Short Abstract

This panel examines inclusion as both a moral discourse and a governance tool in development, exploring how migration, disability, and education policies shape power, mobility, and agency—and whether inclusion remains transformative in uncertain global futures.

Description

Inclusion has become a leading principle in global development—invoked across education, migration, and disability frameworks as the moral discourse of equity and participation. Yet underlying this progressive discourse are more nuanced economic and bureaucratic logics that govern who is recognized as “included,” how inclusion is measured, and for what purpose. This panel unpacks inclusion as both a discourse of justice and a technology of governance, exploring how development institutions such as the World Bank, UN agencies, and bilateral donors translate moral imperatives into measurable, fundable, and scalable interventions.

In a global context of deepening precarity, digitalization, and human mobility, the panel (re)positions inclusion within broader political economies of migration and knowledge production. It asks: How do inclusion-informed agendas reframe power relations among states, markets, and communities? How do displaced and transnational communities rethink belonging under such regimes? And what forms of agency emerge when local actors reimage or resist top-down frameworks?

The panel invites contributions addressing three key themes:

Inclusion and Mobility – migration, displacement, and cross-border governance as negotiated spaces of belonging;

Managerial Rationalities of Equity – how data systems and funding mechanisms convert moral aims into bureaucratic accountability;

Reclaiming Agency and Futures – how communities in the Global South reimagine inclusion beyond institutional frames.

By integrating economic sociology, policy analysis, and critical development studies, this panel re-focuses power and agency, asking whether inclusion can still serve as a transformative framework in uncertain futures.

This Panel has 2 pending paper proposals.
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