-state actors into services, activities and interventions that belong to the hard sphere of State sovereignty.

Biographical Note
Dimitris Parsanoglou is a Lecturer and Senior Researcher at the Department of Social Policy at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens. He holds a DEA and a PhD in Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has coordinated, as Senior researcher of the Centre for Gender Studies of the Panteion University, the FP7 project “MIG@NET: Transnational Digital Networks, Migration and Gender” and he has taught Sociology at the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies of the University of Crete. He was a Post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Peloponnese, in the framework of the ARISTEIA project “Migration Management and International Organizations: A history of the establishment of the International Organization for Migration”. He is currently coordinating the project “Beyond the ‘refugee crisis’: Investigating patterns of integration of refugees and asylum seekers in Greece”, funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation.

Michaela Benson | Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Title
Brexit and Britain’s Overseas Citizens: Reframing Britishness from Beyond the Borders

Abstract
Brexit has made visible the extent to which political and public understandings of Britishness conceive of it as an identity and citizenship allied to an ‘island nation’, contained by its borders. Yet, Britain’s overseas citizens – its emigrants settled outside Britain and citizens of its former colonies and overseas territories – are conspicuously absent from such understandings. In a period when the question of who counts as British has fuelled major political transformation this talk argues that bringing overseas citizens centerstage offers a powerful corrective to hegemonic constructions of a solely White and/or indigenous Britishness. It builds on critiques that identify the neglect of Britain’s imperial history and the presence of a multi-ethnic polity in the (post-)imperial core within such narratives of indigeneity (see for example, Bhambra 2017; Virdee and McGeever 2018), extending the geographical purview of this perspective to include overseas citizens – who only feature in these debates as and when they enter (or are asked to leave) the British Isles – and Britain’s diasporic population – one of the largest in the world proportional to the resident citizen population in the United Kingdom.
In particular, the talk draws on one element of a broader project looking into Britain’s relationship with its overseas citizens: recent research on what Brexit means to British citizens living in the EU27. Through this focus it offers initial insights into Britain’s ambivalent relationship to its overseas citizens, their inclusion and exclusion from public and political debate, and how a focus on dispersed contemporary geographies of Britishness might challenge contemporary understandings of who counts as British.

Biographical Note
Michaela Benson is Reader in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths and the project lead for BrExpats: Freedom of Movement, Citizenship and Brexit in the lives of Britons resident in the EU27 (https://brexitbritsabroad.com). She has been Visiting Professor at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile (2014) and Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès (2018-19). She is the author of The British in Rural France (2011), which was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2012, and co-author of Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Malaysia and Panama (2018) and The Middle Classes and the City (2015). She has edited 3 volumes and is the author of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. She is currently Managing Editor of The Sociological Review, the longest-standing journal of sociology in Britain. Throughout her career she has been committed to engaging publics with social science research, through public speaking, broadcast and print media, podcasting, and contributions to educational resources.

Gurminder K Bhambra | University of Sussex, UK

Title
European Cosmopolitanism and Atavistic Nationalism: The Twin Conditions of Brexit

Abstract
The European project is commonly argued to be organized around the idea of ‘cosmopolitan Europe’ – a Europe that would distance itself from its recent past by uniting in recognition of its deeper, long-standing institutional commonalities and celebrating its cultural diversity within those commonalities. There is little discussion, however, of the diversity constituted by multicultural others as part of cosmopolitan Europe. This rests on a particular understanding of European history that evades its colonial past. It also disavows examining the consequences of that domination for the contemporary multicultural constitution of European societies – one that those on the far-right see as having been imposed upon them rather than created from Europe’s historical imposition upon others. It is the colonial histories of Europe that have produced its multicultural present – a multiculturalism that over the last five years political leaders have declared to have failed. What does it mean to say that multiculturalism has failed when it is colonialism that created multi-cultural Empires and multicultural European societies? What does it mean to say that multiculturalism has failed when post-colonial European societies continue to be empirically multicultural? What sort of politics does it legitimate? In this talk, I suggest that the failure to acknowledge Europe’s colonial past is responsible precisely for the rise of atavistic nationalism that is central to the politics of Brexit and I ask how could a postcolonial sociology better help us to understand this present.

Biographical Note
Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. Previously, she was Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick and has been Guest Professor of Sociology and History at the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She is author of Connected Sociologies (2014, available open access) and the award-winning Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (2007). She also co-edited a volume on Decolonising the University (2018) and has spoken regularly on the crisis for refugees in Europe and on questions of citizenship in the light of Brexit. She set up the Global Social Theory website (globalsocialtheory.org) to counter the parochiality of standard perspectives in social theory and is co-editor of the social research magazine, Discover Society (discoversociety.org).

Max Haller | University of Graz, Austria

Title
The European Union – The Failure of a Dream? An Ambitious Scenario Disproved by the Brexit

Abstract
My book European Integration as an Elite Process (Routledge 2008) had a question as a subtitle: “The failure of a dream?” In my lecture, I will argue that the Brexit has proven that this scenario came true; it was in fact a massive event of disintegration. The dominant interpretation sees it as the result of an irresponsible behavior of British political elites and an inadequate application of direct democracy. However, against these views, I will argue: (1) Already among the historical ideas about European integration, there were two contrasting views: one of a loose federation of nation states, the other of a new federal, globally powerful state; (2) the political elites pursued European integration secretly along the second model; (3) the Brexit was only the logical consequence of deep doubts of the Britons about the EU; similar doubts had already been expressed by French and Dutch people in 2005 when rejecting the EU constitution. I will not argue that the EU will disintegrate. Rather, European integration has achieved some important aims, although by far not all which are ascribed to her. There exists an alternative, viable vision of European integration which could be attractive also for Britain irrespective if it will remain a member or not. This vision is that of a socio-economic Community of Law. As such a Community, the EU should abstain from all governmental functions, slim down many of its present institutions and strengthen its elements of Citizen’s Initiatives. In this process, also Britain could contribute ideas and support.

