Summary of Themes in SLA Presidential Conversation on Language & Mobility/PEI on Migration

[Dick, Hilary]

Dear Colleagues--

You may recall my mentioning at the SLA business meeting in November that I
would be sending around an email recapping the content of the SLA
Presidential Conversation on Language and Mobility. Here it is!

First, I want to again extend thanks to our participants Susan Gal, Bonnie
McElhinny, Monica Heller, Shalini Shankar, Alejandro Paz, Rosina Marquez,
and Jan Blommaert for their thoughtful comments--as well as the many SLA
members who attended the event.

I have composed a document that contains a summary of the Presidential
Conversation, along with some additional information about the AAA's new
(and still forming) Public Education Initiative (PEI) on Migration,
Displacement, and Mobility. Unfortunately, I am not able to send the
document as an attachment to the SLA list-serve--not being able to send
attachments is a regulation in place to ensure the safe management and use
of the list.

If you would like the full document, please email me at <dickh at arcadia.edu>
and I can send it to you directly.

For your immediate reference, however, I have pasted below a summary of the
predominant themes that emerged during the open portion of the Presidential
Conversation, along with the current "Vision Statement" for the PEI.

If you were present at the Conversation and feel that something crucial has
been left out of the themes, please let me know. Keep in mind that themes
are meant to be brief--so, naturally, there is a lot of detail that has been
left out intentionally.

As you know, a key aim of the Presidential Conversation was to ensure the
SLA engage with the PEI from the outset. The PEI is still in the early
stages of planning, and I am happy to share with you that the full document
recapping the SLA Presidential Conversation will be included with other
documents for discussion at a key PEI planning meeting in late May, so our
timing is good.

If you are interested in being involved in some as yet-to-be-determined
way(s) with the PEI, I am currently soliciting expressions of interest for
the PEI Planning Committee.  Let me know of your interest by emailing me.
If you have already emailed me, you do not need to do so again.

Please respond by *TUES May 6* with any feedback on the themes and/or
expressions of interest.

Note that I am merely gathering information for the PEI--I am not on the
Planning Committee and will not be making the decisions about the structure
of roles in the PEI.

Thank you for your interest.

Yours sincerely,
Hilary
-- 
HILARY PARSONS DICK, PhD
Assistant Professor of International Studies
Department of Historical and Political Studies
* Arcadia University*
<dickh at arcadia.edu>

*SLA Presidential Conversation Organizers*

-        Adrienne Lo (UNIV OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN)

-        Hilary Parsons Dick (ARCADIA UNIV)

-        Jonathan Rosa (UMASS, AMHERST)


*Conversation Commentators*

-        Susan Gal (UNIV OF CHICAGO)

-        Bonnie McElhinny (UNIV OF TORONTO) and Monica Heller (UNIV OF
TORONTO)

-        Shalini Shankar (NORTHWESTERN UNIV)

-        Alejandro Paz (UNIV OF TORONTO) and Rosina Marquez (UNIV OF SURREY)

-        Jan Blommaert (TILBURG UNIV)




*Key Themes that Emerged in the Open Portion of the SLA Presidential
Conversation*

After the commentators offered their 'thoughts for conversation' (see below
for a recap of these), we opened the floor to general discussion, asking
audience members to share what they thought were the most pressing issues,
questions, or themes they would like to have included in the AAA's PEI.



Three themes emerged as particularly salient during the conversation; they
were: (i) the role of language in producing the social boundaries and
categories that define "mobility"; (ii) the historicity of mobility; (iii)
and the institutionalization of mobility. Each theme is discussed in more
detail below.



In addition to the themes, audience members were interested in working with
the PEI to envision an array of "instruments" through which the PEI can
engage the public, beyond a touring museum exhibit: YouTube videos;
interactive events, blogs, etc. If you have ideas for such instruments,
please email them to Hilary, who can convey them to the PEI planning
committee.



-        *THEME ONE: Language as defining "mobility"*

o   Several participants drew attention to the ways that language
ideologies and practices play an absolutely central role not only in
determining the social categories and socio-geographical boundaries that
organize "mobility," but also in shaping the practices through which such
categories are created and come to affect the actual lives of mobile
populations. Think, for example, of immigration policy (which is a form of
discourse)--it helps construct and perform both sovereign borders and the
categories of persons who are authorized to move across them (while also
setting the terms of "migrant illegality").

§  So, what kind of person do you become when you do (or do not) move,
according to these boundaries and categories--and what role does language
play in that process of becoming? This question has been a major point of
exploration in the literature on language and migration for years--and it
also undergirds the next two themes from the conversation.



