Editors
David L. Palatinus (University of Ruzomberok)
Stefania Achella (University of Chieti-Pescara)
The purpose of this special issue of Itinerari would be to tackle the interrelation of Climate, Conflict and Migration, and the ways their pertaining ecological, political, and ethical complexities are construed and circulated via various cultural practices and ways of symbolization.
In the light of the recent challenges and controversies migration policies has been facing in the US, UK and the EU, and the current administrations’ ambiguous attitudes towards the role environmental factors play in the proliferation of conflict and, consequently, migration, addressing the relation between these global factors is an urgent and topical issue.
Migration has become a key player in the recent radicalization of global politics, and has frequently been construed via media outlets as well as in political discourse as a threat to national security and to the perceived cultural values, or as it is frequently referred to in Western political parlance, ‘our way of life’. From Huntington’s highly controversial Clash of Civilizations (1996) to Derrida’s concept of ‘hostipitality’ (2000) to Zizek’s ideas about the militarization of society (2015) to Thomas Nail’s most recent Theory of the Border (2016), migration has been mobilized both as political capital as well as a new critical idiom that thematizes discourses on how we understand human subjectivity, and the ways we negotiate historical and cultural legacy. As Abel et al. observe, a growing number of media reports suggest a correlation between climate change, violent conflicts in the Middle East, and forced migration (2019). At the same time, recent tendencies towards the radicalization of world politics and the emergence of populist agendas (in the US, the UK as well as in a number of EU countries) also necessitate a radical rethinking of issues ranging from politics of inclusion to social mobility to climate justice and violent borders (cf. Sheller 2018, Mann and Wainwright 2017, Jones 2017).
The correlation between conflict and migration has been in the focus of attention in critical discourses on global politics of crisis, economic theory, social geography, research on global security, and over the past years it established itself as one of the pivotal agendas to pursue in Anthropocene research too. Various disciplines offered insights into the multiple possible ways these factors are connected to one another, yet the order of causality and the nature of this relation remains unexplained.
The purpose of this project is to bridge the gap between current political discourses and pertaining scholarly takes on the construction and circulation of cultural ideas about the multi-faceted relations between conflict, climate, and migration. Our primary focus will fall on conceptualizations across various platforms of the cultural spectrum that map out the ways the relations between these factors are perceived and engaged with. The project lays special emphasis on the ways we negotiate awareness and agency in relation to media representations of migrants and migrations into and out of specific geographic locations. This thematic issue aims at bringing together approaches that move between and across political geography, migration studies, philosophy and ethics, political theory, violence, comparative literary and media studies, eco-criticism and climate studies, cultural ecology, theories of subjectivity and otherness.
Possible angles of approach will include but are by no means restricted to documentary realism (films for action); fiction (literary and moving image media from feature films, to television to video games); social media (with particular emphasis on Twitter and Instagram); political discourses, colonial theory, ethics and hospitality, climate studies, war studies, etc. We seek to focus on cultural narratives of the visibility as well as the invisibility (in fiction, art, media and critical discourse) of scarcity, changed ecological circumstances, practices of exclusion, systemic violence etc., and other forms of social and cultural anxieties related to conflict, climate and migration.
Authors interested in presenting their contribution to this theme can submit it to the address:
The paper must not contain the Author’s name in the subject, or any reference to the Author.
The paper must contain an abstract in English reviewed by an English native speaker, not exceeding 250 words. The paper will be a file (pdf or doc) to be attached during submission. It must not exceed 5.500 words (spaces and footnotes included) and must be written in English.
Deadline: July15, 2020.
Any elements of the file that might identify the Author must be removed in order to guarantee anonymity during the referee process.
The contributions will be forwarded to one or more independent reviewers, according to the blind refereeing process. Reviewers may anonymously ask the author to modify or improve their contribution.
For the initial selection procedure, no guidelines are set for formatting; in those instances where the contribution has been accepted, a final version will be asked of the author.
Notification of acceptance, conditional acceptance, rejection
The editorial staff will give notification of the refereeing outcome via email.
Editors:
David Levente Palatinus is Senior Assistant Professor in Digital Media and Cultural Studies and founder of the Anthropocene Media Lab at the University of Ruzomberok (Slovakia). He works on television, digital culture, and human-nonhuman relations in the Anthropocene. He is co-editor of the ECREA section of CSTOnline, and is on the advisory board for “Rewind: British and American Studies Series,” Aras Edizioni, Italy.
Stefania Achella is Associate Professor of Ethics at the University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy). Her main areas of research are classical German philosophy, dialectical tradition of Italian philosophy and intercultural issues. She coordinates the Laboratory of Migration Studies (MIST).