Biographical Note
Max Haller, born 1947 in Sterzing (Italy), Dr.phil. Vienna 1974, Dr. phil. habil. Mannheim, Professor of Sociology at the University of Graz (Austria) 1985-2015. He was president of the Austrian Sociological Association and is a member of the Austrian Academy of Science. He was co-founder and Vicepresident of the European Sociological Association and co-founder of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). He was a visiting professor at universities in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Italy, California/USA and Tanzania. He published and edited 40 books and about 250 papers in international sociological journals (incl. AJS, ASR, Revue Française de Sociologie, International Sociology) and readers. His main research areas are social stratification, sociology of European integration, comparative social research, and sociological theory. Recent publications include Ethnic Stratification and Economic Inequality Around the World (with Anja Eder), Ashgate Publishing 2015; Higher Education in Africa. Challenges for Development, Mobility and Cooperation, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2017 (ed. with Anne Goujon and Bernadette Müller).

Vanessa E. Thompson | Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany

Title
Identity Politics and the Crisis of Europe: On Current Articulations of White Reconstructions and the (Im-) Possibilities of an Intersectionality of Struggles

Abstract
The political developments of the last years in various European countries demonstrate that Europe and its democratic values are in crisis. Whether it be the ‘necropolitical’ responses to the flight and movements of those rendered refugees, the continuous rise of the far-right, or the neoliberal securitization of increasing poverty: The normative paradigms that undergird the project of Europe such as freedom, justice and equality are severely put to the test. At the same time, many social and political theorists analyze and explain these troubling formations against the backdrop of socio-economic developments such as neoliberal globalization and increasing economization. Most of these approaches as well as dominant democratic and left political movements signal the need for renewing the 'social question' and call for a return to (white) ‘class politics’ that respond to the fears of those who had been ‘left behind’. However, these discussions often dismiss politics of racialized and minoritized groups and movements, disqualifying their claims as ‘identity politics’ that focus solely on the particular realm of rights. My talk problematizes these approaches, drawing on an actualization of W.E.B. Du Bois’ conception of ‘white wages’ and Gurminder K. Bhambra’s critique of ‘methodological whiteness’. I suggest that these approaches allow for a historicization of the interconnections of racism, colonialism and capitalism, including their gendered logics, that not only challenge the historical wrongs of the European project, but further enable the reconstruction of another Europe through what Angela Davis calls an ‘intersectionality of struggles’.

Biographical Note
Vanessa E. Thompson is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Sociology at Goethe-University Frankfurt. She was previously a fellow at the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching are focused on black studies, critical race and racism studies, post- and decolonial feminist theories and methodologies, gender and queer studies, and social movement theories. Her book project, Solidarities in Black: Anti-Black Racism, Black Urban Activism and the Struggle beyond Recognition in Paris, explores forms of black urban activism and anti-racist mobilizations against anti-black racism in France as well as analyzes the re-production of coloniality through the workings of neoliberal French Republican Universalism. Her current research project focuses on racial gendered policing in Europe and transnational articulations of abolitionist alternatives from a black feminist perspective. Vanessa has published articles on the work of Fanon, black social movements in Germany and France, and racial gendered policing in Europe.

organised by RN01

This Semi-Plenary brings together topics that have traditionally stood at the core of sociological thinking, but that have not always been at the heart of ageing theory and research. Sociological investigation points to the contemporary struggles over the representation of older age within and beyond the realm of the social sciences. Later life and older people are, on one hand, represented as a quiescent minority bearing multiple disadvantages within a social status of limited agency and increasing dependency, experiencing a loss of autonomy and the need to redefine one´s role in the community and society. On the other hand, older people are also seen as a source of new political economic, and cultural ‘grey’ power, as an influential actor in contemporary societies, shaping the contours of new policies and welfare regimes. These debates reflect the diversity of the experiences of ageing selves and the pluralities of life courses as well as of the institutional, political, and social changes with which the personal and individual experience is inseparably interlinked. They also promote the reformulation of concepts of agency, autonomy, or power themselves and to the calling for their even more reflexive application in academic accounts of later life.

The Semi-Plenary invites papers that focus on the dynamics of power and citizenship in later life. Potential papers may, for example, relate to issues of (in)dependence, interdependency and personhood in older age, older persons as (political) actors in contemporary societies or the roles of various stakeholders in ageing related agendas and policies.

Clary Krekula | Karlstad University, Sweden

Title
Ageing, Time and Embodied Relatedness

Abstract
Time is an ever-present dimension of human life, a specific mode of experience and an intrinsic dimension of subjectivity and sociality. Still, however, temporal experiences are often taken for granted rather than being expressed and reflected upon explicitly in everyday life. As a consequence, phenomena of time are not only intertwined with, but also confused with, phenomena of aging, both in everyday life and in research. Accordingly, there is a need to discuss the relationship between time, temporality and aging. By showing how temporal analyses contribute to new theoretical perspectives on central research topics, this paper illustrates the fruitfulness of bringing time and temporality into critical studies on both age and aging.
Based on analyses of qualitative interviews with 25 women and 8 men in Sweden, aged 52–81, who dance on a regular basis, and with a focus on their experiences of passion for dance, the paper discusses temporal dimensions of embodiment and subjectivity. The results shed light on three temporal experiences which create passion: An extended present, the embodied synchronization between the dancers, and experiences of a temporal continuity. Where previous studies on older people’s embodiment have tended to focus on the relation between inner subjectivity and an externally limiting body, these results draw attention to “embodied relatedness”, to the interplay between social and bodily processes, and they illustrate how temporality constitutes a link in these processes. Departing from these results, theoretical considerations on the relationship between temporality and aging will be made.

Biographical Note
Clary Krekula is Professor of Sociology at Karlstad University, Sweden. Her research focuses on critical age studies, ageing from an intersectional perspective, and time and temporality. From these perspectives, she has brought attention to women’s embodied ageing and to age normalities and temporal regimes in work organisations. She is involved in national and international collaborations within these fields and runs the national network AgeS: a Swedish research network, which focuses on developing critical age studies and research on temporality. She is currently conducting research on dynamics of inequality across the life course, self-employment later in life and the social and corporeal aspects of dancing among older people. Her most recent books are Gender, Ageing and Extended Working Life. Cross-National Perspectives (with A. Ní Leime, D. Street, S. Vickerstaff & W. Loretto) and Introduktion till kritiska åldersstudier (Introduction to critical age studies) (with B. Johansson).

