Migration, Diaspora and the Moving Humanity of the Global South

Abstract (English)

Reflecting movements and transformations, the phenomenon of migration and diaspora has long intersected and overlapped the human experience. Contemporary Global South registers intensified migratory movements linked to economic precarity, climate crises, political instability, cultural and systemic inequalities. Nonetheless, these movements are neither new nor isolated. History illustrates that neither migration panics nor the corresponding necessity as well as politics of accommodation to large-scale human movement across long distances are new (Bhabha 2017a). This panel invites a critical exploration of epistemologies that frame migration, diasporas, displacement and belonging: How do the terminologies— migrant, historical and/or contemporary diasporas, refugee, expatriate, stateless, tribal and indigenous—shape policy, perception, and movement discourses? By centering the Global South, we discuss how colonial legacies and neo-imperial structures continue to mediate migration and the movement of humanity pushing boundaries in wake of newer systems of access, resistance and belonging. Nestling its evolution between technological advances and governance systems or tied to an intersection by disasters, wars and oppression, persecution and post-conflicts scenarios, migration has expanded between as well as within countries and continents, leading eventually to settlement across the entire globe (Manning 2013). This panel will explore issues of historical and contemporary integration of diasporas, racialized citizenship, labor precarity, securitization of borders, and the persistence of diasporic solidarities and resistances (Richmond 1994). We invite contributions on the longue durée of migration, from the critical lens of the anthropology of memory, culture, religion and politics and its significance for recent debates on migration. How do, - historical migrants and diasporas whose ancestors have witnessed, -forced displacements in the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades and under the indentured labor migrations or, have constituted the fleeing humanity escaping domestic or war related persecutions, analyze the contemporary movement of humanity? From such a perspective, the historical diasporas from and in the Caribbean, Latin American, African and Asian Countries (CALAAC) entail a crucial context for understanding how contemporary migrants and diasporas move (Bhabha 2017b). How do anthropologists understand economic and climate-driven migrations; exodus and mass departures; mass expulsions, returnees and twice migrants? (Sassen 2021). How do indigenous, decolonial (Achiume 2019), and Global South epistemologies offer alternative ways of understanding the moving humanity, identity and belonging of the Global South? Seeking to foreground knowledge systems stemming from lived experiences of this moving humanity of the Global South, this panel challenges hegemonic narratives. In a world replete with historic irony of unfettered diasporic transformations amidst crises of migration and displacement, we invite contributions, case studies and story telling (in English or Spanish) which rethink categories, histories, legacies and contemporary discourses.