Migrations: Socio-Cultural Contexts And Constitution

Cultural studies do not represent a historicist approach focused on the origins and development of particular social and cultural expressions, but - especially in its most recent form - instead analyses and engages with specific socio-cultural contexts and their formation, as well as bringing critical sensitivity to the conjunctural and contextual especially in terms of tensions, contradictions and crises. Within this new framework, migration studies with its interest in forms of regulation and management, control and practices of resistance has become an essential platform not only for updating conceptual categories but also for highlighting the contested terrain of contemporary cultural studies itself. The current volume aims to explore the connection between these two fields of study, proposing new ideas, themes and approaches that speak to the varied field of migration studies, starting from the approach of cultural studies and post-colonial studies, both of which open up horizons and trajectories that often remain invisible in other discourses and narratives. The collection includes articles that address: the issue of migration starting from critical race theory, feminism, and transnationalism (underlining the role played by race and sex in the formation of processes of subjectivation within migratory processes); migration practices and (contested) migration politics; the representation and spectacularization of migration; and mapping, counter-mapping, media and communication. AUTHORS: Valeria Cammarata is Associate Professor at the Department of Psychological and Pedagogical Sciences, University of Palermo. Federica Mazzara is Reader in Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities, University of Westminster.