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Trajectories of Romani Migrations and Mobilities in Europe and Beyond (1945 – present)

Mezinárodní konference

Kdy: 16.-18. září 2019
Kde: Vila Lanna (V Sadech 1, Praha 6)
Organizátoři: Prague Forum for Romani Histories (ŠD AV ČR), Seminar on Romani Studies (Katedra středoevropských studií, FF UK), Fakulta sociálních věd a ekonomie (University of Valle, Colombia), The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, CEFRES
Finanční podpora: Strategie AV21 (AV ČR), CEFRES & Bader Philanthropies
Jazyk: angličtina (simultánně tlumočena do češtiny)

The conference will bring together scholars from across a variety of disciplines to present empirically grounded accounts of the multiple dimensions of Romani mobilities since 1945 in order to analyse connections between various forms of past mobilities and migrations and the most recent movements of various Romani groupings. The conference will be held in Prague on September 16-18, 2019.

Over the past decade, a growing number of research projects, publications, and media have focused on Romani migrations and mobilities. However, most of these studies have only rarely combined the study of historical continuities and social trajectories shaping the present-day migratory movements. Anthropological and sociological accounts have documented contemporary strategies of Romani migrants, the production of legal classifications, and explored the politics shaping Romani mobilities. Additionally, the trope of “nomadism” has continued to inform the discussions as a foundational concept (often as a simplified “straw man”) that researchers embrace or oppose to explain their arguments. We invite researchers to interrogate the utility and limitations of this binary and to move beyond it through conceptually innovative analyses of movement, circulation, migration and the concomitant social and existential mobilities they imply in the context of the post-World War II era, bearing in mind that a large part of local Romani communities have been part of the European sedentary population.

The conference also aims to contribute to the incipient field of comparative studies of Romani mobilities with a focus on the second half of 20th century and from intersectional perspectives. Whereas recent research has documented the suffering and persecution of Romani groups during World War Two, post-war developments have not received the same measure of attention. These include, for instance, Romani experiences of returning to destroyed homes, government attempts to resettle and disperse Romani populations by force, labor and other internal migrations in search of better lives enchanted by the opportunities available in more industrialised cities, or navigating through ‘compensation schemes’ introduced by various state and international agencies.

Many members of previously persecuted minorities, including Roma, hoped for a better future in the context of massive post-war projects to restructure European states. In Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe most of the local Roma aspired – together with others – to greater social mobility and full membership through socialist citizenship. Socialist projects to reach the ‘greater common good’ and societal equality, however, also entailed forced displacements and new regimes of disciplining the Romani bodies to cultivate working-class citizens out of Romani/Gypsy groupings. On the other hand, post-war aspirations and trajectories of (social) mobility of the Roma in the ‘West’ remain largely unexplored, as well as the participation of Roma in movements and navigations across the East-West divide (and beyond).  Similarly, relatively few studies explore the social mobility of Roma linked with gendered changes and (re)negotiation of inter-community relations, as well as other mechanisms and dispositifs along which members of Romani communities renegotiated their (stigmatized) ‘Gypsyness’ in post-war times.

Thus, we invite various contributions to explore a wide range of mobilities and different intersections and/or entanglements between often contradictory developments, which can be understood as a condition for mobility, including physical movement and a change in social position. Additionally, the conference organisers welcome empirical and theoretical discussions of Romani mobilities as oscillating between modes of dispersal and containment, between forced mobilities and efforts to carve out autonomous movements and spaces.

Conference themes and areas of interest
The conference aims to bring together various empirically grounded and historically informed studies exploring different kinds of mobility and immobility in Europe and beyond. Locating these mobilities in the broader political, social, historical and cultural contexts and forces, contributors are invited to reflect on both voluntary and forced migration, patterns of seasonal mobility, and various forms of mobility (e.g. existential, physical, social) as a reaction to oppressive conditions as well as newly opened possibilities. We welcome in particular proposals that focus on one or more of the following areas:

