Call for papers : International Workshop : Representing Humanitarianism / Représenter l’Humanitarisme

Marseille 23-24 September 2015 –MUCEM – Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée

Since January 2014 the Emborders project, based at the Mediterranean Laboratory of Sociology – LAMES (MMSH/Aix -Marseille University) has looked critically at humanitarian interventions and policies addressing victims of sex trafficking and sexual minority asylum seekers in in the UK and France. The project examines the workings of ‘sexual humanitarianism’, a concept created by Nicola Mai to understand and represent the humanitarian governance of undesirable migrants that are framed as vulnerable according to their sexual orientation and/or behaviour.

• What is at stake when sexuality/gender are rendered an apparatus of rights-claims in the context of migration control?
• How do sexuality and gender-related moral panics function when migrant populations are specifically targeted?
• How do the neoliberal imperatives of guaranteeing freedom and making the State secure co-exist in processes of filtering populations at the borders?
• Which artistic, political, policymaking, documentary and fictional representations naturalise and operationalise sexual humanitarianism?

Throughout the workshop we will engage with artists, filmmakers, journalists and scholars from a variety of disciplines (Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Political Science) whose scholarship is focused on sexuality, gender and migration issues.
However, we also want to encourage scholars working on other themes to apply. We will address questions in relation to the recent formation of sexual humanitarianism as a logic that protects and controls the presence of migrants in the neoliberal state. We will ask workshop participants to think through the ways in which sexual humanitarianism applies to their objects of analysis.

Please submit a proposal (max. 300 words) with a short biographical note (max. 150 words) to Dr Calogero Giametta giametta@mmsh.univ-aix.fr and Prof Nicola Mai mai@mmsh.univ-aix.fr. In order to maximize discussion time in the context of the workshops we will ask selected participants to send us a short paper (max. 2,500 words) relating to their presentation, which we can circulate in advance of the workshop.

Deadline 30 May 2015

The papers presented at the workshop will be published in a special issue of a peer reviewed journal in English.

The languages of the workshop will be English and French.