[ecrea] CFP Diaspora, migration and the media ECREA section workshop

 CALL FOR PAPERS
 ECREA Diaspora, migration and the media section
 University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
 “MIGRATION AND COMMUNICATION FLOWS: RETHINKING BORDERS, CONFLICT AND 
IDENTITY THROUGH THE DIGITAL”
 “We are faced with a crisis of humanity, and the only exit from this 
crisis is to recognize our growing interdependence as a species and to 
find new ways to live together in solidarity and cooperation, amidst 
strangers who may hold opinions and preferences different from our own.” 
 Zygmunt Bauman, Strangers at our door (Polity, 2016)
 ECREA’s ‘Diaspora, Migration and Media’ and ‘Intercultural and 
International Communication’ sections will organize a joint conference 
at the University of Basque Country in Bilbao on 2-3 November 2017 that 
will focus on how research on migration and communication flows can help 
rethinking key notions like ‘borders’, ‘conflict’, ‘solidarity’, 
‘identity’ and ‘culture’.
 RATIONALE: 

Migration, cultural diversity and the media are increasingly 
problematized. Europe appears to be crumbling down in the current moment 
as a result of the Brexit vote, the election of Donald Trump and the 
so-called ‘European Refugee Crisis’. This is illustrated by hoaxes and 
fake news messages on these themes that serve as popular clickbait on 
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As media outlets seek to address these 
‘post-Truth’ conditions, populist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, racist and 
neo-nationalist rhetoric and sentiments have grown excessively across 
social media. Meanwhile, the number of internal and external European 
borders proliferates, and digital data are used for surveillance and 
migration management. Therefore, mediated encounters with diversity, the 
humanitarianism-securitization nexus and the role of communication flows 
urgently deserve further academic exploration to advance understanding 
of some of the major societal challenges of our time.
 The continuous re-appropriation of Anas Modamani’s selfie with the 
German chancellor Angela Merkel on Facebook is an illustrative case in 
point. He took his selfie in September 2015, when Merkel visited the 
Berlin shelter where he was then living. Modamani is a Syrian refugee 
who fled from Darayya. After posting the selfie online, he has 
repeatedly been falsely linked to terrorism. On the basis of physically 
resemblance, he was for example wrongly accused to be involved in the 
bombings in Brussel (March 2016) and the recent attack at a Berlin 
Christmas market (December 2016), see 
seehttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38599385.
The conference aims to cover a broad range of conflict-related themes 
such as media production and regulation of information on forced 
migrants in a ‘post-Truth’ era; fake news; the 
humanitarianism-securitization nexus, migration management, social and 
political conflicts related to migrant and diaspora communities, 
radicalization and online counter-terrorism, hate speech and racism, but 
also solidarities, activism and protest.
 Digital technologies and innovations constantly offer new ways to 
approach these issues, both theoretically and methodologically. The 
organizers invite papers that explore the complexity of migration and 
communication flows through conceptual interventions as well as 
qualitative and quantitative studies.   PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME
 The conference will include:
 • Keynote lectures by Marie Gillespie and Pedro Oiarzabal.


*Marie Gillespie is Professor of Sociology, The Open University, 
coordinator of the Mapping Refuge Media Journey project 
(2016-2018).
“The "Mapping Refugee Media Journeys" project investigates 
the parallel tracks of the physical and digital journeys of Syrian and 
Iraqi refugees. It documents the media and informational resources that 
refugees use from the point of departure, during their journeys across 
different borders and states, and upon arrival (if they reach their 
desired destination)”. For more information, see 
http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/research/projects/mapping-refugee-media-journeys 



*Pedro Oiarzabal is an Internet and Basque studies scholar, and a 
migration and diaspora researcher. His research examines diaspora 
creation and diaspora interaction with information and communication 
technologies as well as the meaning of identity in both homeland and 
diaspora realities, with particular emphasis on the Basque case.

• A roundtable to establish bridges of dialogue between academics 
studying the coverage of migrants and journalists reporting on various 
conflicts in Europe, addressing methodological and ethical challenges.
• A YECREA event dedicated to young scholars (PhD and postdoc level): 
see below for more information.
• A joint panel organized with the ECREA ‘Intercultural and 
International Communication’ division to broaden the empirical, 
conceptual and methodological scope of the conference and to explore 
future collaborations.
• An elaborate social programme, including a conference dinner and boat 
tour, allowing participants to enjoy the city of Bilbao.
Call for panel and paper proposals
 To explore the issue of migration and communication flows in an 
informal and stimulating atmosphere, we invite participants to submit 
paper and panel proposals to the 2017 ECREA Diaspora, Migration & Media 
conference.

We particularly welcome proposals on the following topics:
• Rethinking the category of the migrant: forced migrants, 
guest-laborers, postsocialist, postcolonial, expatriates
• ‘Bottom-up’ digitally mediated processes, such as transnational and 
local networking and connectivity, diaspora organizations, identity 
construction, urban communications
• ‘Top down’ digitally mediated processes of migrant management: border 
control, surveillance & control systems for population movements, 
migrant detention centres, express flights, arrests at the street, lack 
of public information   • The humanitarianism-securitization nexus, 
human/communication rights, border management, express flights, street 
arrests, surveillance and political economy      • Migrants, media and 
language: the impact of migrants on linguistic dynamics (particularly in 
the context of natively bilingual societies), building resilience for 
new and local minority media structures
• Intersectional analyses of migration and communication flows: how do 
axes of difference, including race, gender, sexuality, nation, location, 
generation religion, class together co-constitute subordination and identity
• Methodological considerations in media and migration studies, 
including, but not limited to digital migration studies
 We encourage scholars whose abstracts have been accepted, to submit 
full papers by 1 October 2017 in order to compete for the first ECREA 
Diaspora, Migration & Media Paper Awards. There will be one award for 
junior scholars and one for senior scholars.

TIMELINE:
Abstract deadline: April 16, 2017
Notification of acceptance: May 16, 2017
Full-paper submission: October 1, 2017
Registration deadline: October 1, 2017
 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Please send 200-300 word abstracts by 31 March 2017.
Please include a short biography (max 100 words)
 Indicate in your submission whether you are interested:
   -in the 
YECREA event
-sessions jointly organized with ICC
-being considered for the special issue “Migration and communication 
flows: rethinking borders, conflict and identity through the digital”
 Submit your abstract + bio to (ecreadmm /at/ gmail.com), indicate in your 
email header
[Submission last name + paper title]
 ORGANIZING TEAM:


Irati Agirreazkuenaga, PhD
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Vice Chair
Assistant professor information genres, radio speech & corporate 
communication
Graduate Social Communication Programme, Department of Journalism
University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain    Koen Leurs, PhD
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Chair
Assistant professor gender & postcolonial studies
Graduate Gender Programme, Department of Media & Culture
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
    Kevin Smets, PhD
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Vice Chair
Assistant professor in media and culture
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium 
Postdoctoral fellow, Research 
Foundation Flanders, University of Antwerp, Belgium
 Melis Mevsimler, MA
ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media Young Scholar Representative
PhD student Digital Crossings in Europe. Gender, Diaspora and Belonging 

Utrecht University, the Netherlands


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