  • Different trajectories and modes of Romani mobilities from 1945 to the present
  • Movement as a mode of escaping oppressive and asymmetric conditions
  • Intersectional studies of mobilities addressing gendered, classed, raced/ethnicised differentiations and other intertwined dimensions of social domination
  • Connections between mobilities and forms of violence (physical, symbolic, everyday, structural)
  • Romani migration during the period of socialist high-modernist policies – strategies deployed to attain upward social mobilities; forced displacements and resettlement schemes
  • Mobility between oppressive policies of racial containment and dispersal, on the one hand, and resistance and resilience of various Romani individuals and groups, on the other
  • Romani civil and political rights movements and their relation to physical and social mobility
  • Continuities and discontinuities of migrations; historicizing the present moment and connecting past trajectories of migration and mobilities to current developments
  • Methodological issues in exploring “histories of the present” of Romani migrations and mobilities
  • Attempts at conceptualisation/critical revision of migration and mobility beyond the concept of “nomadism” and traditional “statist” tropes; examination of various modes of being beyond relying on the assumption of “Roma/Gypsy proneness to movement”

The conference will include a panel highlighting research based on the archival holdings of the International Tracing Service (ITS). The ITS collections include more than 35 million multi-page Holocaust-era documents relating to the fates of more than 17 million people who were subject to incarceration, forced labor, and displacement during and after World War II. The ITS is located and accessible for research in Bad Arolsen, Germany, as well as in digital copy at seven other locations around the world, including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The Archive included significant holdings on Romani victims and survivors, as well as documentation of Romani interactions with refugee resettlement agencies and compensation schemes. Proposals that feature ITS-based research are particularly welcome. As additional conference program a public session will be organized during which experts working on the ITS collections will introduce the research tools available to the interested public and assist Romani participants and visitors in searching for the documentation on their ancestors.

PROGRAM
16 September 2019

14:30 Opening of the conference
Helena Sadílková (Charles University) & Jan Grill (University of Valle): Introducing Trajectories of Romani Mobilities

15:00-17:00 Panel I
Displacement, Survival, and Migration in the Aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust: Romani Trajectories in the Arolsen Archives

Elizabeth Anthony, Visiting Scholar Programs, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Using the Records of the International Tracing Service Digital Archive for Scholarly Research on Roma Victims of the Nazis

Ari Joskowicz,  Vanderbilt University and 2013-14 Diane and Howard Wohl Fellow (USHMM)
Romani Refugees between National and International Migration Regimes (1945-1960)

Chair: Jo-Ellyn Decker, Holocaust Survivor and Victims Research Center, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Discussant: Kateřina Čapková, Institute for Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences

17 September 2019

9:30-11:00 Panel II
Manipulation of „Gypsy Nomadism“ in Post-War Europe

Huub van Baar, Institute of Political Science, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies, University of Amsterdam
The Ambiguous Politics of Protection in Post-War Europe: Irregularizing Citizenship of Roma through Mobile Governmentalities

Stefánia Toma – László Fosztó, Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities in Cluj-Napoca
The mobility of the Roma as Resource and/or Obstacle for Social Integration in Romania

Filip Pospíšil, City University of New York, Anthropology Department of John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Nomads from the Neighboring Village – The Intrastate Mobility of the Unwanted

Chair: Yasar Abu Ghosh, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities Charles University
Discussant: Ari Joskowicz

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:00 Panel III
Negotiating Intrastate Policies During Socialism

Ana Chiritoiu, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University
‘Capable’, ‘Free’, and ‘Universal’: The Circulation of Roma Between Idioms of Resistance and Difference. A Case-Study from Southern Romania

Markéta Hajská, Seminar for Romani Studies, Department for Central European Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
The Assimilation Policies of 1950s Czechoslovakia Towards Itinerant Groups as Viewed by Romani Witnesses: The Case of Žatec and Louny

Jan Ort, Seminar for Romani Studies, Department for Central European Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
The Policy of “Controlled Dispersal” of the Roma in the 1960s in the Former Czechoslovakia. A Case Study of Humenné District

Chair: Helena Sadílková
Discussant: László Fosztó

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 Panel IV
Challenging Borders and Closed Concepts

Licia Porcedda, École des hautes études en sciences sociales
The Trajectory of Croatian Roma in 1940s and 1950s Italy. Citizenship, Social Control and Inclusion Through the History of Rosa Raidich

Sabrina Steindl-Kopf – Sanda Üllen, Institute of Modern and Contemporary History at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Intersections of Participatory Action and Migration Biographies of Romani Migrants in Vienna

Dušan Slačka, Museum of Romani Culture
Effects of Political and Administrational Situation on Territorial Movement and Life of the Roma in Moravian-Slovak Borderlands – Example of Districts of Hodonín and Senica till 1970s

