[Commlist] CfP: Migration as Method: Media, Circulation, and Knowledge Production

  18th NECS Graduate Workshop


      Migration as Method: Media, Circulation, and Knowledge Production

*17 June 2020*
*Hosted by the University of Palermo*

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Deadline for submissions: 31^st  January 2020

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The 18th NECS Graduate Workshop is intended as a moment of exchange and 
reflection on methodologies for studying the entanglements of media and 
migration. As such, it constitutes an attempt to tackle, or at least to 
reflect on, a threefold challenge.

First, as an event on the subject of media and migration, it recognizes 
how the messy imbrications between the two terms call, almost by 
default, for committed approaches. As Radha Sarma Hegde has it, 
“migration is a dynamic process that shapes, exceeds, and cuts across 
individual communities, economies, nations, and borders. The scholarly 
challenge is to find the methodological and conceptual stance to capture 
the intricacies of these interactions” (2016: 6). The question of how 
film and media studies are equipped to respond to the constantly 
recalibrated politics and problematics of migration is therefore paramount.

Second, as an event that addresses film and media scholars in a 
self-reflectively all-embracing manner, it bears the traces of the 
fragmentation of the discipline in its current stage. While the 
contentious lack of established methods in film and media studies has 
never been a serious disciplinary worry in itself, the proliferation of 
allegedly interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary sensibilities across 
the field still requires further reflections. In other words, how these 
approaches can be properly translated and disseminated is an unavoidable 
point of departure. Construed as more than simply an evocative metaphor, 
the /migratory/ becomes for us an effective paradigm through which 
heterogeneous forms of knowledge come together in complex symbiosis.

Third, as an event addressed to early-career researchers, its focus on 
methodologies wishes to counterbalance the shared set of problems 
affecting the very conditions of knowledge production in contemporary 
academia. As the neoliberal university model becomes more and more 
globally entrenched, the imperatives of competition and 
self-entrepreneurship have induced the widespread adoption of control 
mechanisms such as performance audits and measures of academic 
production, accelerating, among other things, the increasing 
precariousness of doctoral students and early-career researchers, and 
its related forms of alienation. A sustained reflection on methodology 
in this context allows us then to contrast outcome-driven research 
practices with an alternative space, however temporary, to interrogate 
the conditions of possibility for research as well as its lived, 
on-the-ground realities.

At present, most analyses of the relationship between media and 
migration prioritize migration as a research object, and particularly as 
a thematic of mediated narratives. Such approaches draw attention to the 
circulation of tropes that pervade the contemporary mediated discourses 
on migration, such as those of the endangered-yet-threatening dinghy 
boat, of migratory waves as vermin or invasions, or of gendered 
stereotypes casting male migrants as (sexual) threats and female 
migrants as (sexual trafficking) victims. The image of the wall as the 
paradigmatic icon of migrant exclusion became so prevalent in media 
narratives and critical studies alike that its deployment in critical 
analyses actually runs the risk of reinforcing what Mezzadra and Neilson 
named “the spectacle of the border”, i.e. “the ritualized display of 
violence and expulsion that characterizes many border interventions” 
(2013: viii).

And yet, little attention has been devoted so far to the epistemic angle 
from which we articulate our analyses of media and migration. How do we 
best accommodate, for instance, the circulatory dynamics involving 
currencies, commodities, information, and knowledges in the 
oft-spectacularized accounts of migratory movements in the media? What 
are the methods and tools that prove most useful in order to widen our 
gaze on both “mediated migration” and the migration of media knowledge 
itself? And what if, taking our inspiration from Mezzadra and Neilson, 
we proposed to take migration as a method in its own terms? With this 
workshop, we would like to reflect on the ways in which migration, in 
its broadest sense, can be said to play a constitutive role in the modes 
of production and organization of knowledge. To this end, we invite 
contributions that shed light on the assemblages of migratory movements, 
knowledge transits, and information flows both in contemporary 
mediascapes and within critical media studies. We particularly welcome 
papers addressing the methodological issues at stake in the study of 
media and migration. Potential approaches could be built on, but not 
limited to, the following areas:

  * Media and cultural history
  * Media industry studies
  * Socio-cultural anthropology and ethnography
  * Human and cultural geography
  * Digital humanities
  * Science and technology studies
  * Critical border/migration studies
  * Postcolonial theory
  * Gender and sexuality studies
  * Critical race and ethnic studies
  * Textual and discourse analysis
  * Political economy and critical policy studies
  * Research-creation
  * Militant research and conricerca

References

Hegde, Radha Sarma. 2016. /Mediating Migration/. Cambridge (UK): Polity 
Press.
Mezzadra, Sandro, and Brett Neilson. 2013. /Border as Method, Or, the 
Multiplication of Labor/, Durham (NC): Duke University Press.

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*SUBMISSION*

Early-career researchers from cinema, visual and media studies are 
invited to submit proposals for contributions by 31 January 2020. 
Applicants are welcome to submit a proposal to the 2020 NECS Conference 
as well.

The University of Palermo will not provide refunds: participants will 
cover their own travel and accommodation expenses. Travel information, 
as well as a list of affordable hotels and other accommodation, will be 
provided on the conference website and program. Workshop attendance is 
free, but valid NECS membership is required to participate. Participants 
must register with NECS at https://necs.org/user/register and pay their 
fee by 1^st  February 2020. For the terms of NECS membership, please 
also refer to our website: https://necs.org/faq

Please address all inquiries to (graduates /at/ necs.org) 
<mailto:(graduates /at/ necs.org)>

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*18th **NECS Graduate Workshop organizers*: Giuseppe Fidotta (Concordia 
University, Canada) and Mara Mattoscio (Università “G. d’Annunzio” di 
Chieti-Pescara, Italy)

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