Bernhard Weicht | University of Innsbruck, Austria

Title
Agency, Choice And Control Until The End: Investigating The “Good Death”

Abstract
Demographic and epidemiological developments have encouraged investigation into the latest life stages, often marked by dependencies, vulnerabilities and institutional living, with stigmatised deaths in institutions after periods of suffering and dependency functioning as symbolic antithesis to the good life and the proper person. More recently the importance of a “good death” has shifted the focus more explicitly onto the possibilities of choice and control over the end of life. People express their unwillingness to live a life of being a burden and of being dependent on others. In self-imposed withdrawal or requests for assisted dying the ability of agency is being upheld to represent a “good death” and a person’s autonomy. The underlying assumption here is that choice and the ability to plan one’s life until and beyond death confirm the existence of the proper person. While this idea is built around one assumption – the priority of individual separateness and independence – dying preferences and circumstances are shaped in concrete, culturally situated social relations.
In this paper I analyse public discourses in different national contexts to identify the associations, connotations and constructions underlying the concept of the “good death” and the role agency can play in its conceptualisation. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of newspaper debates, I ask in how far debates on euthanasia and assisted dying take up the ideals of choice and control in order to combat the challenges and fears associated with the latest life stage. The paper argues that this reasoning, while upholding the ideal of the good life, often reverts to an individualistic notion and thereby ignoring the social and relational context of old age and dying.

Biographical Note
Bernhard has studied Economics in Vienna/Austria and Social Policy in Nottingham/UK. He holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham where he researched the social and moral construction of care for older people. He continued his work on care and ageing as Marie Curie Fellow at Utrecht University, Netherlands with a project on the intersections of care and migration regimes. Prior to joining the department of Sociology at the University of Innsbruck he worked as lecturer at Leiden University College. He received his Habilitation at the University of Innsbruck in 2018 with his work entitled “A Caring Sociology for Ageing Societies“. Bernhard has published on the construction of care, ideas of dependency, migrant care workers, the intersection of migration and care regimes and the construction of ageing. He is the author of The Meaning of Care (2015) and co-editor of The Commonalities of Global Crisis (2016), both published by Palgrave Macmillan.

organised by RN07 and RN15

Symbolic boundaries are constantly created and contested, generating new patterns of belonging and exclusion, particularly so in the current period of global insecurity. There are strong trends towards essentializing and demonizing Others, as in the cases of multiple illiberal nationalisms and ethnocentrisms, secular and religious (Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, etc.). Symbolic boundaries are mobilised to create and police social, political, economic and material barriers, with often harsh consequences for those on the ‘wrong side’ of dividing lines. Today there is a hardening of multiple borders, within and around ‘Europe’, and between all nation-states. Increasingly extreme forms of anti-cosmopolitanism and de-cosmopolitization create ever more narrow answers to moral-ethical-political questions, like which refugees are ‘legitimate’ and worthy of being rescued from their plight, and do we help only those like ourselves? Simultaneously, neoliberal politicians define domestic populations into groups such as the unemployed, drug addicts, and the poor, rendering them as ‘matter out of place’ that must be dealt with. All this raises questions about how, why, where, by whom, and with which consequences such symbolic work is done, and how are such boundaries dealt with by those who are excluded and included? Yet symbolic boundaries do not only separate people, they also may create forms of trans-border solidarity, such as pro-EU/anti-Brexit sentiments, anti-Trump protests, trans-national Pride events, resistance to far-right and neo-liberal politics, etc.. How do symbolic boundaries operate in the generation of novel patterns of cosmopolitan affiliation and practice? How might they be creating novel intersectional sorts of belonging?

Sabine Trittler | University of Konstanz, Germany

Title
Religious Boundaries of Belonging as a Source for Perceived Discrimination Among Religious Minorities: A Specific Case of Muslims in Secular Europe?

Abstract
Drawing on the concept of symbolic boundaries, this paper examines the consequences of religious and secular boundaries of national belonging among the majority population for the integration of religious minorities in Europe. It directly relates to and extends previous research, which reveals that Muslims report higher levels of perceived discrimination on religious grounds in secular contexts than in regions where Christianity is a more salient marker of national belonging. Three continuative issues are raised and analyzed: Firstly, the point that the results might represent the specific case of Muslims is addressed by extending the analysis to other Christian and non-Christian minorities. Second, the restriction to Western Europe as a highly secular context is overcome by also including Eastern European countries, where in some countries religion constitutes a highly salient marker of the nation. The third part then sorts out other explanatory factors that might influence perceptions of discrimination among religious minorities focusing on the institutional relationship between state and church. To analyze the linkage between religious notions of belonging and perceived discrimination, data from the ISSP pertaining to the majority population have been combined with data related to religious minority respondents from the ESS. Overall, the results of the multilevel models show that secular contexts are perceived as more exclusionary by each of the religious minority group while Muslims represent the most vulnerable. On the other hand, the results suggest that the symbolic boundaries may have different mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, depending on the religious homogeneity of the majority.

