Colloquium "The Refugee-Migrant Distinction: Toward a Global History" (English and French)

• Bastiaan Bouwman (Utrecht University, the Netherlands),
• Fabrice Langrognet (CNRS, France),
• eremy Adelman (University of Cambridge)

Funders

Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (Fung Global Network Fund), Gates Cambridge Trust

Registration

Attendance is in-person only. Registration is possible (capacity allowing) by sending an email to fgnf.cambridge@gmail.com.

Programme

Thursday 15 October

8:30-9:00  Registration

9:00-9:15  Opening remarks Bastiaan Bouwman, Fabrice Langrognet, and Jeremy Adelman (Utrecht University, CNRS, and University of Cambridge)

9:15-11:15  Panel 1: Refugees, migrants, or alternative categories?

Moderation and discussion: Mia Bay (University of Cambridge)

• Aytek Soner Alpan (British Institute at Ankara) – “From Treaty Category to Identity Claim: Mübadil and the Uneven Making of the Refugee-Migrant Divide”
• Mae Ngai (Columbia University) – “Refugees, History, and the Human”
• Catherine Nolan-Ferrell (University of Texas at San Antonio) – “‘Unrecognized Refugees’ and Alternate Citizenships in Chiapas, Mexico”

11:30-12:00  Discussion: Archival access in uncertain times

Moderation: Jeremy Adelman (University of Cambridge)

Speaker: Heather Faulkner (Senior Archivist, UNHCR)

12:00-13:00  Lunch (Bradfield Court) – speakers only

13:00-15:00  Panel 2: Repatriation and the end of refugee status

Moderation and discussion: Irial Glynn (University College Dublin)

• Noel Mariam George (London School of Economics) – “Across a Sea of Papers: Repatriation, Treaties, and the Afterlives of Post-Imperial Displacement in South Asia”
• Tosin Durodola (School of Advanced Study, University of London) – “Ending Refugeehood: Cessation and the Historical Production of the Refugee–Migrant Divide”
• Wolfgang Thiele (Free University of Berlin) – “Refugees’ Authenticity on Trial: Forced Repatriations and Transnational Activism in Cold War Japan”

15:30-17:30  Panel 3: Labour, security, and precarity

Moderation and discussion: Christoph Rass (Osnabrueck University)

• Laura Robson (Yale University) – “The ‘Nansen Passport’ and the Birth of the Modern Guest Worker”
• Jiajia Duan (University of California, Irvine) – “Walk the Line: The Golden Venture and the Making of Chinese Asylum in the Post–Cold War United States”
• Laura Madokoro (Carleton University) – “‘Dust Bowl’ Refugees: Citizenship, Mobility and the Hardening of Rhetorical Strategies”

18:15-19:45  Reception at Gates Cambridge Sr. House (17 Mill Lane) – upon registration

20:00  Conference dinner – speakers only

Thursday 16 October

8:30-9:00  Walk-in (coffee/tea)

9:00-11:00  Panel 4: The evolution of international norms and concepts

Moderation and discussion: Tugba Basaran (University of Cambridge)

• Leo Lucassen (Leiden University) – “In The Eye of The Beholder, The Fuzzy Boundary between ‘Normal’ and Refugee Migrants. A Global Historical Approach”
• Yulia Ioffe (University College London) – “Complementary Protection and the Changing Boundaries of the Refugee–Migrant Distinction”
• Esther Brito (Pontifical University of Comillas) – “Concretizing the Tensions of Queer Mobility: Migration and Asylum as Sites of Contradiction”

11:30-13:30  Panel 5: Agency and refugee claim-making

Moderation and discussion: Anne Irfan (University College London)

• Anna Deriugina (University of Vienna) – “From Political Exile to Managed Mobility: Russian Émigrés in the Age of Displaced Persons”
• Nadia Latif (Mount Holyoke College) – “Towards A Micro-History of The Forced-Voluntary Distinction through The Experiences of Palestinian Refugees in Burj al-Barajneh Camp”
• Farhana Afrin Rahman (University of Warwick) – “Claims Without a Category: Legal Non-Status and the Gendered Politics of Belonging in Rohingya Displacement”

13:30-14:30  Lunch (Bradfield Court) – speakers only

14:30-16:30  Panel 6: Ending empires and intergroup dynamics

Moderation and discussion: Ria Kapoor (Queen Mary University of London)

• Ana Guardião (University of Coimbra) – “Addressing Forced Displacement: Migration and ‘Refugeedom’ within Portuguese Decolonisation (1960s-1970s)”
• Michal Frankl (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe) – “(Un)defining Refugees in Postimperial Austria and Czechoslovakia”
• Arnab Dutta (University of Groningen) – “The Foreshadowing of Refugee Politics before the Postcolonial Moment: Jewish Exiles in British Bengal, 1930s-40s”

17:00-18:00  Concluding discussion

Chairs: Bastiaan Bouwman, Fabrice Langrognet, and Jeremy Adelman (Utrecht University, CNRS, and University of Cambridge)