Call for papers: Labor in the Global South: A Search for Solutions-A global, interdisciplinary graduate student research conference
Venue – University of California, U.S.A. || Date - May 27-28, 2011
It is critical to reexamine the position of labor in the global South, in the context of momentous changes underway in the global economic and political order. Consider some of those changes: Newly rising powers, such as Brazil, China, and South Africa, are assuming greater roles. Increasing numbers of voices are questioning neoliberal prescriptions and market fundamentalist solutions, and pushing for a broader conception of development that includes social as well as economic dimensions. New movements for democracy are stirring in the Middle East, along with continuing struggles over the degree and nature of democracy across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At the same time, informal and irregular employment continue to make up a huge proportion of jobs in the global South, and the fickleness of global capital flows undermines attempts to carry out sustainable development and upgrade job quality. The UN estimates that over 200 million people world-wide are international migrants (above all from poorer to richer countries), and migrant remittances constitute a major income strategy for families and indeed whole countries in the South.

In this context, it is important to take stock of the state of work and workers in the global South, and to share best practices and critiques of strategies to upgrade jobs and empower workers. This conference will bring together graduate students from the United States and around the world to bring their own research to bear on these issues. The goal is not just to exchange information, but to advance discussions about strategies and solutions. To this end, graduate student presentations, which will make up the bulk of conference content, will be supplemented by innovative labor-related practitioners from the South, in addition to senior academics from the United States. Also, to this end, we ask that paper submissions look toward solutions as well as analyzing current and historical conditions. We welcome submissions that look at a full range of issues involving labor, work, and employment, including formal employment, informal employment, and household and other uncompensated work. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following themes on labor in the global South:
• Democracy and human rights
• Development
• Gender and family
• Race and ethnicity
• Migration
• Corporations and global commodity chains
• Public policies, labor movements and other social movements, NGOs

Submissions are welcome from graduate students in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to: sociology, political science, history, geography, anthropology, economics, area studies, ethnic and gender studies, public policy, social welfare, and urban planning.

A limited number of travel scholarships (airplane fare only) are available to graduate students outside the United States. Participants from outside Los Angeles will be housed with UCLA graduate students and faculty at no cost.

Proposals (1 page) are due April 8, 2011. Include your name, institutional affiliation (including graduate program name), and country. Please indicate whether you wish to be considered for a travel scholarship. Send to laborintheglobalsouth@gmail.com

Questions? Contact Florentina Craciun at laborintheglobalsouth@gmail.compri

Changing Nature of Forced Migration: Vulnerabilities and Responsibilities in South and Southeast Asia

Venue: Asian University for Women

Dates: 22, 23, 24 September 2011

Protracted conflicts, restrictive asylum policies, unequal burden sharing, climate change and natural disasters, along with shifting policies regarding immigration, asylum, work, development, and globalization are not only changing the nature of forced displacements but also blurring the line between forced migration and economic migration. These situations create vulnerable “people on the move”: refugees, internally displaced peoples, trafficked peoples and migrant workers for whom leaving their home becomes the only viable solution. Although they fall under different jurisdictions in domestic and international laws, their vulnerability is often similar as a result of being considered “temporary”, “illegal”, or “illegitimate” and the processes that produce peoples on the move tend to be linked and interconnected. Moreover, this kind of mobility tends to challenge the legal and normative notions about state responsibility, citizenship and identity.

The conference will examine the following:
• the intersections and specificities of causes and consequences of vulnerabilities of these groups of people;
• the coping mechanisms utilized by them;
• the implications of these commonalities and particularities for the distribution of responsibilities and action for domestic and international policies for nation-states, the international community, as well as local and regional actors.

The conference will focus on specific issues concerning South and Southeast Asian regions (including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines).

http://www.asian-university.org/newsAndEvents/events/documents/CallforPapers.pdf

Fourth Critical Studies Conference on Development, Logistics, and Governance

[8-10 September,Kolkata,India]

CRG along with collaborators has worked in the past on themes related to autonomy, rights, popular ideas of social justice, and transformations in the mode of governance in the postcolonial era. These themes and lines of inquiry have reached a stage where we need to discuss in a frame of historical sociology the main way/s in which our societies are being transformed by logistical operations in governance, the particular post-colonial nature of this logistical transformation, and the role that various forms of mobility and flows play in shaping logistical governance in post-colonial milieu. It seems to us that the notion of logistics will give this proposed conference on the dynamics of developmental governance the ballast to map out and navigate this landscape of flows, governmental responses, and the massive transportation and communication-centric network emerging in the process. Logistics is here conceived as a grid of responses to certain social challenges that the task of governing a society faces – challenges that can be briefly described as challenges of security, population movements, and territorial flux in the internal organisation of the State. Such a conference calls for an inter-disciplinary approach in a broad historical overview, which can account for the great changes in logistical management of the Indian and other societies.

The conference proposes to be an occasion for exchanges on studies on logistical
governance. We invite panels / papers on related themes such as:
• The logistics of population mobilisation, control, management, and the phenomenon
of transit labour
• Developmental logistics
• Logistics of elections
• The development of border roads
• Disaster Management
• Impact of military administration on civilian governance
• Control regimes of mobile diseases
• The economy of logistics

The last date for sending proposals and abstracts is 31 March 2011, and the last date for receiving papers will be 31 July 2011. Please send proposals or abstracts to suhit@mcrg.ac.in CRG will have no fund for travel assistance to participants. However it will provide accommodation for 3 nights. The registration fee for the conference will be Rs. 500 (Five hundred rupees) only.

Human Rights Beyond the Law

[September 16-18, 2011, Jindal Global Law School, NCR of Delhi, India]

The workshop aims to bring together scholars, activists, illustrators, performers, musicians, photographers and filmmakers to excavate archives and imagine repertoires of bodily practices of subaltern protest that both engage and critique the law. Abstracts/ proposals should pertain broadly to the theme of the workshop and its four thematic clusters. Non-English abstracts/ proposals are also welcome as long as it is accompanied by an English translation/ transcreation. If you’d like to discuss your abstract/ proposal before submitting it, please feel to write to any of the organizing committee members (emails below). More details on the workshop are available at www.protestworkshop.jgu.edu.in

Paper abstracts, proposals to curate exhibitions/ films, and proposals for performances (not exceeding 1000 words) need to be emailed to protestworkshop.india@jgu.edu.in no later than March 30, 2011. Decisions will be announced by April 30, 2011.