Biographical Note
Sabine Trittler is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Konstanz, Germany, who received her doctorate in Social Sciences from the University of Göttingen in 2017. Her research interests lie at the intersection of sociology of religion, nationalism, and integration research and focus on the role of religion as a marker of national belonging in cross-national comparison. As such she is interested in the formation of religious and secular boundaries of belonging, their relationship towards the toleration and integration of immigrants, as well as the perceptions of these symbolic boundaries among the minority populations in Europe. Her work has been published in Nations and Nationalism, European Sociological Review and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Gert Verschraegen | University of Antwerp, Belgium

Title
Status Struggle, Belonging and Symbolic Boundary Work Among Refugees, Established Immigrants and Belgian Natives

Abstract
Symbolic boundary work can be seen as a crucial component in the competition between social groups. By producing symbolic boundaries different groups can produce, maintain, or rationalize status differences and social divides. But symbolic classifications can also be used to bridge existing social boundaries. In recent years numerous studies have documented the “equalisation strategies” individuals use to bridge social and cultural divides, especially when their identities have been spoiled by social stigma (e.g. Lamont, et al., 2016). In this paper I discuss some boundary as well as bridging strategies that are used by (Syrian) refugees, established immigrants and natives in Belgium. Drawing on in-depth interviews, I will describe how different respondents use ‘comparative strategies of selves’ (Sherman, 2005) to construct a dignified, deserving position for themselves by making implicit or explicit comparisons with other groups. The paper shows how different symbolic markers can be used to brighten or blur group boundaries and how boundary work can best be interpreted in the light of the structural positions in which specific groups find themselves, as well as the cultural repertoires they can draw on. It also highlights how people in relatively similar, disadvantaged structural positions (in the eye of the sociologist) do not form alliances as they derive part of their dignity from the moral and cultural differences they perceive between them.

Biographical Note
Gert Verschraegen is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), where he also serves as the head of the department of sociology. His main research interests are in social theory, cultural sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge and the sociology of European integration. His work has appeared in Poetics, Citizenship Studies, Journal of European Social Policy, Futures, Innovation, Journal of Law and Society, Current Sociology and many other journals. His most recent books include Divercities: Dealing with Diversity in Deprived and Mixed Neighbourhoods (2018, Policy Press, edited with Stijn Oosterlynck) and Imagined Futures in Science, Technology and Society (2017, Routledge, edited with Frédéric Vandermoere, Luc Braeckmans en Barbara Segaert).

organised by RN11 and RN25

There are now two specters hanging over Europe. On the one hand we have growing and dynamic social movements, seeking to establish a more inclusive, democratic, egalitarian, tolerant and united Europe, but at the same time, the forces of authoritarian populisms and ethno-religious nationalisms have flourished (for example in Brexit). In this SP we would like to explore the emotional world behind these two types of activism. The adverse effects of neoliberal globalization have led to growing inequality, growing unemployment and various expressions of discontent. From the Arab Spring to Southern Europe, and across the seas to Occupy, progressive movements flourished. Yet, in general, emotions such as hope and the aspirations of the progressive mobilisations soon waned in face of the regained power of neoliberal capital. In the wake of the 2008 implosion, following a massive influx of refugees, coupled with the harsh adversities of neoliberalism, a variety of authoritarian movements mobilised seeking to privilege the “cultural homogeneity” (a.k.a. “purity”) of their societies. The “contested terrain” between the “politics of belonging”, whether conducted via democratic left or authoritarian right populisms, will be fought between progressive social movements “mobilising for dignity” and reactionary mobilisations impelled by ressentiment. This contestation involves a large array of emotions that act both as motivating and sustaining factors for activism.

Lauren Langman | Loyola University of Chicago, USA

Title
Justice or Vengeance? Capitalism, Crises and the Contemporary Social Movements

Abstract
The first of the Internet mediated social movements, the Zapatistas of Chiapas, was one of the first social movements to garner worldwide attention and support. This was soon followed by the Battle of Seattle that marked the rise of global justice movements resisting the inequities of neoliberal globalization. These various “mobilizations for human dignity” were preparing the networking culminating in the World Social Forum as well as inspiring subsequent mobilizations such as the Arab Spring or Occupy protests against neoliberalism and its retrenchments from social spending, while corporate profits mushroomed along with growing inequality and precarity. The various crises of global capital evoke powerful emotions that dispose support for, if not participation in the various rhizomatic expressions of resistance and protest. But progressive changes in society often evoke fear and uncertainty among the more conservative segments of the society, disposing reactionary movements to thwart progressive change, limit immigration, and restore a glorious past. There is a dialectic of progressive movements seeking equality, freedom, justice, democracy and universal dignity, versus reactionary mobilizations based on fear, anger and ressentiment. These ascendant reactionary movements now threaten democracy, human rights and the rules of law which enabled Enlightenment based modernity. As will be argued, the various legitimation crises of the modern social system are evident in the dialectic between progressive social justice movements that seek a more democratic, inclusive egalitarian society versus the various authoritarian populisms that would save or restore exclusive, intolerant rulebound hierarchies. What must be noted is that both left and right mobilizations are impelled by powerful emotions.

Biographical Note
Lauren Langman, Professor of Sociology, Loyola University of Chicago, Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, has long worked in the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, especially relationships between culture, identity and politics/political movements. He is the past President of RC36 Alienation Research Committee of the ISA, past chairman of the Marxist section of the ASA. His publications deal with globalization, alienation, identity, hegemony, global justice movements, reactionary movements, nationalism and national character. Recent publications include Trauma Promise and Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation, with Devorah Kalekin, Alienation and Carnivalization with Jerome Braun and editing a special issue with Tova Benski, of Current Sociology on Arab Spring, the Indignados and Occupy. His latest books are God, Guns, Gold and Glory and Inequality in the 21st C: Marx, Piketty and Beyond. He is on several editorial boards, including Critical Sociology, Sociopedia, and Current Perspectives in Social Theory.

Sylvia Walby | City University of London, UK

Title
Rethinking Concepts for Social Mobilisations around Brexit and the EU: Projects, Violence and the Political Economy of the World System

Abstract
Theorisation of the social mobilisations around Brexit and the European Union requires addressing three debates about concepts. First, the concept of ‘project’ is preferred to the concept of ‘identity’ to avoid a tendency to cultural essentialism. Second, the significance and distinctiveness of violence as a form of power, with its own rhythm, temporality and emotionality needs to be addressed; rather than blurring the distinction between different forms of power. Third, the significance of contesting hegemons in the political economy of the world system needs to be addressed, not only nations, nationalism and nation-states. The empirical focus of the paper concerns the competing projects active in processes of Brexit and Europeanisation. This requires the theorisation of the EU as a would-be hegemon in the world system. Understanding the EU requires theorisation of the relationship of violence to political economy. The understanding of the emotions threaded through the Brexit process requires this analysis of the relationship of violence to political economy.

