About this Research Topic
As we write this concept note on a proposed series of articles related to displacement(s) and dispossession(s), a media debate is commenting on the inherent inequity in the money and people employed to search for the submersible Titan, versus the Greek coastguard’s refusal to help a capsized migrant vessel off the Greek coast. The capsizing of the boat as well as the reluctance of coast guards to help them, one in an agonizing series of many in the Central Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world, points at the glaring dispossessions that force people to flee their places of origin, and the rightlessness that accompanies them even in the high seas.
The capsized boat carried people from Pakistan, Egypt, Palestine as well as Syria - spaces marked with endemic poverty, political and economic instability and protracted conflict. These, and many other factors (including climate change) contribute to the displacement of migrants and refugees, forcing them to rely on unsafe passages in their search for safety. The proposed Research Topic “Displacement(s) and Dispossession(s)” takes a closer and critical look at these two categories and their inextricable connections. The Research Topic proceeds with the understanding that “The dispossessed are the product of the sovereign state’s internal policies” (Chowdhory and Mohanty 2023), but recognizes the intersectional workings of global capital, security regimes, climate catastrophe and local tensions as the forces driving displacement.
The essays in the collection will feature both specific case studies and undertake conceptual enquiries into the layers of rightlessness that engender such close connections. These could include reassessments of global regimes of protection, invoke creative ways of building solidarity across borders, exploring the possibility of politics in a polarized world. The contributions will cut across disciplines, from the social sciences and medical humanities to explorations of cultural and creative expressions of (forced) migrants and refugees.
Sub-themes within this Research Topic may include:
- Media/cultural representations of displacement(s) and dispossession(s)
- Questions of agency in contexts of forced displacement
- Shock migration
- Environment, vulnerability and displacement
- Issues of statelessness in the Global North and the Global South
- Histories of displacements and dispossessions.
The capsized boat carried people from Pakistan, Egypt, Palestine as well as Syria - spaces marked with endemic poverty, political and economic instability and protracted conflict. These, and many other factors (including climate change) contribute to the displacement of migrants and refugees, forcing them to rely on unsafe passages in their search for safety. The proposed Research Topic “Displacement(s) and Dispossession(s)” takes a closer and critical look at these two categories and their inextricable connections. The Research Topic proceeds with the understanding that “The dispossessed are the product of the sovereign state’s internal policies” (Chowdhory and Mohanty 2023), but recognizes the intersectional workings of global capital, security regimes, climate catastrophe and local tensions as the forces driving displacement.
The essays in the collection will feature both specific case studies and undertake conceptual enquiries into the layers of rightlessness that engender such close connections. These could include reassessments of global regimes of protection, invoke creative ways of building solidarity across borders, exploring the possibility of politics in a polarized world. The contributions will cut across disciplines, from the social sciences and medical humanities to explorations of cultural and creative expressions of (forced) migrants and refugees.
Sub-themes within this Research Topic may include:
- Media/cultural representations of displacement(s) and dispossession(s)
- Questions of agency in contexts of forced displacement
- Shock migration
- Environment, vulnerability and displacement
- Issues of statelessness in the Global North and the Global South
- Histories of displacements and dispossessions.
Keywords: displacement, dispossession, rightlessness, refugee protection, cross-border solidarity
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
