CFP: Continuity and Change of Spatial Mobility around World War I.

For the upcoming European Social Science History Conference in Amsterdam March 22.-25. 2006 we (Sigrid Wadauer at Salzburg and Marlou Schrover at Leiden) - are organising three sessions (outlined below) on Continuity and Change of Spatial Mobility around World War I. If you are interested in presenting a paper in one of these proposed sessions please send an abstract (up to 500 words) to Sigrid.Wadauer@sbg.ac.at. Deadline: April 4th, 2005.

World War I is regarded as watershed in European migration history. Restrictive state policy towards migration, changes of borders, economic development, and the development of the welfare system contributed to the change in the migration system(s). There seems to be at the same time more mobility and also more sedentariness.

Is there just change and discontinuity or also continuity? Are there different people on the move or is there a change in perception? How are the contrary understandings of mobility (as normal, as traditional, as progress or as reaction to a crisis) produced? Are changes in perception related to ‘real’ changes in the migration systems and if so, how? Does it make sense to dissociate (the analysis of) perception and reality? How can we analyse this?

In order to understand a change in the system of migrations it seems necessary to discuss the relation of forms and patterns of mobility which at first sight seem substantially different and are often studied separately. Additionally it seems useful to abandon the idea of clearly separated groups and forms of mobility in favour of an analysis of the practices of defining, distinguishing and organizing migration.

We suggest the following sessions:

Session 1. Government Policy and its Effects: The welfare system and mobility/sedentariness; bureaucratic attempts to regulate migration and their effects; borders and redefinition of migrations; immigration and emigration politics; organisation of migrant work after WWI; international contracts to organize migrant labor; police and crime: identification and control of mobility; workhouses; how government policy differs according to gender.

Session 2. Work and Mobility: The rule of work and concepts of mobility; changes in work organisation; mobility as a strategy to find and/or avoid work; what's work/what's unemployment/work shyness; how does the conception of work differ according to gender; itinerate and stable trades; hierarchies in forms of mobility and the hierarchies of professions;

Session 3. Representations of Mobility/Sedentariness: What actually is in a specific historical context - mobility/migration/sedentariness? How are mobility/migration/sedentariness distinguished? Representations of mobility/sedentariness in media, autobiographies, travel writing; tourism; how does gender shape mobility/the perception of mobility; mobility as stigma/virtue: Anarchistic vagabonds' movements; images of the wandering Jew; image of gypsies etc. and its ambivalence; the weight of attributes (like gender, ethnicity, nationality etc.) and their interrelation.

Please send an abstract (up to 500 words) to

Sigrid.Wadauer@sbg.ac.at

Deadline: April 4th, 2005.