HuMM Lab Conference - Contemporary human mobilities: Uncovering dissoncance(s) between governance practices and lived experiences

In the (near) future, we can expect human mobility and migration to accelerate further due to growing inequality and shifts in global (economic) power, regional implications of climate change and resource scarcity, increasing urbanisation, and demographic and social change. Migration and human mobility will continue posing great political, legal, socio-economic, and societal challenges for all involved. Scholarship to date has focused on the many aspects of national and cross-border migration regimes that have been established or reformed to address contemporary challenges. However, the lived experiences of migration and human mobility deserve more attention to address the ever-developing challenges.

To remedy this, the proposed conference serves a two-fold purpose. First, it aims to uncover, discuss, and assess dissonances between the governance practices and lived experiences of human mobility and migration. Second, it turns scholarly attention to the concept of repair, i.e. subtle acts of care by which order, meaning and human value are maintained and transformed. Repair, here, is understood in its widest possible sense, including material, policy, discursive, symbolic and affective dimensions of repair. Against the backdrop of climate change, (political, economical, racial and social) injustice, inequality and erosion of rights as core causes of migration, we see repair as practice and ethics that makes possible and sustains just institutions and transversal solidarities.

It is evident that the complexity of human mobility and migration, the existing dissonance between governance practices and lived experience, and the many facets of repair work needed to address such dissonances cannot be captured by one discipline alone. With this conference, we aim to bring together scholars of different fields - from students to specialists - to accelerate knowledge-sharing, interdisciplinary collaboration and foster cross-disciplinary discussions.