“Immigration Politics, Refugee Crises, and Ethnic Dynamics in the Turbulent 2010s: Canada and Beyond” – The 26th Canadian Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) Biennial Conference, Halifax
October 16-17, 2020
Halifax, Nova Scotia
The deadline has been extended to March 30th, 2020
Immigration Politics, Refugee Crises, and Ethnic Dynamics in the Turbulent 2010s: Canada and Beyond
The Canadian Ethnic Studies Association (CESA) invites panel and/or paper proposals for its upcoming 26th conference on the theme of “Immigration Politics, Refugee Crises, and Ethnic Dynamics in the Turbulent 2010s: Canada and Beyond”. The 2010s was a decade in which the issues of immigration policy, border security, rising ethnic tensions, new and ongoing regional and national political conflicts, multiple displacements and escalating refugee crises dominated the news in many different countries – from the United States and Canada in North America to the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece in Europe, and to China, Australia, Myanmar, and New Zealand in East Asia and Oceania. This dominance was so pronounced that the immigration/ethnic issues became one of the paramount forces in determining the political directions and election results in different countries; they also led to the rise of a new right-wing populist discourse as well as new and old uncertainties about the meaning and possibility of citizenship, identity / sense of belonging, freedom, human rights, and justice. Meanwhile, despite the conservative and exclusionary politics in various western countries, citizens’ groups and solidarity movements have emerged or strengthened existing voices that support inclusion and integration of migrants and refugees. Finally, this decade also witnessed technological advancements, which not only changed state organization, the economy and the social world that we live in, but also shifted the methodological landscape, pushing the research frontier in immigration and ethnic studies.