Chair: Ilsen About, National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris
Discussant: Eszter Varsa, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Discussion/Forum
Interrogating Analytical Categories: On Pitfalls and Hopefulness in the Emerging Research Field (‘Mobilities’, ‘Migrations’, ‘Trajectories’ and Beyond)

Introductory remarks by: Jan Grill (University of Valle), Yasar Abu Ghosh (Charles University), Helena Sadílková, (Charles University), Martin Fotta, Goethe University, Frankfurt
Chair: Krista Hegburg, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

18 September 2019

9:30-11:30 Panel V
Beyond the Binary of Nomadism and Settlement

Kamila Fiałkowska – Michał P. Garapich – Elżbieta Mirga-Wójtowicz, Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw
Migration Regimes, Kinship and Ethnic Boundaries Impact on Migration Strategies and Practices: Case Study of Roma Migrants from Poland to the UK

Judit Durst (University College London) – Zsanna Nyírő (Corvinus University of Budapest)
Interrupted Continuity: The Role of Kinship in Migration among (Trans)nationally Mobile Roma Factory Workers from Rural Hungary at the Global Assembly Line

Daniel Škobla (Slovak Academy of Sciences – Institute of Ethnology and Social Anhtropology) – Mario Rodriguéz Polo (Palacký University in Olomouc – Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology)
Escaping Ethnic Traps. Cyclical Migration from Slovakia to Austria as a Way to Escape Poverty and Oppression

Chair: Jan Grill
Discussant: Huub van Baar

Emigrating Animals and Migratory Humans: Belonging, Prosperity and Security in More-Than-Human World

Workshop

Místo: Lower Hall (Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Praha 1)
Datum: 10.-11. září 2019
Organizátoři: Etnologický ústav AV ČR, Sociologický ústav AV ČR a CEFRES, s podporou programu Strategie AV21
Jazyk: angličtina

Program workshopu naleznete zde.
Argumentary (EN)

In 2018, Polish authorities announced a plan to build one of Europe’s longest fences to protect the country’s Eastern border from unwanted migrants and a highly contagious disease they might be carrying. At the first glance, the plan is reminiscent of president Trump’s design for a wall along the US Mexican border, or the already built Hungarian fence at the Serbian and Croatian borders. However, there is an important difference: the disease that Polish and other European authorities fear is African Swine Fever (ASF), and the unwanted migrants are not humans but wild boars from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The Polish plan has since been dropped, yet similar fences, such as one between Denmark and Germany, are already being built. It seems that the “Trojan boar”, the feared virus carrier, is contributing toward the resurrection of the old-new borders just as human refugees have, eroding the Schengen space of free movement. This account of foreign boars, biosecurity, and border walls is just one example of the interesting parallels between human and nonhuman animal movement and how the state organises in response.

Noting the unfolding conceptual exchange between mobility studies and animal studies, the objective of this workshop is to further the dialogue and bring together scholars of human migration and non-human animal migration. At the intersection of these two fields of study we expect a range of engaging questions to emerge. Migration often involves the destabilisation of established orders of belonging and the triggering of processes of othering and protectionism. What are the potential empirical and analytical synergies between studying the movement of people and that of non-human animals across geophysical, symbolic and biopolitical borders? In many contexts, human migrants are derogatively described with the use of animal metaphors (e.g. as cockroaches) while animals, often equally derogatively, are described with the human qualifiers (e.g. as invaders). What should we make out of those analogies? Can we still speak about the flow of  “metaphors” between accounts of human and non-human migration if we refuse to see the two as belonging to ontologically disparate domains (one exclusively human, the other exclusively non-human)?

We invite participants to share empirical research on, and conceptualizations of, migration in relationally complex multispecies world. Focusing on ongoing, historical and anticipated movements of humans and non- human animals we wish to explore the changing meaning and analytical utility of such concepts as belonging, precarity, (bio)security, prosperity, invasiveness, climate refugees, ecosystem, native, nation or state.

Zde si můžete stáhnout abstrakty příspěvků.

