CFP: Special issue on forced migration and mobilities research

Submissions are invited for a special issue of an academic journal looking at Forced Migration and Mobilities Research.

We are looking for a theoretically informed and empirically rich paper analysing environmentally induced migration from a mobilities perspective.

By environmentally induced migration we understand human displacement related to global warming, long term environmental stress and disasters such as floods, fires, tsunamis and earthquakes.

Potential contributors will have to comply with a strict editorial schedule and be ready to submit a first draft to the editors of the special issue by May 2010 and a final draft by early August 2010.

For more information about the general outlook of the special issue see below.

Please direct expressions of interest by the 5th of February to Nick Gill n.m.gill@lancaster.ac.uk and Javier Caletrío j.caletrio@lancaster.ac.uk

General outlook of the special issue
Forced migration is a chronic reality and a pending threat in some parts of the so called Global South and is set to become increasingly central for rich industrial nations too in the 21st century due to growing political and environmental instabilities. Forced migration studies have already made a significant contribution in understanding a complex phenomenon that demands ever more sophisticated transnational, interdisciplinary and theoretically oriented analytical perspectives. But, as Stephen Castles (2003) has noted, the policy driven agenda of forced migration studies still has to make explicit such demands and contribute more substantially to social theory.

‘Critical mobilities’ is a new direction in social theory with also clear post-disciplinary and global aspirations. The analytical potential of its post-disciplinary outlook is already evident in recent works of synthesis that have fruitfully brought together studies on migration, tourism, business travel, social mobility, inequality, urban infrastructure, complexity and reflexive modernization (Canzler et al. 2008; Urry 2000, 2008). ‘Critical mobilities’ is a distinct if eclectical approach with moving boundaries. Yet, its development as a cosmopolitan perspective (Beck, 2006) still awaits new synthesis that incorporates forms of mobility, bodies of research, problematics, and social and political contexts that are relevant beyond North Atlantic rim societies.

This special issue therefore seeks to contribute to ongoing efforts to expand the social-theoretical basis of forced migration studies and cosmopolitan outlook of mobilities research by encouraging a dialogue between both bodies of research. A focus on forced migration promises to make more explicit and further develop the critical outlook of mobilities research, offering one way in which the approach can begin to fulfil is cosmopolitan aspirations. Moreover, the methodological and conceptual frameworks being developed by mobilities research can illuminate new areas of concern facing forced migrants, especially regarding the relationship between diverse forms of mobilities; social and infrastructural networks; different forms of state power and the role that mobilities play in governance; ‘natural’ diasaters and infrastructural resilience and collapse; the convergence of physical and digital space; global complexities; and senses of place and belonging.