-        *THEME TWO: The historicity of mobility*

o   Attendees thought it was critical that we, and the PEI, denaturalize
the rooted population ("the citizen") as the primary category of belonging
and try to envision the world with mobile populations in the center. This
means, among other things, that we need to be aware of the long histories
of human movement (from the "Out of Africa" model of human evolution to
various eras of colonialism--not only European--to the many periods of
"immigration" during the era of the modern nation-state form). There is
nothing exceptional about contemporary human movements.



o   That said, many in the audience asked the crucial question: what is
particular about the contemporary movement of people--how is it different
from other types of movement in prior periods of history?

§  One way to answer this question is to attend to the issues raised by Sue
Gal in her opening comments about how "mobility" works as a social-semiotic
process, rooted in particular contexts and historical moments (see below).

§  Another, not unrelated, answer that emerged robustly during the
Conversation was that we must consider the institutionalization of
mobilities in order to see what makes them particular across time--more on
that point in the next theme.



o   In thinking about the historicity of human movement, it was urged that
we be careful not  to replicate linear narratives of history or easy
periodizations of the past, which tend to overlook the way that so-called
sequential periods of history often overlap in time, and frequently carry
with them distinct and competing concepts of groupness and mobility. Think,
for example, of the interaction of religious and secular nationalisms: both
distinguish 'outside groups' and, thus, presuppose the possibility of
movement across distinct social spaces--and yet they each conceive of time
and space differently, often leading to tremendous political and sometimes
violent conflict.



-        *THEME THREE: The institutionalization of mobilities*

o   The PEI should consider processes of the various 'institutions' that
work to delineate, arrange, and enact the possible range of human movement
(and "movers"), so that some are seen as productive, desirable, moral, and
others are not, while yet others are rendered invisible or "disappeared"
altogether.

§  Indeed, it was pointed out that "migrantcy" is a negotiated
phenomenon--it is not self-evident, and every distinct mobile population
exists within a range of other mobile populations, some positively
valorized, others not (what we could call an "indexical order of
migrantcy").



o   We talked about a range of salient "institutions" and institutional
practices--from those of the nation-state (the US Census; various
departments of immigration control; courts and other offices that hear
claims for asylum and/or administer deportation proceedings) to those of
non-governmental organizations (UN reports and conferences; immigrant
rights campaigns) to those of the media (advertising firms; marketing
campaigns) to those that pertain to the technologies, such as E-Verify,
that sort some people into categories of risk (as potential "terrorists" or
"illegal aliens"), while positioning others as non-threatening and free to
move.



o   We considered the multiple ways language practices enable the forms of
'movement control' that become instituted. Think of the importance of
documents--passports, visas, or the lack thereof, in shaping the character
and experience of movement. Think also of the absolutely essential role
that language plays in creating the images of mobile populations which
always undergird and enable the institutionalization of mobility--agreement
on immigration policy, for example, depends first on agreement about 'who
immigrants are': a process that unfolds discursively.


*PEI on Migration, Displacement, and Mobility: DRAFT Vision Statement*

The central goal of the SLA Presidential Conversation was to generate
insights for the PEI about how linguistic anthropology can contribute to
the PEI on Migration, Displacement, and Mobility. As such, Monica Heller,
now AAA President, opened the event, addressing the PEI's aims. For your
reference, included below is the PEI's current Vision Statement; it is a
draft, not the final.



*AAA PEI VISION STATEMENT*

Draft: December 2013

*World on the Move - 100,000 Years of Human Migration*



In today's world, there is a lot of discussion about how we move around
much more than we used to, and about what that is doing to our communities.
In some places, there is concern that too many "immigrants" will use up the
resources of a country, or change it beyond recognition. In others,
communities are disrupted and destroyed by the need to move to make way for
mining, tourism, or agriculture, to find jobs unavailable at home, or to
escape the effects of climate change. The American Anthropological
Association's new Public Education Initiative will address these concerns
from an anthropological perspective.



The new AAA project's central messages are:



1) The forms of mobility that concern us now are not new: people have being
moving around for as long as we have traces of humans on the planet. Today,
every one of us has a mobility story in our own lives or in our family
histories.



2) There are many reasons for mobility. This initiative will focus on:
climate change; changes in economic activities; competition for political
power. It will show how these are tied to each other.



3) Mobility (for whatever reasons) always brings changes in how we live:
what we eat, how we dress, what we speak, where we live, what we believe.
Mobility is also connected to changes in policies and public debates.



4) Sometimes human migration worries us because we fear losing what we
know, what we have, the world we are comfortable in. Sometimes, though,
mobility is about freedom. How should we feel about it now? What is it like
to be a stranger? Or to find yourself in a new world? How does it feel when
your mother moves far away? Or the people who move in next door look and
act in unfamiliar ways? How can we use what we learn in the exhibit to
recognize the humanity in all of us?