From the 14th-16th March, Routes held an international workshop at Dartington Hall on the topic of Exploiting Mobilities: Governments, law and the instrumentalisation of movement.
On the 15th March, scholars from across the humanities and social sciences presented work relating to how governments enrol and co-opt mobilities, and the role of laws in doing so. The workshop was divided into three panels. The first saw a focus on international labour mobilities. Minna Seikkula presented on international mobility linked to the wild berry industry in Finland, Michael O’Regan spoke to the hidden exploitation in working holiday visas, and Joana Marques highlighted the coercive aspect to mobilities of posted workers in civil construction.
The theme of labour migration continued into the second panel, with Laura Rennie presenting on the parallels between the Windrush Migration and the ‘Middle Passage’. We then moved to consider UK marriage migration requirements as a regime of (im)mobility in the UK with Nicole Hoellerer, and concluded the second panel with a presentation by Alfredo Tosques, that brought a long durée perspective to the workshop by describing the cooptation of foreigners through land right concessions in the Hellenistic Polis.
After a break for lunch, a third panel brought together diverse viewpoints on state control of mobility. Louis Everuss kicked off the session with a presentation on the mobilities of digitised sovereign borders. Rebecca Yeo then led us to consider parallels and intersections between the approach of the UK state to asylum seekers and disabled individuals. Dawit Tesfay Haile and Joris Schapendonk then gave a joint presentation which patchworked (dis)continuities of transnational return migration infrastructures, considering carceral systems, coerced mobility and framings of (in)sanity. The panel was concluded by Gerawork Gizaw, the 2024 Routes Visiting Scholar, who shared his experientially-informed insights on the instrumentalisation of movement, especially within the context of the refugee camp.
The day was brought to a close with a closing discussion by the Routes coordinators, Helena Wray, Nick Gill, Elena Isayev and Ben Hudson, which drew together the core themes and connections of the preceding presentations and discussed future directions of collaboration.
Thank you to everyone who joined Routes for this terrific workshop!