Centre for the Study of Migration - Past activities
2019
‘Tankers, Tycoons, and the Making of Modern Regimes of Law, Labour, and Finance’
- Talk by Laleh Khalili, Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London
- Date: Thursday 21 March 2019
- Location: Arts One Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London
- Organisers: Queen Mary Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IHSS) and Queen Mary University of London Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholars (QMUL-LTDS)
2016
Europe’s crisis: What future for immigration and asylum law and policy?
Migration and Law Network 206 Conference: 27-28 June 2016, in association with Queen Mary University of London
The European Union is today faced by significant movements of refugees and migrants from places which have experienced war or economic or environmental pressure. Combined with recent terrorist attacks, these developments have led some to doubt the viability of the EU migration framework. At the same time, they have led to arguments for new action by EU institutions and agencies, and by neighbouring countries. New forms of solidarity have been sought by some states and sections of public opinion, but rejected by others. Given the current sense of crisis, there are great uncertainties as to the future direction of the EU migration framework, as well as its content.
Against this background, we invite papers from any discipline which address legal and policy aspects of the ongoing EU migration crisis. Among the questions that papers may wish to address are the following:
- What is the nature, and what are the sources, of the EU crisis concerning migration?
- What should be the legal, policy and operational responses to the European migration crisis?
- Is solidarity among states and peoples possible inside the EU? Does solidarity apply also externally, towards non-EU countries? What is, and what should be, the role of neighbouring and transit states in controlling migration towards the EU?
- Are there lessons from elsewhere – including the Americas, South East Asia and Australia – for the experience in the EU and its surrounding region?
- Are new international norms and approaches needed to accommodate contemporary migration flows?
26th November UNHCR Information & Careers Session
17th November Theatre Play & Discussion
11th November Meet & Greet Event with Immigration Organisations
9th November The Centre hosted the launch of London The Promised Land Revisited: The Changing Face of the London Migrant Landscape in the early 21st Century edited by Anne J Kershen. A full programme for the day is available here.
5th November The Centre hosted a postgraduate workshop ‘Researching methods in interdisciplinary Environments’. The workshop was open to all Humanities and HSS Schools. Key speakers were Greg Constantine, Tarek Virani and Mariza Dima. The workshop focused on the use of visual and ethnographic methods.
2nd November MIGRALAC (Latin American and Caribbean Migration Network) Seminar ‘Latin American experiences of migration, work and employment’, organised by The Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Birmingham.
The Centre and the International State Crime Initiative (Law, QMUL) co-hosted Greg Constantine under the QMUL Distinguished Visitor Scheme. Greg is a documentary photographer currently working on a project entitled ‘Global Stateless’ which includes a long standing engagement with the Rohingya in Myanmar. A series of events were planned including an exhibition of his photographs.
2015
Conference on Critical Migration and Border Studies, 1-2 September 2015
Returning home? Contexts and lived experiences of return migration
July 6th 2015, 2-5.30pm Room 126, Geography building, Queen Mary University of London
2014
Migrant London in the Age of Neoliberalism
Brian Chikwava author of Harare North was in conversation with Dr Rachael Gilmour on the 22nd May 2014 at 6pm in the ArtsOne Lecture Theatre.
For more than the past hundred years Queen Mary has existed in the heart of migrant London, and the College has an impressive history of researching migration as a social phenomenon and in intervening in public debate. Given the intensification of migration in the present epoch, it is timely to re-launch the Centre and to invite those concerned about migration, from QMUL and from further afield, to attend this first event in what we hope will signal a revivified future for the Centre.
At this re-launch Brian Chikwava will address the question of migrant labour in contemporary London. He is the author of the magnificent novel Harare North, published by Vintage in 2009, which re-imagines the hallucinogenic, dispossessed lives of Zimbabwean migrants and refugees in Brixton. As Maggie Gee has noted, this is fiction which ‘turns the London you know upside down’. He will be in conversation with Dr Rachael Gilmour of the School of English and Drama.
2012
International Conference: Travel History, Literatureand Film 2-3/7/2012
This international, multilingual and interdisciplinary conference, was organized jointly by the Centre for Catalan Studies (School of Languages, Linguistics and Film) and the Centre for the Study of Migration, both part of Queen Mary University of London.
Film screening: 'A Kid for Two Farthings' - 1/7/2012
In collaboration with the East End Film Festival the Centre for the Study of Migration took a look at the Jewish presence in 1950s East London with a screening of Carol Reed's 1955 feature film 'A Kid for Two Farthings'. Based on Wolf Mankowitz's novella the film follows Joe, a small boy who buys a one-horned goat in Petticoat Lane Market believing it to be a unicorn that will change his family's fortunes. Featuring fantastic location footage of post-war Whitechapel and a characterful cast (Diana Dors, Sid James, David Kossoff) the film is poetic and moving in equal measure. There was a short introductory talk by Dr. Gil Toffell.
DISPLACEMENT, RESISTANCE, REPRESENTATION: Culture and Power in Contexts of Migrancy - 28-29/6/2012
The Centre's annual conference was held at Queen Mary and was FREE and OPEN to ALL.
ArtsTwo Opening 5-14/3/2012
A series of public events to mark the opening of the ArtsTwo building including lectures, readings, seminars, performances and film.
2011
Social Cinema Scenes 25/11/2011
*Note This Event Was Cancelled*
Media Becomings: Toward a Nonlinear History of South Asian Media. Dr Rajinder Dudrah (Manchester) and Dr Amit Rai (Queen Mary)
In Pirate Modernity, Ravi Sundaram elaborates a vision of nonlinear media analysis that follows the vectors of practices, media flows, and affects. In this workshop on what is becoming through media, what is media becoming in South Asia, Dudrah and Rai engage with Pirate Modernity as a touchstone for thinking about the past, present, future of research in media ecologies.
Social Cinema Scenes is an ongoing series of research events investigating the social significance of cinema spaces across a range of historical and cultural contexts. Taking an intimate research colloquium format events seek to generate discussion between different disciplinary specialists to explore how geography, history, identity and aesthetics intersect within spaces of film exhibition.
Multiculturalism and Integration
Annual Guest Lecture November 1st 2011: 6.30pm
Professor Tariq Modood (Director, Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship) spoke on multiculturalism and integration in a lecture entitled 'Multiculturalism and Integration: struggling with confusions.'
Migration Across the Disciplines
Organized by Tendayi Bloom and Parvati Nair 30th June -1st July 2011
With this conference, the Centre for the Study of Migration brought together scholars, practitioners and performers from several continents. They work in the fields of: anthropology, geography, governance, languages, law, literature, media, medicine, philosophy, physics, and poltics. They expressed themselves through traditional academic papers, through poetry, through music, through film, through photography, and through insights from their daily practice. Based physically at the heart of Britain's migration story, were able to take a walking tour of London's East End and had a conference dinner at a local Lebanese restaurant.
9-29 May 2011 - Stephen Watts, writer and poet, was resident at the centre during this time. There was a series of four workshops that he conducted during his stay.