Biographical Note
Professor Sylvia Walby has worked at City University of London as Professor of Sociology and Director of the interdisciplinary Violence and Society Centre since 1 March 2019. She was previously at Lancaster University where she was Distinguished Professor of Sociology, held the UNESCO Chair in Gender Research, and was Director of the Violence and Society UNESCO Centre. Sylvia was the founding President of the European Sociological Association, elected after chairing the steering committee to establish the association. She has been President of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee RC02 on Economy and Society. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Professor Walby was awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities and diversity. She is Chair of the REF Sub-Panel for Sociology.

organised by RN12 and RN22

Since Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) introduced the term Anthropocene indicating that humanity has started to fundamentally shape their geology, the notion of the Anthropocene has become widespread in public and scholarly debate (Lorimer 2016). When Geologists in April 2016 officially agreed on that a new epoch has begun, the notion of the Anthropocene had already entered the cultural stock of knowledge. Mainly based on developments in Earth Systems Science and research around climate change, the term Anthropocene has become a metaphor for a changed social consciousness of human-environment relations. The insight that humanity fundamentally alters its natural environment is not a new idea. Within sociology, since the 1980s Ulrich Beck had started to argue that we live in a Risk Society which is characterized by the risks which accompany our technological successes. These risks have become so pervasive they even would threaten the existence of humanity altogether (Beck 1999, 2009). The uncertainty and non-knowledge involved in climate risk may require new strategies. This raises the question to what extent the notion of the Anthropocene expresses a change of the ways how humanity deals with risk and uncertainty. Does the notion of the Anthropocene alter social awareness of the natural environment and, if yes, how? What are the consequences for (world) society? The two keynotes address these questions from the perspective of the sociology of risk and uncertainty and environmental sociology.

Linsey McGoey | University of Essex, UK

Title
The Hierarchy of Ignorance: Corporate Impunity in Historical Context

Abstract
This talk looks at the ways that corporations have historically evaded responsibility for harms to people and the environment. Drawing on the history of ideas and the growing genre of research known as ‘ignorance studies,’ the talk first examines early modern concerns about corporate impunity raised by late enlightenment thinkers such as Burke, Smith and Wollstonecraft. I then turn to the present era, exploring recent concerns over corporate malfeasance and global supply chains. I suggest the concept of a ‘hierarchy of ignorance’ is useful for examining the stratified ways that different stakeholders draw on strategic ignorance to their advantage. Finally, I make a number of general theoretical points about the value and utility of ignorance in corporate realms.

Biographical Note
Linsey McGoey is an Associate Professor in social theory and economic sociology at the University of Essex. She is recognized internationally for playing a pioneering role in the establishment of ignorance studies, an interdisciplinary field focused on exploring how strategic ignorance and the will to ignore have underpinned economic exchange and political domination throughout history. She is author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift (Verso, 2015) and The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World (Zed, 2019). She is a founding co-editor of the Routledge Research in Ignorance Studies book series, and is a member of the core editorial board at Economy and Society.

Jens Zinn | University of Melbourne, AU and Mid-Sweden University, SE

Title
The Production of Nature: Towards a Risk-Taking Society

Abstract
In scholarly and public debate the notion of nature is shifting from something that is naturally given and can be (freely) exploited, to being at-risk and in need of protection against technological and economic developments, to eventually considering nature as requiring active shaping and thereby necessitating risky decision-making or risk-taking under conditions of uncertainty. The presentation traces these developments in science and social science.
The announcement of the Anthropocene scientifically acknowledges the human influence on nature has become so substantial that it is justified to speak about a new geological epoch. In environmental sociology the dominance of a protective approach to nature has given way to a growing variety of approaches including strategies to restore nature in areas where it has already been destroyed. There are a number of branches in economics to find ways using market mechanisms for organising a more sustainable use of natural resources without substantially compromising economic growth. Indeed, many of these and other debates are complex and controversial. Climate change deniers and supporters of exploitative approaches of nature remain influential.
The presentation suggests, to the degree public debate and natural degeneration move towards a world where nature can no longer be merely protected but is increasingly actively produced and socially allocated, risk taking becomes endemic and secondary risks more frequent. In the conclusions I discuss social challenges and consequences of these developments.

Biographical Note
Jens O. Zinn is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Melbourne and Guest Professor at the Sociology Department and the Risk and Crisis Research Centre at Mid-Sweden University. He researches how societies, organisations and individuals perceive and respond to risk and uncertainty. In a recent initiative he develops conceptual tools to better understand risk taking. In an interdisciplinary research project, he examines how language and the social combine in the changing discourse-semantics of risk. In 2015 the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation awarded him the Friedrich-Wilhelm Bessel Price. Zinn founded two international risk networks within the International Sociological Association in 2006 (TG04) and within the European Sociological Association in 2005 (RN22) and headed these networks for many years. In ‘Living in the Anthropocene: Towards a Risk-Taking Society.’ Environmental Sociology 2(4) he discusses environmental degeneration from a risk perspective.

organised by the ESA President Sue Scott and RN23

Diane Richardson | Newcastle University, UK

Title
Making and Unmaking Sexual Citizenship: From Past, Present to Future

Abstract
Over the last two and a half decades the literature on the interrelations between sexuality and citizenship has rapidly expanded to become an important area of study across a number of disciplines, including sociology. Associated with this, sexual citizenship has become a key concept in the social sciences. It describes the rights and responsibilities of citizens in sexual and intimate life, including debates over equal marriage and women’s human rights, as well as shaping thinking about citizenship more generally. Sexualities is also, increasingly, a discourse of human rights with growing global concerns for ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ (SOGI) issues. This body of work extends beyond sexuality and citizenship studies and connects to a wide range of issues central to sociological enquiry including: understandings of identity and community; equality; neoliberalism and governmentality; individualization; nationalisms; and processes of globalization. Yet, while sexual citizenship is a term that is used by more and more people in a plurality of contexts, it is increasingly voiced uncritically. What does it mean in a continually changing political landscape of gender and sexuality? It is time for a critical rethink that encompasses a de-centering of a ‘western-centric’ focus, and considers the implications for future conceptual and empirical development, as well as for political activism.

