Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates labour migration policy making migrants decision-making in late c19th Hawai‘i. Of focus is the impact of multiple displacements on understandings of interregional cultural identities, non-Western governance and contemporary global networks.

Paper long abstract:

Combining methods of the global history of political thought and practice with an anthropologically informed inquiry of historical global lives, this paper will investigate dual dynamics of labour migration policy making and individual migrants' decision-making processes in the context of the late nineteenth-century Kingdom of Hawai'i. The Kingdom of Hawai'i presents a compelling case study as it witnessed significant flows of Western labour into a formally sovereign extra-European polity. During the final three decades of the Kingdom's existence (prior to a US businessmen led coup in 1893), an aggressive campaign to encourage mass immigration was launched that led to flows of tens of thousands of Japanese, Portuguese (mainly Madeiran) and Northern European plantation labourers to the Hawaiian Islands. Drawing upon discourses of repopulation, racial improvement and climatic suitability, leading government officials - both indigenous and Western - hoped that mass immigration would secure the Kingdom's prosperity and replenish a nation that had been decimated by the arrival of foreign diseases. Yet, these attempts were compromised by the decisions of Portuguese migrants in particular to continue on to other sites - principally California - upon the conclusion of their contracts. This paper will sketch out policy makers' conceptual politics and labourers' negotiations of Hawaiian planation labour agreements to achieve their own ends. Of particular interest will be the impact made by multiple displacements on policy makers' and labourers' understanding of interregional cultural identities, non-Western governance and contemporary global networks.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will analyse the multiple trajectories of Madeiran families across empires, including in post-abolition British Caribbean plantations, Hawaii and Southern Angola

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will analyse the multiple trajectories of Madeiran families across empires, including in post-abolition British Caribbean plantations, Hawaii and Southern Angola. I will outline an overview of those movements and focus on the situation of the Madeiran laborers that were contracted by British owners of Guianese plantations since the 1830s. At the end of their contacts, many remained there and competed with other groups for market niches, while others went back to Madeira and venture in new contracts that emerged with the treaty between pre-annexation Hawaii and Portugal.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork among Polish post-accession migrants in Ireland I discuss their deeply rooted in historicism attitudes toward nationalism, belonging and right for migration to 'civilised' countries.

Paper long abstract:

Kulturkampf - aggressive policy of secularisation, and related orientalising convictions of German authorities (including Max Weber) on Polish cultural inferiority had resulted in one of the first ethnic cleansings in a modern nation-state history (so called Prussian expulsions, 1885). But terminology of cultural clashes and hierarchies promoted within its framework has paradoxically found numerous followers among its victims: the participants of Polish public culture. It is frequently utilised also nowadays. Obviously accents have changed, claiming adherence of Polish culture to 'Western' or 'Christian' civilisation, and its superiority over the more 'oriental'.

Therefore, in spite that since 19th Century Poland has been left by over 20 million of migrants, including war and political refugees, who frequently experienced a cultural discrimination, Polish educational system and public culture is rather avoiding this topic, focusing on those who remained on Polish soil, prising their loyalty, sufferings and heroism in the context of Euro-American history of civilisation supremacy, conquest and right to rule or, at least, to abuse.

Given such a background, many of my Polish research partners in Ireland, even those of rich migratory family biographies, are convinced that the Poles historically deserve respect and that they fought the privilege of belonging to European family. Many of them imagine the present-day newcomers according to narratives of their orientalising school and universities, and subsequently orientalising Internet social media and networks.

In my paper I discuss the historical international circulation of nationalism that also explain some seemingly irrational issues of recent populism's successes in democratic countries.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation has two moments: first, I present a number of insights from a broader ethnographic study focused on the mobile lives of Portuguese lorry drivers within and across the European Union; these findings are then worked to explain a number of theoretical and conceptual traits of mobility.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I start off by presenting a number of insights from a broader ethnographic study focused on the mobile lives of Portuguese lorry drivers within and across the European Union. The pivotal argument is that national identities and belongings are not exclusively linked with roots but also with routes. Mobility, instead of eroding feelings of national belonging, may contain a special potential for enhancing and even amplifying them on some circumstances. Through a case study of mobile ethnography with Portuguese lorry drivers across Europe, I provide an example of this phenomenon, coming to the conclusion that these individuals, rather than culturally transposing barriers, live their professional lives in a kind of nationalised nutshell on wheels.

