Living Together in Diversity: National Societies in the Multicultural Age

Conference venue: Central European University (Hungary)
Period: May 21 - 22, 2012
Deadline for submitting abstracts: Dec. 31, 2011

Contemporary European societies have been recently characterized as having entered the age of 'super-diversity'. Migratory flows in particular have contributed to this transformation, due to the heterogeneous ethno-cultural, and religious background of present migrants, as well as their social status, age, and mobility patterns. Among the effects this transformation has brought about is the increased challenge posed to the constitutive principle of the nation-state, i.e., the assumption that identity (nation) and politics (state) can and should be mutually constituent and spatially congruent. Thus, unsurprisingly, many states have started perceiving diversity as a 'problem', potentially threatening national unity, while anti-immigration and xenophobic attitudes have experienced a rapid surge.
 
Existing scholarship has offered insightful critical analyses of this 'backlash against diversity', documenting the rise of repressive state measures designed to limit access of new migrants to the national territory and citizenship. Other scholars have instead moved away from the idea of the nation-state, proposing either post-national solutions, which decouple the cultural (nation) from the political (state), or transnational paradigms, which implicitly discard the focus on the nation-state as not only obsolete but also politically questionable. Yet, despite important insights from this scholarship, social and political life continues to remain largely structured by discourses, resources and institutions articulated at the national scale.

It is therefore the aim of the proposed conference to explore how 'living together in diversity' is imagined, narrated, organized, justified, and practiced within contemporary national societies. With the stress on 'in' rather than 'with' diversity we want to move away from reifying the dominant 'majority' society perspective, which assumes diversity as something 'carried' solely by immigrants and something that the 'native' society has to cope with. Some of the questions that are of interest are listed below.

All potential participants are invited to submit an abstract (250-300 words) to Tatiana Matejskova (MatejskovaT@ceu.hu) by December 31st, 2011. By January 31st, 2012 participants will be informed about the acceptance of their papers. Confirmation of participation and payment of the conference fee will be due on February 28th, 2012. The conference fee of 60 Euros will cover refreshments, lunches and conference materials.

Dr. Tatiana Matejskova
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology
Central European University
Zrinyi utca, 14 1051, Budapest
tel: +36-1-327-3000/2327; Fax: +36-1-328-3501
e-mail: MatejskovaT@ceu.hu