Biographical Note
Diane Richardson is Professor of Sociology in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is internationally recognised for her work in the areas of feminism and the sociological study of gender and sexualities. Her recent research explores issues of identity, citizenship, recognition and belonging, and debates about equality. Her book Sexuality and Citizenship (2018, Polity) was based on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship project entitled Transforming Citizenship?: Sexuality, Gender and Citizenship Struggles. Other books include Rethinking Sexuality; Contesting Recognition: Culture, Identity and Citizenship (with J. McLaughlin and P. Phillimore); Intersections Between Feminism and Queer Theory (with J. McLaughlin and M. Casey); and Sexuality, Equality and Diversity (with S. Monro). A fifth edition of Introducing Gender and Women’s Studies, co-edited with Vicki Robinson, will be published in 2020. With Vicki, she also co-edits Palgrave Macmillan’s international book series Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences.

Greg Thorpe | Manchester Pride, UK

Title
Pride, Past and Present: Links with Arts and Culture in Manchester

Abstract
The origins of the Pride movement around the world lie in the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 in New York City. The contested histories of that singular event and the subsequent evolution of Gay and the LGBT+ Pride play out in various ways to this day in the different ways that people continue to be marginalised in society and within LGBT+ communities. Manchester Pride has unique roots in both this historical tradition and in a grassroots community response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
The second part of my talk will introduce Superbia, the year-round programme of arts and culture from Manchester Pride. This is a unique project which curates and supports queer arts all year round, including a dedicated Grants programme and community partnerships for Greater Manchester. It could become a model for such activities across Europe and elsewhere.

Biographical Note
Greg Thorpe is the Project Manager for Superbia, the year-round programme of culture from Manchester Pride. The project curates, supports and promotes LGBT+ culture in Manchester and operates a grant programme for any work that is by, for or about LGBT+ communities in the ten boroughs. Greg is also a writer, artist and independent curator, and works for the independent artist community Islington Mill in Salford. 

Roman Kuhar | University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Title
Anti-Gender Movements in Europe

Abstract
Numerous countries in Western and Eastern Europe, in Latin America and in some other parts of the world have recently been faced with a fierce opposition to ensuring rights deriving from intimate/sexual citizenship issues. Mass protests against marriage equality, reproductive rights, gender mainstreaming and sexual education have centralised around the so called "gender theory" or "gender ideology". It is explained that the very notion of "gender" is in fact a hidden plan of "radical" feminists and LGBT activists, a new type of Marxism, aiming at nothing less than a cultural revolution: a post-binary gender world, where there is no place for "natural families", masculinity, femininity etc. "Gender theory" has become an empty signifier, an all-inclusive and catch-all mobilising tool, used by various (religious) groups, political parties and even state establishments to prevent equality policies from being adopted and implemented.
The contribution will map out and explore the emergence, the content and the effects of the "gender ideology" (or "gender theory") discourse. It will examine how an academic concept of gender became a mobilising tool for neo-conservative social movements and massive street demonstrations and how the concept of human rights, which has been used until recently by the proponents of gender and LGBT equality, is now being (ab)used by neo-conservative actors.

Biographical Note
Roman Kuhar is professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and teaches courses on gender, sexuality, popular culture and everyday life. Currently he is the dean of the Faculty of Arts and the head of the research programme The Problems of Autonomy and Identity in the Times of Globalization.
He is the author of several books, among others Media Construction of Homosexuality, co-author (with A. Švab) of The Unbearable Comfort of Privacy and co-editor (with J. Takács) of Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe and (with D. Paternotte) of Anti-gender Campaigns in Europe: mobilizing against equality (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017. Translation into French: Campagnes anti-genre en Europe: des mobilisations contre l'égalité, 2018, Presses Universitaires de Lyon). He is also one of the associate editors at Social Politics (Oxford University Press).

organised by RN04 and RN30

Youth participation in public space is often misunderstood, and children’s political subjectivity and agency are frequently overlooked entirely. These misperceptions apply in sociology as well as in lay discourse. This joint Semi-Plenary between the Childhood (04) and Youth (30) Research Networks seeks to enlarge our understanding, by exploring the connections between two major collaborative studies recently completed in Europe and beyond. The Connectors project (2014-19, ERC funded) studied the development of children’s everyday practices of participation in three cities (London, Athens, Hyderabad). The Partispace research (2015-18, EU funded) looked at the spaces and styles of youth participation in eight European cities (Bologna, Eskişehir, Frankfurt, Gothenburg, Manchester, Plovdiv, Rennes, Zurich). In relation to the main conference theme, both studies were framed by inquiry into the boundaries and barriers (geographical, socio-economic and ideological) that define, and confine, child and youth participation and political agency; both also found that aspects of belonging – to family, to neighbourhood, to peer group and to cultural tradition – were crucial in understanding the different ways in which children and young people engage. (Both studies also looked beyond Europe – to Turkey and to India.) The Semi-Plenary will include presentations from leading members of the two projects, drawing out the wider implications for our understanding of children and young people’s place in society and politics. It will provide an opportunity to explore together the connections and differences between the forms and repertoires of participation for young children and those moving into adulthood, and how we may understand these phenomena more deeply, particularly in the context of major social and political change in Europe.