These findings are then worked to explain a number of theoretical and conceptual traits of mobility. Particularly in the last quarter of the 20th century, mobility (and movement) appeared as a metonym for transgression, hybridism, cosmopolitanism, networking and fluidity, perhaps due to an overall epoch of optimism. But, mobility is much more than that. Dynamics and practices of mobility equally contain logics of enclosure, em-bordering, encapsulation, differentiation or inequality. Indeed, the generalised curbing of enthusiasm after the turn of the century reinforces this notion, with incidents such as 9/11, the financial crisis, and so forth, contributing to new takes and visions on mobility. Mobility should not, thus, be essentialised. It is a process. Indeed, mobilities are produced (Cresswell 2006), alongside social class, race, ethnicity and belongings.

Paper short abstract:

The refugee journey remains significantly under-researched. Based on the life-story of Nur Alam, a Rohingya man from Myanmar, this paper explores the impact of multiple displacements and permanent liminality in the life of a Rohingya refugee.

Paper long abstract:

Nur Alam is a stateless Rohingya man born in the Northern part of Rakhine state in Myanmar, an area that has been riddled with conflict and multiple mass exoduses for more than half a century. Barely twelve years old, he was forced to leave his family and his home behind and made his way to Yangon, where he lived for the next two decades. After multiple forced relocations and physical threats to his family, Nur Alam decided to move his wife and his four children to Malaysia in search of better life-chances.

However, in Malaysia too, Rohingya face exploitation and abuse. Being stateless and being persecuted, Nur Alam spent his entire life in a state of perpetual liminality. Only resettlement to the USA, yet another displacement, succeeded in finally moving Nur Alam's life out of this condition of permanent liminality.

Informed by 18 months field research among four Rohingya families living in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur this paper takes the life story of one Rohingya man to give voice to his unique experience of multiple displacement. This paper furthermore aims to make a contribution to a conceptualization of the embodiment of liminality.

Paper short abstract:

The present paper explores experiences of multiple displacement of transantional immigrants accross the Old City of Montevideo, Uruguay, based on ethnographic research.

Paper long abstract:

The present paper explores experiences of multiple displacement of transantional immigrants accross the Old City of Montevideo, Uruguay, focusing on peruvian families. It is based on ethnographic research. It considers the experience and the diverse meanings of migration of immigrants who live in Old City as the result of a trajectory of different migratory movements. Data was collected during a long-term ethnography of the Old City of Montevideo immigrant communities and interethnic relations. Ethnographic project 2013-2016: Etnopolis. Identity negotiations in Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo. The paper analyzes the negotiation of frontiers and how hospitality is produced accross the Old City thick walls.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how multiple migrations shape people's identity and sense of belonging, analyzes the religious and racial politics of identity, with a focus on how multiple trajectories of movement shape hierarchies of citizenship; and contributes to discourses of migration and identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how multiple migrations shape people's identity and sense of belonging. The paper is based on my ethnographic study on twenty multiply-migrated individuals of diverse disciplinary, cultural, and national backgrounds; who are/were teaching at Alfaisal University (AU) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. What does citizenship mean for a Muslim Pakistani professor of philosophy who arrived at AU through multiple trajectories (after living and working in Pakistan, the U.S., Canada, and Oman)? What does family mean for a Christian Chinese-South African professor of medicine at AU, who lived, worked, and had children in the US, then moved to Australia and became an Australian citizen, then lived and worked in Scotland; and came to Saudi Arabia? What kinds of alternative arrangements do such people make for their personal, family, and professional lives? Using some of my informants' narratives such as "being a Pakistani in Saudi Arabia is a curse," I aim to analyze the religious and racial politics of identity and citizenship, with a focus on how multiple trajectories of movement shape hierarchies of citizenship and identity that are manifested through differential treatments of people in terms of respect, salary, benefits, and promotions. In doing so, I intend to contribute to anthropological discourses of migration and identity.