Critical Suicide Studies International Network Meeting

International Network Meeting

Místo: Etnologický ústav AV ČR (5. patro), Na Florenci 3, Praha 1
Datum: 26.-27. června 2019
Organizátoři: Etnologický ústav AV ČR a CEFRES
Jazyk: angličtina

Popis (EN)

As part of its ongoing commitment to growing the emerging field of critical suicide studies, an international network of scholars will come together for two days in Prague to address the following goals:

1.      Identify ongoing opportunities for collaborative grant-writing, research and writing projects.

2.      Develop a regular conference schedule to build on the success of three international conferences to date (Prague, Canterbury, Perth). The next conference is planned for Vancouver in June 2020.

3.      Articulate a set of guiding ethics to serve as a touchstone for our scholarly, practice and pedagogical engagements.

4.      Continue to mobilize critique for productive ends by identifying opportunities to re-think what it means to do suicide prevention.

5.      Expand the field to include scholars, practitioners and those with lived experience from around the world.

Více informací na: https://criticalsuicidology.net/.

Prezentace knižních novinek CEFRESU – červen 2019

Konec akademického roku oslavíme prezentací francouzských knižních novinek  v humanitních a společenských vědách.

Sejdeme se v úterý 25. června 2019 v 17:00 v knihovně CEFRESu.

Mimo jiné budou představeny následující knihy:

  • Diane AFOUMADO: Indésirables (Calmann-Lévy, 2018)
    Florence Vychytil Baudoux
  • Franz FANON: Oeuvres. N° 2 (La Découverte, 2018)
    Thomas C. Mercier
  • Marc JOLY: La révolution sociologique (La Découverte, 2017)
    Jan Maršálek
  • Claudia MOATTI: Res Publica. Histoire romaine de la chose publique (Fayard, 2018)
    Hana Fořtová
  • Gérard NOIRIEL: Une histoire populaire de la France, De la guerre de Cent ans à nos jours (AGONE, 2018)
    Michel Perottino

Revisiting the 1989 event in Central Europe: social margins, writing practices, new archives

Mezinárodní konference

Místo: Vědecké centrum Polské akademie věd (rue Lauriston 74, Paříž), Sorbonne Univerzita (rue de la Sorbonne 17, “Salle des actes”, Paříž)
Datum: 7.-8. června 2019
Organizers: Vědecké centrum Polské akademie věd v Paíži, Centrum polské civilizace (Sorbonne Univerzita), CEFRES,  Centrum francouzské civilizace a frankofonních studií ve Varšavě
Jazyk: angličtina

Tato událost je první z cyklu konferencí nazvaného “1989-2019: Beyond the Anniversary, questionning 1989“. Konference se budou konat v Paříži, Varšavě a Praze.

Podrobný program naleznete zde.

Popis (EN)

What is known about 1989, this chain of major events that have shaken up the map of Europe and the world? The collapse of communist regimes has been extensively studied and commented on. The human and social sciences have long focused on the 1989 enigma, which saw the un-anticipated collapse of the European part of the Soviet bloc in just a few months. However, the work on 1989 quickly led to other research agendas, proposing to study the current transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. Because contrary to what the large number of stories about 1989 may suggest, there are few empirical studies on this object and for good reasons. Because of its historical situation as the final moment of the communist period and as the inaugural moment of the “democratic transition”, 1989 was finally little addressed as such and for itself. Retrospective analyses of the reasons for the fall of the communist bloc and prospective studies on the democratization of Eastern European societies quickly marginalized the event as an object of investigation, in favor of more interpretation-oriented writings. More recently, it is more a questioning around the memory controversies on 1989 that has caught the attention of researchers. This conference therefore proposes a return to the event itself. Going back to the field, diving in the past, mobilizing new sources, without of course sacrificing the analysis to pure facts. This is the perspective adopted which consists in questioning the event through its social margins, actors who have until now remained in the shadows (for example workers or women), through writing and cultural practices and by engaging in a debate on the archives of 1989, raising new or too long ignored questions. Several leads seem to be possible:

  • 1989 and social margins : What did 1989 mean for the Eastern European working classes, rural communities, people living in urban areas far from the heart of events, women, young people or the regime’s elites? Crossing the political event and the social worlds offers an original perspective on the dynamics of the collapse and makes it possible to rethink the relationships between the “revolutionary process” and social classes, which are known to be central to Marxist theory.
  • Writing and cultural practices : How was 1989 figured, documented and co-constructed, both during and after, through various writing practices (diaries, actors’ memoirs, underground press, samizdats, correspondence) and artistic genres such as literature, theatre, happening, painting or documentary? What traces does it leave in the visual memory of the event? What exactly is described, from what point of view?
  • New archives : Which archives were constituted on 1989 and on the period preceding the event? Are the archives on 1989 part of the archives of communism? Did 1989 produce its own archivists? Who are they and how can these archives be used? How can we interpret the development of oral history in the East and the multiplication of real “banks of testimonies”, which are emerging as new archives of communism and post-communism?

