Fotografie realizată de Hervé
Bossy
Conferința "Mobilities, land use, and ecological crises
in Europe’s peripheries"
Hosman, Romania, 13-16 September 2023 – offline and online
conference
Biblioteca Universității "Lucian Blaga" din Sibiu este
partener în organizarea conferinței
"Mobilities, land use, and ecological crises in Europe’s
peripheries", care se va desfășura în perioada 13 - 16
septembrie 2023, la Hosman. Mai jos aveți detaliile de
participare, în limba engleză.
Call for papers
Global agriculture is deeply affected by ecological crises,
industrial production increases pressures on communities and
on the environment, and the continuous expansion of
(mega)cities consumes their hinterlands. All these processes
are overwritten by migration/mobilities and have profound
consequences on land uses.
Tracing these processes in Eastern Europe and other regions
of high emigration becomes increasingly important, as these
regions generate large migratory flows, which then shape
land uses both at home and in destination places. Rural
communities are profoundly shaped by high emigration and
aging populations.
More critically, return pulls in these regions impact local
economies while these regions are prominent in political
debates and elections in the national arenas. The COVID-19
pandemic crisis opened up important questions regarding the
dependency of European agriculture on precarious seasonal
work. The growing literature on seasonal workers in
agriculture – including on Eastern European migrants –
indicates agricultural workers as essential workers in
developed countries.
This conference guides the attention toward countries of
origin and countries experiencing different forms of
mobility: out-migration, return, and immigration. In this
sense, it investigates how migration and work regimes are
transforming agriculture and rural population in the
European periphery and other similar regions.
As the literature on seasonal workers in European
agriculture focuses almost exclusively on countries of
destination, our focus is rather a on return migration.
Secondly, the conference enlarges the scope of the research
by looking not just at agricultural workers, but also at
returnees, entrepreneurs, and self-employed in agriculture,
part of which may have been agricultural workers at a
certain point in time, while others may have had a different
migratory career. In addition, as many migrants live
transnational lives and are separated from their families
for long periods of time, we ask how such relations
intersect and influence agricultural work and land use
practices.
In this sense, inquiries into different forms of
international mobilities help us explain the relationship
between other mobile subjects: migrants, migrants’ families,
returnees, and investors, and how they influence agriculture
and land use in countries of origin of large migratory
flows.
Finally, the global ecological crisis induces often dramatic
changes all along the migratory routes in agriculture.
Different categories of mobile people started to have a
different understanding of ecology and land-as-value.
Whereas debates on climate change have long started, climate
change and climate risks are only recently felt concretely
by many people.
As farmers learn about their impact on the soil, crops, and
water use and balance commercial with climate
responsibility, society-land relations are deeply
transformed on and by rural sites.
How people engage with land also differs from those inclined
to invest in technology to others who simply abandon
cultivating the land in their countries of origin, yet not
agriculture entirely, as they may remain to work in the
fields in developed countries.
We approach the nexus between land use, mobility, and
ecological crises from a mobility and transnationalism
perspective looking at how different mobilities shape and
are shaped by agricultural practices and the new challenges
posed by massive ecological change.
Proposed topics
Environmental dislocations, mobility, and land use
Pioneer-returned entrepreneurs in agriculture
Lifestyle and utopian migrants involved in agriculture
Transnational families and land use
Land and rural capitalism Eastern Europe’s ‘new
peasantries’: how mobility and IT usage change local
populations
Agrarian populism
Seasonal work and health
Essential but precarious: seasonal work in the European
agriculture
Immigrant workers in agriculture in new countries of
destination
Conference organizers
National University of Political Studies and Public
Administration, Bucharest, Romania, and Lucian Blaga
University of Sibiu, Romania
Conference Committee
Anghel, Remus Gabriel, Ph.D., Professor, National University
of Political Studies and Public Administration &
ISPMN, Romania
Roxana Bărbulescu, PhD, Associate Professor, University of
Leeds, UK , Vesalon Lucian, PhD, Associate Professor, West
University of Timișoara, Romania, Valer Simion Cosma, PhD,
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Date and location
The conference will take place between 13-16 September 2023
in Hosman (Hosmengen), Transylvania, Romania.
Hosman is a romantic Transylvanian village located 25 km
distance from Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Romania. More on the
location is here https://www.facebook.com/Hosman.Romania/
Online participation is possible. Travel costs
(accommodation, meals, and low-cost flights) will be covered
by organizers.
Proposed aim
The aim of the conference is to enhance dialogue on the
relationship between mobility and land use. Selected papers
will be part of a common publication project.
Paper delivery : Abstract delivery 1 st of April
2023
Paper delivery 15th of July 2023 (tentative)
Contact information
email: remusgabriel@yahoo.com, lvesalon@gmail.com
webpage and more information at: returnita.wordpress.com
Conference programme:
Programme
and poster conference (pdf)
ianuarie 2023