Summary of Work Group 2 2009 MEETING
Travel, Exchanges, Translations
Rome, 27-28 April 2009
Convenor: Emilio Cocco
University of Teramo, Dep. Theories and Policies of Social Development
ecocco@unite.it
+39 086126029; +39 3471109775 (cell. phone)
Venue: Istituto Luigi Sturzo – Via delle Coppelle, 35 – Roma -
infopoint@sturzo.it
Chair: Luigi Vittorio Ferraris
Italian Center for Conciliation Studies (CISCI), Rome, Italy
luigivf@tin.it
Title: Liquid Lands, Solid Seas: dislocations, exchanges and relocations across the eastern borders of Europe
Structure of the meeting:
The focus of this workgroup is on the processes of crossing borders and on the ways borders become visible and meaningful (or, conversely, how they disappear) at the eastern peripheries of Europe.
Accordingly, in this first meeting, selected participants discussed the relations between border crossing (moving) and time, investigating how the frequency or period of crossing (moving) might affect the borders and the identities of those crossing. Sometimes people, things, objects, places, beliefs move across borders and are exchanged, dislocated and relocated. In other cases, the borders move and make things domestic or alien from one day to the next. Special attention was also paid to legal and illegal exchanges, conversions and translations across the borders, and those performing them.
The Work Group was intended to enhance the potential of exploring these issues in the context of the changing notion of space-time in the contemporary global world, with a focus on different forms of social connection/disconnection and their impact on the classic ways to perceive territoriality.
The convenor of the first meeting asked participants to think about this focus in two ways. First, by considering the relations between the physical features of the borders and the way different points of observation can affect the social construction the border. In this perspective, the relation between land and sea and vice versa was considered a crucial one; accordingly, some of the papers pointed out this relation and explored it from different standpoints.
Secondly, by studying how the uncertainties and the lack of transparency of the global social context put stress on some territorial borders, which are trapped in an ultimately provisional condition between the past and the future. A good example is given by the borders of detention centres for undocumented migrants, in which people are held for an unpredictable time span. Indeed, some of the papers focused precisely on the topic of migration and legal/illegal border crossing as a way to perform the border itself.
Finally, participants of the work group were asked to reflect on a wide variety of relevant concepts. These included concepts such as autochthonous, immigrant, foreigner, traveller, passer-by, tourist, alien, displaced, exiled, smuggler, illegal, transgressor, settlers, colonist, pioneer and their relation with border crossing at the eastern peripheries of Europe.
The objectives and the aims of the work group
The Work Group met for 2 days in Rome and the selected speakers presented both empirical and theoretical analysis of the wider processes of dislocations, exchanges and relocations across the borders of Europe’s eastern peripheries. The structure and the aims of the work group were consistent with the objectives of the COST Action IS0803, paying special attention to the aim of drawing together people from a range of different disciplines across the social sciences and humanities.
Thus, the purpose of the work group was to draw together expertise and reports from current research being carried out by scholars who are Parties to the Action. This knowledge is to be used to build up a new approach towards the study of borders, in addition to building up the project’s website and Wiki presence.
Additionally, one key element of this Work Group – which is common with the other meetings of the Action – was to bring together regional specialists with conceptual specialists, as well as bringing together scholars working the northern down to the southern part of the eastern periphery of Europe. This set the stage for a ongoing process of sharing the knowledge, both empirical and theoretical.
To that end, the convenor of the Work Group 2, Emilio Cocco, developed a conceptual theme to address the topics, which would be able to attract empirical and conceptual works from the north and the south. Dr. Cocco based his proposal on the work he is carrying out in the framework of a national research project on mobility and tourism in the Adriatic Sea. This project focuses on most of the topics included in Work Group 2’s scientific domain, providing an interesting research field to experiment and bring together different approaches.
The location of Rome was selected because Italy is one of the crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Eastern periphery of Europe, and both in Rome as in the rest of the country the connections between the different forms of border-crossing are quite strong.
