Follow Up re 2013 Presidential Conversation on Language & Mobility/PEI on Migration

[Dick, Hilary]

Hello, everyone--

I am writing with a quick follow up on my email of April 16 (forwarded
below).

Please remember that the deadline to email me with expressions of interest
related to the AAA's new PEI on Migration, Displacement, and Mobility is
this coming *TUES May 6*. This is also the last day I will be able to
receive feedback on the SLA Presidential Conversation on Language and
Mobility summary (explained in my email below), which will be discussed as
part of the PEI planning meeting later this month.

Thank you for your time and attention.

All the best,
Hilary


On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Dick, Hilary <dickh at arcadia.edu> wrote:

> 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?
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
HILARY PARSONS DICK, PhD
Assistant Professor of International Studies
Department of Historical and Political Studies
* Arcadia University*
<http://www.arcadia.edu/faculty/hilary-parsons-dick/>
<dickh at arcadia.edu>