Call for Papers Political Remittances and Political Transnationalism: Narratives, Political Practices and the Role of the State

Call for Papers
Political Remittances and Political Transnationalism:
Narratives, Political Practices and the Role of the State
Workshop at the University of Oxford
19-20 June 2017
Conveners: Dr Félix Krawatzek and Dr Lea Müller-Funk
This workshop seeks to gather an interdisciplinary group of researchers undertaking innovative research on migrants’ political remittances and political transnationalism. The question of how political ideas and practices circulate between migrants and their home country has clearly gained in relevance with the current increase in worldwide migration and requires historically sound investigations. The workshop continues discussions initiated during “Political, Social, and Economic Migrant Remittances: Content, Social Networks, and Impacts” held at Nuffield College (Oxford) in September 2016.
Political remittances and political transnationalism have increasingly been addressed across social sciences and the humanities. Research has covered a wide array of topics, such as migrants’ transnational political practices to understand the development of the home country, the interlinkages of political remittances and conflict resolution vs conflict exacerbation, the connection between political transnationalism, immigrant integration and identity constructions, and the role of diaspora engagement policies on political transnationalism. These phenomena have been studied using methods such as interviews, ethnography, text and corpus analysis, surveys, network analysis or policy analysis.
However, important questions remain open: What factors can be identified from historical and cross-country comparisons to improve understandings of political transnationalism? What can different disciplines learn from each other in studying political narratives and practices circulating among migrants? What influence do states have on political transnationalism? What theoretical concepts have been developed to study these phenomena across disciplines? What type of sources and methodologies are appropriate to study the flow of political remittances?
Trying to address some of these questions, without being restricted to them, this workshop will provide an open and constructive space to share results from original empirical research, advance theoretical concepts on political remittances and transnationalism and discuss methodological challenges. We anticipate discussions about political remittances and i) narrative and text analysis, ii) transnational political practices, iii) sense of identity, iv) the role of the state and v) theoretical approaches. We also plan a methodological roundtable on ways to study political remittances and transnationalism. Contributions by political scientists, sociologists, historians, linguists, and anthropologists are particularly welcome to enhance comparisons and discussions across disciplines and regional areas.
The workshop is a joint initiative supported by the OxPo Programme (Oxford-Sciences Po Programme), Nuffield College, the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and the Maison Française d’Oxford.
Please apply with a paper abstract (max. 500 words) and a short CV by 21 December 2016 addressed to felix.krawatzek@politics.ox.ac.uk and lea.muller-funk@politics.ox.ac.uk. We will finalise the programme by the end of January 2017. Papers should be sent two weeks before the workshop. Depending on the interest of participants, a publication of selected conference papers in a special issue is intended.