For this first WG2 proposed meeting, a total of 29 researchers applied to attend, who were from 12 Parties to the Action. The convenor (Dr. Emilio Cocco) made a selection on the basis of: the quality of the proposed applications, a balance of early stage and senior researchers, a balance of topics and regions of specialisation, a balance of theoretical and empirical proposals, a balance of Parties participating.
The final decisions were made in consultation with the Steering Committee of the Action (the Steering Committee consists of the Chair, Vice Chair and all the Convenors of meetings for 2009, a total of 9 MC members).
One of the innovative aspects of COST Action IS0803 is that the meetings belonging to different work groups domain and taking place in the same year are interconnected and structured to articulate with one another. Additionally, they have been set up to make dissemination of knowledge relatively rapid and effective, with the help of a dedicated Wiki section ( like wikipedia) of the Action to which any Action members can contribute.
Accordingly, the participants to Work Group 2 in Rome were asked to send a draft version of their papers or proposed wiki entries two-three weeks in advance. The idea was to upload their papers in the password protected area of the Action website, which would have allowed participants and convenors to read through all the papers and prepare for the meeting. Unfortunately, the website was not completely finished by the date of the work group meeting, so that the IT support was only been partially working. Nevertheless, the draft versions of the papers were circulated by the convenor and all the participants were able to read them before the meeting. At the meeting, everyone had the right to speak for about 15 minutes the first day, leaving space for discussion the second day. Papers were divided into two sections, without any particular criteria, as they were more or less approaching the reference concepts from very specific standpoints. This method proved to work, though it was a little bit too rigid. Actually, now the website is fully functioning, and once all the participants learn how to use it, then it will be easier to move earlier to the discussion of the relevant topics without too much time for full presentations.
As far as the Wiki was concerned, there were no proposals for entries before the meeting, but at the end of the meeting the group came up with several entry proposals (see “conclusion”). Some of them overlap with other the proposals of other work groups, which is to be expected given the overlapping interests of all the work of this Action. Indeed, this combined system for interlocking meetings and constant placing of material on the website with an ongoing means of creating searchable cross-references is intended to make the vast body of empirical and conceptual material that will emerge from this Action easily and transparently available to all participants. According to the objectives stated in the application of the project, this will be building up a solid knowledge base from which to tackle the main objective of this Action: “to develop a new multi-disciplinary approach to study the process of remaking the borders in the eastern periphery of Europe, combining research on everyday social, moral and material aspects of this, and bringing together expertise in both empirical and conceptual research from across the whole region”.
Comments on the presentations and discussion:
The abstracts for each presentation discussed at the meeting can be found at http://www.eastbordnet.org/events/workgroups/WG22009/index.htm. The working papers of these meetings will be posted on the website by the end of the summer 2009.
The papers mostly discussed the topics of travelling and transnational mobility, with special regard to migration and diasporas. These similarities made the following discussion easier, although forced the focus of the work group somehow too much in the direction of “migration studies”. In spite of the importance of migration processes for constituting borders by crossing them – both legally and illegally – there are also other aspects of border-crossing that deserve more attention, perhaps in future meetings. For instance, the issue of tourism was only slightly touched upon, as was the issue of the movement of capital and flows of money, which are also central to our Action. Finally, the innovative and voluntarily dimension of border crossing, connected with acts of ‘pioneerism’ and discovery was also under-represented at this meeting. A group of papers addressed the topic of the sea and maritime borders, both in terms of border-crossing and border-making. This angle proved to be important and fuelled the discussion, bringing together more empirical and with conceptual approaches. Generally speaking, the work group had a strong regional focus on the Balkans and the Mediterranean but interesting examples of similar issues were brought from the northern regions. Comparisons drawn during the discussion time have been fruitful.
At the end of the day, the convenor collected some proposals to be considered for Wiki entries by the MC.