It is therefore about revisiting 1989 by consciously taking a fragmented look on the series of political events that have transformed Central and Eastern Europe. Hence the use of new and heterodox sources: oral history with ordinary citizens, self-writing, memoirs written by former members of the opposition or communist parties, posters, literary and artistic materials, etc., which have been the subject of so few publications since then.

Vědecké vedení Cyklu konferencí
  • Maciej Forycki, Vědecké centrum Polské akademie věd v Paříži
  • Jérôme Heurtaux, ředitel CEFRESu
  • Nicolas Maslowski, Centrum pro francouzská studia (CCFEF), Univerzita ve Varšavě
  • Paweł Rodak, Centrum polské civilizace (Sorbonne Univerzita)

Delegitimizace jako sociální fenomén

Mezinárodní konference 

Místo: Varšava
Datum: 24. a 25. května 2019
Organizátoři: Filozofický ústav, Centrum francouzské civilizace, Univerzita ve Varšavě
Partneři: CEFRES
Jazyk: angličtina

Kompletní program ke stáhnutí zde.

Delegitimizace jako sociální fenomén (EN)

An event, consequently, is not a decision, a treaty, a reign, or a battle, but the reversal of a relationship of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it, a feeble domination that posits itself as it grows lax, the entry of the “masked other”. Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Genealogy, History

It is quite striking that Foucault’s definition of historical event bears all the characteristics of delegitimization i.e., the loss of authority or an abrupt refusal of recognition. This is no coincidence. Delegitimization is a historical event because it appears as the precondition for the possibility of any novelty in the social world. It is the negative moment preceding any positivity. Delegitimization precedes the change and generates it. The weapons held by the authority are turned against it, the sacred is turned into profane, the glorious into infamous, what is weak becomes strong, and the ignominious takes place in the sun. The figure of delegitimization is indeed one of the most powerful in the modern social imaginary – it arguably represents a heroic moment of progress.

The edifice of the Enlightenment was built through all series of delegitimizations: the delegitimization of Aristotelian teleology paved the way for modern science; the delegitimization of revelation brought the freedom of thought and of speech; the delegitimization of monarchy produced democracy; the delegitimization of privilege – equality before law. Delegitimization pairs up with either collective or individual emancipation. Moreover, in modern societies, delegitimization becomes an institutionalised game. Inscribed within scientific, artistic and political fields it ensures their internally competitive nature. We confront here an apparent paradox where the very legitimacy of any distinction or advantage depends on the possibility of delegitimization standing at bay. Yet, this seems to be a virtuous paradox. If we recognise that every legitimacy, even if to a different degree, carries some fair amount of the arbitrary usurpation and violence, it plainly deserves to be exposed to a reversal of fate.

And yet delegitimization as social practise is far from being an innocent endeavour. It hardly meets any normative expectations. It rarely passes only through a fair critique, it produces strawmen, misinterpretations or puts things out of proportion. The enterprise of delegitimization favours the performative efficiency over the power of argument; the feeling over the reason. It has aversion to nuance. As some prominent contemporary thinkers point out, it proceeds by fabricating empty signifiers filled with imaginary equivocations. Not only does delegitimization distorts its objects, it also constantly manipulates, displaces or conceals the subject of the whole making. The subject of delegitimization is often, if not always, ‘a masked other’ as denunciator rarely speaks undisguised and in his own name; he is rather a Porte-parole for entity of his own making. The art of delegitimating is indeed the backbone of populism. And so the ‘masked other’ appears elsewhere and in different form, when delegitimating turns no longer against holders of power and prestige but against those who lack them dramatically. Withdrawal of recognition targets mostly the ones who lack recognition, by means of stigmatisation, vilification, objectification and dehumanisation. Delegitimization is therefore inherent in every pogrom or genocide.

The goal of our seminar is an interdisciplinary exchange aiming at understanding contemporary crises of legitimation. We hope to achieve this by taking the broadest possible scope in space, time and method.