The Camp as a Space of Political Membership – Nando Sigona – February 17 at 6pm

The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility hosts a lecture by Nando Sigona entitled “The Camp as a Space of Political Membership.” The lecture is going to be followed by a discussion by prof. Michel Agier, Professor of Anthropology at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Director of Research at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, and a Visiting Scholar at the New School for Social Research (2015).

Drawing on an ethnography of informal refugee camps for Kosovo forced migrants in Italy, this talk argues for a resident-centred understanding of camps and camp-like institutions in refugee studies. It invites to a closer examination of the everyday lives in/of camps and the embodied practices and claims of citizenship that inhabitants perform. It discuss the concept of campzenship as a tool for capturing both the spatiality of membership and the specificity of contemporary camps.

Dr Nando Sigona  is Lecturer and Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK where he teaches sociology of migration and citizenship. He leads the workstream on Theory and Methods in the Institute of Research into Superdiversity. He is also Research Associate at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) and Refugee Studies Centre, both at the University of Oxford. His research interests include: statelessness, diasporas and the state; Romani politics and anti-Gypsyism; ‘illegality’ and the everyday experiences of undocumented migrant children and young people; and governance and governmentality of forced migration in the EU.

His work has appeared in a range of international academic journals, including Sociology, Social Anthropology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Identities, Citizenship Studies and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He is author or editor of books and journal’s special issues including Romani politics in contemporary Europe: poverty, ethnic mobilisation and the neoliberal order (with Nidhi Trehan, Palgrave, 2009), Refugee Community Organisations and Dispersal: Networks, Resources and Social Capital (with David Griffiths and Roger Zetter, Policy Press, 2005), The Roma in the new EU: Polices, Frames and Everyday Experiences (with Peter Vermeersch, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2012), and Rifugio Europa? (Studi Emigrazione, 2006). He recently edited (with Fiddian Qasmiyeh, Loescher and Long) The Oxford Handbook on Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and co-authored (with Bloch and Zetter) Sans Papiers. The social and economic lives of undocumented migrants (Pluto Press, 2014). Nando is also Associate Editor of Migration Studies, published by Oxford University Press.

The event is part of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility 2014-15 Lecture Series “Rethinking Refugee Spaces: Architecture, Design, and Politics.”

Tuesday February 17th 2015 at 6pm

Klein Conference Room (A510)

66 West 12th street New York NY