Precarity, i.e. insecurity and uncertainty in life, is structural, situational and, for many, especially for migrants and racialised minorities, an enduring condition of life. Sociologists and social scientists have for long acknowledged that time, temporalities and rhythms are simultaneously central to the organisation of the society and everyday lives yet commonly taken for granted. For migration scholars time has become an important perspective for the analysis of power dynamics, governance structures, individual experiences and forms of agency and asymmetric relations as well as experiences of precarity.
Confirmed keynote speakers include Professor Bridget Anderson from the University of Bristol, UK, Professor Vanessa May from the University of Manchester, UK and Professor Cathrine Degnen from Newcastle University, UK.
Find the programme and a link to registration below. For more detailed information, visit our website.
Registration for the Symposium on Precarities and Temporalities in Migratory Contexts is open from 26th of May to 11th of August.
Fees:
26th May - 15 June: Early bird 50€
16th June- 11 August: Normal price 80€
Location
The Symposium takes place in the University of Helsinki Main Building, Fabianinkatu 33, Helsinki.
Schedule
9.30-10.00 Registration
Fabianinkatu 33 Main lobby
10.00-11.00 Opening & Keynote: Bridget Anderson: Time, State, Nation: The Case of Migrantised Worker
Room F4050 Pieni juhlasali
In this paper I’ll explore what we can learn at the intersection of labour, migration and precarity. I will start by considering two ways in which the temporal turn enriches the study of migration and mobility: Firstly, it encourages a processual approach to migration that moves away from fixity and ‘the migrant’ and towards ‘migrantisation’. Secondly, through drawing attention to temporality as a mechanism of governance it invites us to reflect on how the state governs through time. This is not peculiar to ‘migrants’, and the lens of temporal governance can help us unmake some of the constructed divisions between migrants and citizens. I will then explore some of the ways in which the labour precarity framing, which is very popular in labour migration research, can both further and undermine this project of unmaking differentiation. It can further it by capturing a particular kind of worker subjectivity and highlighting the relevance of social reproduction to lived experiences of contemporary work, and it can undermine it by introducing hierarchies of vulnerability and by distracting analysis away from taking migration as a class issue.
11.15-12.45 Parallel workshops (Age & Aging; Social reproduction; Inclusion & Migrantisaton)
13.00-14.00 Lunch
Sodexo Laurus
14.00-15.00 Keynote: Cathrine Degnen: Time and Imagining Generational Differences: Chronocracy and Agism in Brexit-Covid-19 England
Room F4050 Pieni juhlasali
Generation or relative age is a common way humans define social difference. In Europe and North America, old age is frequently perceived as a period of decline and loss, a condition ‘successful ageing’ paradigms exhort individuals to avoid for as long as possible. Explicit and implicit ageist beliefs, discourses, and practices marginalize later life, portraying it as undesirable and inferior. This paper explores how imagined generational relationships with time – younger people as future facing, older people as ‘out’ of time – enrol linear, future-oriented temporal perspectives in reproducing ageism. The aftermath of the Brexit referendum followed closely by the covid-19 pandemic serve as my ethnographic examples. These two extraordinary events permit me to highlight how chronocracy (Kirtsoglou and Simpson 2020) – that is, the denial of coevalness or coexistence in time through everyday temporal regimes – reinforces unequal power dynamics, and to explore how generational groups are differently valued in contemporary England.
15.00-15.30 Coffee break
Aula Sirén
15.45-17.15 Parallel workshops (Belonging; Time; Different Precarities)
17.30-18.30 Reception
Christina (U2085)
19.00 Dinner
Ravintola Ragu, Ludviginkatu 3-5
9.30-10.30 Keynote: Vanessa May - Belonging, Time and Migration-related Pracarity
Room F4050 Pieni juhlasali
My talk explores the intersections of belonging, time and migration-related precarity. Belonging – which can be defined as a fundamental sense of comfort and ease within oneself and one’s relational, social, cultural and material surroundings – is an inherently temporal experience. I revisit my work on the temporal nature of belonging, a core feature of which is a concern with people’s everyday lives and with relationality. In particular, I examine how the temporal horizons of past, present and future inform a person’s sense of belonging and how temporal belonging intersects with space and materiality. These insights are placed in conversation with recent work on the temporality of migration experiences, which foregrounds the structural foundations of temporal precarity. My aim is to consider how such a dialogue could enrich both the belonging literature and scholarship on migration.
10.45-12.15 Parallel workshops (Labour 1; Home & Hospitality; Care)
12.30-13.30 Lunch
Sodexo Laurus
13.45-15.15 Parallel workshops (Regulation/Governance; Integration; Labour 2)
15.15-15.45 Coffee break
Aula Sirén
15.45-16.30 Panel discussion
Small festive hall F4050
"Changes to the migration law effects on the lived experience of migrant workers"
Panelists: Marianna Heinonen, the Free Movement Network
Eugene Ufoka, AFARS
Nikki Obernik, the Borderlines project
Find the book of abstracts here.