[ecrea] Migration studies in the digital era- Antwerp 2019 CFP

*-Migration studies in the digital era-*a workshop on qualitative digital
research methodologies and the study of mobilities



Thursday, Feb. 14th  to Friday, Feb.15th, 2018

Organisers: Fiona Seiger and Christiane Timmerman

The digital is intertwined with most aspects of social life today and bears
consequences for researching the social regardless of whether it is the
researcher’s central topic of study or not. While questions pertaining to
the importance and effects of technological innovations in social science
research date back to at least the late 1990s, the speed at which new
technologies and their practices develop, demands regular updates . This
international workshop seeks to address how the digital features in our
conception of questions about the social world with a particular focus on
migration studies.

Based on empirical research, we invite papers that rethink issues of
methodology in the study of mobility and `the digital´. Papers should
include an inquiry into one or more of the *following questions*:

•                  How does `the digital´ change the way we approach
qualitative research, and do we need to adjust our methodological toolkit?

•                  How do we engage with `the digital´ ontologically and
epistemologically?

•                  What are the ethical concerns and limitations in using
digital methods, particularly when studying mobility?

•                  What information produced online can we as researchers
make use of:

o   What data can we, ethically, collect (i.e. problem of consent vs.
informed consent)?

o   How do we critically assess digital data?

We encourage paper proposals from various disciplines including, but not
limited to, social and cultural anthropology, sociology, human geography,
communication studies and the digital humanities by early and mid-career
scholars.

As we aim to create a platform for in-depth discussion, selected papers
will be grouped into one of three sessions, each led by an expert in the
field. The questions below serve as a guide.

*Session 1 **Studying mobility through digital tools **:: with Paolo S.H.
Favero*

•                  What questions can digital research address and what
answers can it deliver?

•                  What insight do we gain from bringing together the study
of physical mobility and digital space/digital technologies?

*Session 2 **Migrant trajectories and experiences of (im)mobility **:: with
Koen Leurs*

•                  What can researching `the digital´ tell us about the
social world of migrants? What can `the digital´ tell us about social
phenomena pertaining to mobility?

•                  Are there `regimes of mobility´ within digital space?
And if so, how do these intertwine with the material world? How do they
inform one another?

*Session 3 **Challenges and limitations of digital research in the context
of mobility studies **:: with Christine Hine*

•                  What are the limitations and challenges in doing digital
research and how can we address them? What are the limitations of the
knowledge gained through digital research?

•                  What errors have we committed while conducting digital
research and what have we learned from them?

 *Abstracts for papers* (max. 300 words) and a short biographical note
including your institutional affiliation and positon, should be sent via
e-mail as Word.doc attachment by *Sunday, November 4th*

Decisions will be communicated within the two weeks that follow.

*Accepted abstracts* should be turned into preliminary papers (3000 words)
and sent by *Sunday, January 20th.*

Please e-mail your abstracts and papers to Dr Fiona Seiger at
fiona-katharina.seiger[at]uantwerpen.be
<(fiona-katharina.seiger /at/ uantwerpen.be)>  .

*Should you have a preferred session(s), please indicate your preference(s)
upon abstract submission.*
About

*Christiane Timmerman* is a full professor at the University of Antwerp
and, as Research Professor (ZAPBOF), acts as the academic director of the
Centre for Migration and Intercultural Studies (CeMIS – University of
Antwerp) that focuses on multidisciplinary research on migration,
integration and ethnic minorities. In her function as director of CeMIS,
she has built extensive experience coordinating large-scale research
projects on international migration and integration.

*Christine Hine *is a Reader in Sociology at the University of Surrey. Her
main research centres on the sociology of science and technology with a
particular focus on the role played by new technologies in the knowledge
construction process. She has a major interest in the development of
ethnography in technical settings and in "virtual methods" (the use of the
Internet in social research). In particular, she has developed mobile and
connective approaches to ethnography that combine online and offline social
contexts.  She is the author of *Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded,
Embodied and Everyday* (Bloomsbury, 2015), *Virtual Research Methods* (Sage,
2013), *Understanding Qualitative Research: the Internet* (Oxford
University Press, 2012), and *Virtual Ethnography* (Sage, 2000).

*Fiona-Katharina Seiger *has worked with migrant women in Japan, return
migrants in the Philippines and  transnationally mobile youth for over a
decade. She is now eager to shake up her usual conceptual and
methodological approaches, having developed a fascination for `the digital´
in research and the many questions arising from it.  Fiona holds a PhD in
Sociology from the National University of Singapore and currently works as
a post-doctoral researcher at CeMIS at the University of Antwerp. Prior to
joining CeMIS, Fiona was based at Kyoto University where she conducted
research as a  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
post-doctoral fellow.

*Jamie Coates *is an anthropologist who joined the University of Sheffield
permanently in 2018 after having previously worked at Sheffield, Waseda
University, Osaka University and Sophia University. He specialises in the
cultural anthropology of China and Japan and combines visual and digital
ethnography with historical and textual analysis to explore the
relationship between technology, mobility and imagination in urban
Northeast Asia. Jamie is currently investigating how media and migration
re-scale local imaginaries in the Sino-Japanese context. Through this
interest, Jamie increasingly engages with wider questions of how digital
technologies are changing relationships and personhood in East Asia, as
well as how digital East Asia challenges current debates in the social
sciences and humanities.

*Koen Leurs* is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate Gender Program,
Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University. He works on digital
migration studies and has recently published *Digital Passages. Migrant
Youth 2.0. Diaspora, Gender & Youth Cultural Intersections* (Amsterdam
University Press, 2015). Currently, he is co-editing the Sage *Handbook of
Media and Migration*. He is the chair of the European Communication
Research and Education (ECREA) Diaspora, Migration and the Media section.

*Paolo S.H. Favero* is Associate Professor in Film Studies and Visual
Culture at the University of Antwerp. A visual anthropologist, he has
devoted his career to the study of visual culture in India (and Italy). His
core interest is the role of images (new and old) in human life but he is
also a specialist of the integration of new technologies within
ethnographic methods. He has also has designed a digital tool for
conducting emplaced participatory ethnographic work. Paolo is an active
photographer and filmmaker and is the author of *The Present Image: Visible
Stories in a Digital Habitat* (Palgrave Macmillan) and *Dentro ed Oltre
l’Immagine: saggi sulla cultura politica e visive nell’Italia
contemporanea *(Meltemi).

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