Sevasti-Melissa Nolas | Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Title
Entanglements that Matter: Stretching the Political with the Help of the Connectors Study Children

Abstract
What are the intersections of childhood and public life? What could we learn about politics and political theory if we were to closely look at children's everyday lives and practices? The presentation focuses on the distillation of a 3-year long, international ethnographic study which took place simultaneously in three cities (Athens, Hyderabad and London). Taking a multimodal ethnographic approach, the ERC funded Connectors Study focused on the everyday lives of 45 five- to eight-year-olds, and their families, during the period between 2014-2017, a historical moment most often referred to as one of political and economic ‘crisis’. The children, and their families, who participated in the study were emblematic of a variety of urban experiences, family histories and trajectories. In moving out of institutional moments and spaces and joining children in their everyday lives, the presentation explores the idea and possible meanings of ‘a political child’ and its implications for political theory. In particular, I will focus on the sensory and embodied ways in which children encounter, experience, and engage in public life (broadly defined) and make some suggestions about how these sensory and embodied encounters might push political theory beyond the discursive (talk) and the cognitive (opinion).

Biographical Note
Sevasti-Melissa Nolas is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research areas include: human agency and lived experience, childhood, youth and family lives, civic and political practices across the life course, and publics creating methodologies. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC funded Connectors Study and the co-editor of entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography.

Ilaria Pitti | Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow at Örebro University, Sweden

Title
Youth and Politics: Avoiding or Appropriating?

Abstract
Over the last 30 years, youth studies have argued in favor of the need to pay more attention and give more recognition to the less traditional forms through which young people participate in the public space. This debate has expanded common definitions of youth participation beyond the classic tools and contexts of representative democracy. The diffusion of a broader understanding of youth participation has not only changed adults’ and institutions’ views on youth engagement, but it has also increased young people’s awareness of the participative meanings of a series of apparently non-participative actions such as dancing, drawing graffiti, playing sport or cheering. In this scenario, the boundaries between the “political”, the “social”, and the “private” have become more and more blurred, while the use (or not) of the adjective “political” to describe a given action has often become a matter of choice.
Between 2015 and 2019, the Horizon 2020 project has investigated youth practices of participation in eight European cities through ethnography and biographical interviews. Considering these materials, the presentation will propose a reflection on the relationship young people have with the concept of “politics”. By exploring when and how the adjective “political” is used by young people to describe their practices in the public space, the presentation intends to highlight parallel tendencies to avoid and re-appropriate politics by younger generations. Results invite to rethink common understandings of participation and the public sphere.

Biographical Note
Ilaria Pitti is Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow at Örebro University (Sweden) and Vice-President (Southern Europe) of ISA’s RC34 “Youth Studies”. Her academic research is located at the crossroad between youth and social movement studies, focusing on the analysis of young people’s participation in social movement organisations and subcultures. She is also interested in the effects of precariousness on young people’s lives and on young people’s individual and collective reactions to precariousness. On these topics, she has conducted research mostly through qualitative methods, participating in national and international projects (Horizon 2020 projects Partispace and Youthblocs). Her most recent publications include the book Youth and Unconventional Political Engagement (2018) and the article "Being women in a male preserve: an ethnography of female football ultras" (2018, Journal of Gender Studies).  

organised by RN11, RN20 and RN32

In recent years, boundaries have become an ever more present concept, both in everyday political practice and in scholarly analysis. In both domains, however, the meaning of boundaries and what they are used for has considerably expanded beyond the classical notions such as nation-state borders. In social science analyses, boundary is increasingly used as metaphorical concept and has been applied to phenomena that have been conventionally studied with other concepts such as categorization or identification. How can we make sense of boundaries beyond a metaphorical use of the term? Where should we locate the specific analytical strength of the term boundary?

This Semi-Plenary aims to address the question of how to conceptualize boundaries as something existent and consequential, something real and felt, as something people actually are confronted with, actively produce and reproduce and (are forced to) engage with. It will not only consider economic and political dimensions, but also the emotional dimensions of boundary making especially as they relate to social, cultural and symbolic processes.

There is a need to address the challenge to conceptualize boundaries in a way that is empirically accessible to qualitative and quantitative methods. And a critical reflection is needed on the relationship between terms that are used both for scholarly analysis and the political practice (as boundary is): How do we conceive of and empirically study boundaries without reproducing boundaries in problematic ways?

Both speakers have extensive experience in studying processes of differential affiliation along various lines such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, but also along boundaries of political movements. They will discuss how institutions, different national(ist) ideologies, cultural frameworks and social conditions shape how boundaries become relevant and significant phenomena – particularly (but not only) in the everyday life-worlds of our societies.

Ruth Wodak | Lancaster University, UK and University of Vienna, Austria

Title
Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Racialization of Space

Abstract
Processes of inclusion and exclusion, of racialization of space and culturalization of debates, frequently involve conflicting discourses, narratives, and related identities about bordering, about access and rejection, and – more recently – about constructing new walls. These discourses are consistent with fundamental claims of critical discourse studies (CDS) – that is, that discourses and social realities are mutually constitutive and that discursive practices may have major ideological effects, helping to produce and reproduce unequal power relations and legitimize inclusion and exclusion; particularly in regard to ethnic and religious minorities, refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers. In this lecture, I discuss the securitization, economization, and moralization of borders via specific discursive forms of argumentation and legitimation of exclusion, and then turn to one example: I briefly summarize Donald Trump’s argumentation for building a wall in order to keep Latin American (primarily Mexican) migrants out of the US. In the conclusion, I reflect on the resemiotization of discourses about exclusion via borders and walls, and their continuous reinforcement via a politics of fear.

Biographical Note
Ruth Wodak is Emerita Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, and affiliated to the University of Vienna. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996 and an Honorary Doctorate from University of Örebro in Sweden in 2010. She is member of the British Academy of Social Sciences and of the Academia Europaea. Her research interests focus on discourse studies; language and/in politics; prejudice and discrimination; and on ethnographic methods of linguistic field work. Recent book publications include The Handbook of Language and Politics (Routledge 2018, with B. Forchtner); The Politics of Fear. What Right-wing Populist Discourses Mean (Sage, 2015; translation into the German Politik mit der Angst. Zur Wirkung rechtspopulistischer Diskurse. Konturen, 2016), and The Discourse of Politics in Action. Politics as Usual (2011 Palgrave).