TRANSNATIONAL: Laura Huttunen
MEDIALIZATION: Madeleine Hurd
TOURISM: Emilio Cocco, Rita Salvatore
TERRITORY: Damir Josipovic
MIGRANTS/MIGRATIONS/ASYLUM SEEKERS/REFUGEES: Jutta Bacas, Paola Monzini
BORDERS, BOUNDARIES: Isabella Damiani
MEDITERRANEAN: Michaela Schauble, Irena Weber
FRONTIER: Olivier Kramsch
IDENTITIES: Laura Assmuth
ETHNICITIES: Zdenek Uherek
Conclusion:
After the presentations and the discussions had in Rome, as convenor of this first meeting of the
WG2 and in preparation for the second meeting, I would like to make some points, which I should
consider to build up my final academic-style report.
Border-crossing emerged as an important act either to make the borders real and visible or,
conversely, to make them invisible. Most of the papers focusing on a conceptual approach underlined the processes of the “social construction” of the border, that is to say, they pointed out the social nature of the border itself. These assessments, far from being naive statements, suggested that to theorise and conceive borders correctly, one should clarify the ways borders are thought as social practices within society. Thus, it shall be quite important for our future research work to make it clear “who” are the agents, objects, communications, relations, etc.. that actually cross borders. For example, how important is it to distinguish between voluntary or forced acts of border crossing for the border-making process? Is it still possible to draw distinctions and point out responsibilities by distinguishing between “in” and “out” of the border, given that, as some claim, today we look at the border from within a single world society? Accordingly, what is becoming the role of the terrestrial frontiers when states share their powers with super-national organisation and more international oriented public opinions?.
From this standpoint, when we considered issues like regular border crossing performed by women or migrant labour both in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean, we ended up discussing the problems of co-evolution and co-management of the borderland by the two neighbouring authorities according to international principles and rules. We have been giving a special attention to institutional communication flows between different national authorities, bureaucratic traps, processes of making and breaking families, sites of temporary detention, joint bilateral initiatives to manage and balance the flows of migrants labour.
Another important aspect of border-crossing has been found in the “time” dimension that is strictly connected with the one of “space”. The same idea of borders as places is extremely
dependent on time-space factors. Places like detention camps for immigrants, check-points,
islands, boats, could be investigated as borderlands if considered as suspended in space and time
between two sides of the frontier.
Also, the changing notions of space-time produce asymmetrical situations and the act of crossing a border could be short and quick from one side, whereas from the other side the same act could
appear extremely long and complicated. Additionally, the same border could appear very solid and
material if observed from one perspective while changing the standpoint it may disappear and look
invisible to the observers.
The relation between the sea and the land has been quite useful to better conceptualise the ideas above, as from the land a maritime border may look invisible, while it is not for those crossing the sea. All kinds of sea travellers, from fishermen to skilled sailors, usually are quite aware of the boundaries they cross while travelling the sea. Seascapes are determined by winds, streams coastlines, straits and maritime legal frameworks that may be invisible for the land based observers. Conversely, terrestrial borders are most of the time less important for those travelling the sea. From a maritime perspective, harbours, ports and related customs are usually the crucial border in a relation with the inland, which tends to be represented as a homogeneous counterpart of the sea. Researches with a focus on illegal immigrants, tourists and professional sailors show that those crossing the sea tend to weaken their perception of the terrestrial borders. In this perspective, the WG2 has pointed out that the study of the coastline and the sea-land interlocking sites, such as harbours, is strategic to a further development of the analysis of border-making processes in a sea-land perspective.
Finally, I believe the papers and the discussions suggest that more research and scientific work shall be devoted to the processes of exchange that travelling brings about: conversion of money, translations of languages and habits, change of moral and cognitive perspectives, the role of gender in performing exchanges and contacts. Dislocations and displacements, and the need to proceed to relocations and replacements, are the keywords that emerge and could possibly act as concepts for the future meetings of the work group 2.
Emilio Cocco, August 2009