In today’s world of multiple successive and overlapping crises, territorial borders are experiencing resignification and revival in conjunction with increasing historical, political, and cultural pressures faced by local, national, and international communities on a multiplicity of scales. This is true both where patterns of mobility and migration are concerned, as well as in relation to borderlands, border regions, and border cultures. Canadian borders are no exception, with inherited border conflicts, negotiations, and imaginaries intersecting with new challenges, creating an increasing sense of urgency. Since the colonial settling of Turtle Island, the anglophone and the francophone settlers have drawn borders, parceled up land, and made use of land resources in what today is known as Quebec and Canada. These borders have not only become important for migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers but also for the inhabitants of border regions, whose cross-border life worlds were suddenly irritated by closed borders. The renewed importance of bordering processes in the 21st century asks for a recalibration of the study of Canada’s borders, calling for critical and ethical models of engagement from scholars across all disciplines involved in Canadian Studies, Quebec Studies, and Indigenous Studies. The 45th annual conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in Germanspeaking Countries (GKS) should present one such opportunity to reflect about the border/migration/mobility nexus from multiple perspectives and bring them into conversation.
The conference, therefore, focuses on narrations, policies, practices, (alternative) concept(ion)s, and geographies of borders, mobility, and migration. By investigating displacement, diaspora, and other forms of border crossings which entail questions of citizenship and nationality and negotiate the meanings of home, belonging, and marginality, and by thinking through diverse concepts with which borders, mobility, and migration are approached, we seek to broaden and deepen the understanding of Canada across the disciplines.
We invite paper proposals in both English and French across all disciplines involved in Canadian Studies, Quebec Studies, and Indigenous Studies on topics related to mobility, migration, and borders. Such topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Canadian, Québécois, and Indigenous border cultures: specificities and negotiations
- Canada/Quebec and global migration flows
- Cross-border mobilities within Canada/Quebec
- Borders/migration/mobility in Canadian, Québécois, and Indigenous literatures, art, and media, including oral tradition
- Canadian, Québécois, and Indigenous imaginaries of borders/migration/mobility/
- Indigenous nations and borders/migration/mobility
- Border disputes
- Posthumanist and non-anthropocentric approaches to borders/migration/mobility
- Borders/migration/mobility and crises (climate crisis and the pandemic)
- Border histories, geographies, and policies
- Border experiences and regulation
- Citizenship and human rights
- Federalism and territorial management
- Policies of borders, migration, and mobility
- (De)territorialization of languages
- Borders and gender
- Epistemologies of the border, epistemologies on the move
- (Alternative) concept(ion)s of borders
Contact and Abstract Submission
Paper proposals/abstracts of max. 500 words can be submitted in French or English and should outline:
- methodology and theoretical approaches chosen
- content/body of research
- which of the three aspects outlined above the paper speaks to (if any)
In addition, some short biographical information (max. 250 words) should be provided, specifying current institutional affiliation and position as well as research background with regard to the conference topic and/or three aspects. We encourage submissions in French.
Abstracts should be submitted no later than May 15, 2023 to the GKS office: gks@kanada-studien.de