The call for papers for the ECAS conference in Prague in June 2025 is now open! Together with Raffael Beier from TU Dortmund, Els Keunen is organizing a panel titled ‘Mobile urban lives – migration, displacement, and belonging’ which is part of the Urban Studies disciplinary stream. Deadline for submission of the abstracts is 15 December 2024. Details on the panel below, more information on the call for papers here (https://www.ecasconference.org/2025/call-for-papers/) and the different panels here (https://guarant.eu/ecasconference2025/call-for-papers/).
DISCIPLINARY STREAM: Urban Studies
THEMATIC STREAM: Afropolitanism and Afropean Belongings
ORGANISERS: Raffael Beier (Germany) & Els Keunen (Germany)
SHORT DESCRIPTION
The panel explores shifting housing provisions for, experiences and strategies of mobile populations, incl. migrants and internally displaced persons. How do their experiences and aspirations shape housing pathways and their sense of belonging?
ABSTRACT
This panel explores the nexus between mobile populations in African cities, the provisional or shifting nature of their urban dwellings, and their sense of belonging. With ‘mobile populations’ – a major factor of African demographics – we allude to various migrants and displaced persons, who travel or are forced to move to and/or between different places within and beyond urban areas. In their search for urban housing, mobile populations are potentially affected by limited access to urban networks and financial resources, as well as discrimination and xenophobia. These aspects may reduce their housing options in the city, building housing experiences that may be characterized by high volatility, provisionality, but also desire and hope. Housing pathways are shaped by the agency of mobile populations, their housing aspirations and ambitions to a secure urban life, but are also affected by temporary rental agreements, landlord-tenant conflicts, evictions and intra-urban displacements and resettlement. Under such volatile and shifting conditions, we aim at putting focus on questions of placemaking and belonging. How do housing experiences and aspirations shape housing pathways of mobile populations and their sense of belonging in the city?
We welcome contributions that include but are not limited to:
- Access to various forms of housing for mobile populations
- Housing experiences and trajectories of mobile populations in urban areas
- Aspiration and agency of mobile population in shaping their housing pathways and placemaking
- The influence of intra-urban evictions and displacements on sense of belonging
- Longitudinal analyses of housing and mobile (urban) lives