Elijah Anderson | Yale University, USA

Title
Living While Black: What Black Folk Know

Abstract
In the United States, almost every black person has experienced the sting of disrespect on the basis of being black, and with forces of nationalism on the rise in Europe and beyond, more and more black people are experiencing this beyond the U.S. as well. A large but undetermined number of black people feel acutely disrespected in their everyday lives, enduring discrimination they see as both subtle and explicit. In the ongoing balancing act between cosmo (cosmopolitan) and ethno (ethnocentric) forces all around the world, the cosmopolitan frame is coming under attack. In the face of this reality, black people worldwide manage themselves in a largely white-dominated society, and particularly in the white space, learning and following as best they can the peculiar rules of a racially subordinate existence.

Biographical Note
Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University. He is one of the leading urban ethnographers and cultural theorists in the United States. His publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999), winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society; Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of Urban Sociology; and the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner (1978; 2nd ed., 2003). Anderson’s most recent ethnographic work is The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (2011). Professor Anderson is the recipient of a number of prestigious professional awards, including the Merit Award from the Eastern Sociological Society, the Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award and the W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association.

organised by RN27 and RN34

The sudden arrival of asylum seekers and refugees in Southern European countries has led to various social changes. Controversies as well as increasing anti-immigrant feelings have erupted, but a continuing commitment to the new arrivals has also occurred. Migration is a crucial issue in the public debate of several EU countries and especially for those who are in the Mediterranean region: this is visible in everyday life in many towns and cities. The Semi-Plenary aims at discussing to what extent Southern European societies cope with the increasing challenges of cultural and religious diversities and deal with the current migratory waves.

The game of inclusion and social cohesion is really played out on the field of integration policies at a local level, including socio-economic relations between natives and immigrants, long-term residents and new arrivals, old and young, first and second generations. Obviously cities and neighbourhoods differ as to the composition of their population and their immigration rate, socio-demographic characteristics, initiatives and opportunities available to support integration processes, and also as to modalities of relations with the general citizenry and consequent social-cohesion processes. In other words, they differ according to so-called “local integration policies”. They differ also in the way how they avoid the risks of conflicts on the basis of ethnic, religious, cultural diversity and gender. We are facing with an era where the pivotal issue is shifting from integration to clash, from open-welcoming to close-borders in a general scenario where local/national citizens often fear the foreigner/immigrant.

The Semi-Plenary is concerned with contemporary policies of redefining barriers and boundaries in accessing rights and gaining inclusion opportunities.

Maurizio Ambrosini | University of Milan, Italy

Title
Fortress Europe? The Governance of International Migrations and Asylum as a Battleground

Abstract
The governance of immigration has been presented in recent literature as a multilevel process, where different actors play a role. As a consequence, not only national governments, but also local institutions are more involved in immigration policies, not only on the more traditional ground of provision of services, but also in the more recent and harsher ground of migration control.
Northern Italy has supplied many materials to research on local policies of exclusion. Local policies of exclusion have been redirected in recent years towards a particular category of immigrants, namely asylum seekers, representing them as dangerous, undeserving and welfare scroungers. But these policies do not remain unchallenged. On the other side, local actors from the civil society mobilize in favour of the reception of refugees and immigrants. Four types of civil society’s actors can be detected: NGOs and other specialized organizations, such as social cooperatives; other civil society actors (CSOs), such as trade unions, religious institutions, associations of volunteers; social movements with radical stances; spontaneous groups and private citizens, without any affiliation.
The governance of immigration, especially at local level, can be defined as a battleground, in which different actors take part, according with various economic interests, social bonds, moral values and political beliefs. The practical governance of immigration and asylum is influenced by these different interests and visions.

Biographical Note
Maurizio Ambrosini, Phd in Sociology (1989), is Professor of Sociology of Migrations at the University of Milan. He gives courses also at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France) and at the Italian campus of the Stanford University. He is the editor of the journal Mondi Migranti and the Director of the Summer School of Sociology of Migrations (Genoa). His main interests cover immigrants’ labour markets, irregular migrations, ethnic entrepreneurship, migration policies, refugees studies. He is the author of more than 250 articles, chapters and books, published in different languages and in several leading scientific journals. Recently he published Irregular Migration in Southern Europe: Actors, Dynamics and Governance (Palgrave, 2018). He is responsible of the Italian unit of the European project MAGYC (H2020 program), on the governance of international migrations. In 2017 he has been appointed as an expert at the National Council of Economy and Labour (CNEL) of Italy.

Camille Schmoll | University of Paris Diderot, France

Title
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? The Spatial Politics of Visibility and Everyday Life in Southern European Localities

Abstract
In recent years, spatial strategies – such as dispersal, confinement and concentration, immobilization and forced movement – have been crucial to the managing of migration flows and its visibility/invisibility in Southern Europe. In this paper, I develop a spatial grammar of migration management, in order to better grasp the territorialized dimension of migration policies and its impact on everyday life in Southern European localities. My paper focuses on three types of localities: villages and small cities; large metropolises and islands. Using examples borrowed from scenes of ordinary life in public and private spaces, I show how migration governance intersects with regimes of visibility and legitimacy at the local scale. I argue for accounts of recent migration crisis that are more cognizant of the processes of rescaling of migration governance and the embodied dimension of migration policies, in a context characterized by a repressive turn and the intensification of border enforcement.

Biographical Note
Camille Schmoll is an Associate Professor in geography at University of Paris Diderot, member of the CNRS team “Géographie-cités” and a fellow of Institut Convergences Migrations. In 2017, she was appointed member of the scientific commission in charge of the permanent exhibition at Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. Her research topics include migration policies; urban approaches to migration patterns; cosmopolitanism and borders; gender, generation and the family in international migration; qualitative methods. She published several articles in this field in the most outstanding international journals and co-edited the following books: Méditerranée. Frontières à la dérive (2018, Le Passager Clandestin); Migrations en Méditerranée (with Wihtol de Wenden and Thiollet, 2015, CNRS), Gender Generations and the Family within International Migration (with Kofman, Kraler, and Kohli, 2011, AUP); Stranieri in Italia. La generazione dopo (with Barbagli, 2011, Il Mulino). She is writing a book on Gender and Migration in the Mediterranean (La Découverte).