CfP on “cosmopolitan enclaves”, EASA 2018

We would like to invite papers for our panel “Cosmopolitan enclave. Tensions and paradoxes” at the EASA Conference in Stockholm (Aug 14-17).

This panel will discuss the concept of ‘cosmopolitan enclaves’ in its spatial, economic and social dimensions. In particular, it will address the theoretical and empirical relevance of rearticulating mobility and space for understanding the paradoxes of cosmopolitan enclavement.

This panel will offer theoretical and ethnographic insights into the concept of ‘cosmopolitan enclaves’. In particular, it will address the telling tensions and scholarly potential of combining the transnational ideal of cosmopolitanism (e.g. Hannerz, 1990; Vertovec & Cohen, 2002) with the exclusive segregation implied by the concept of spatial, economic or social enclaves (e.g. Portes & Manning, 1985; Ferguson, 2005; Ballif, 2009). It will address the paradoxical localization of these social spaces, and discuss how far certain actors rely on cosmopolitan enclaves as a resource for (im)mobility and territorial claims. The panel will further consider which stances are developed from within these enclaves towards outsiders—so-called non-cosmopolitan locals—and how practices of inclusion and exclusion reinforce enclaves’ boundaries.

Possible questions for individual papers include: What practices and representations of geographic mobility support the creation and reproduction of cosmopolitan enclaves? What are the specific attributes of such spaces, what are their underlying territorial claims, and what are their implicit ‘admission criteria’? How do they favor (unequal) access to specific resources? How far do these cosmopolitan enclaves participate to (counter)hegemonic narratives? How are enclave boundaries created and maintained?

Through both theoretical inputs and a range of case studies (involving, for example, international schools, transnational social activism, expat communities, multinational companies, expert communities, high end resorts, NGOs, religious communities…), this panel will shed light on how a localized cosmopolitan stance can both reinforce and undermine the formation of enclavement, keeping a keen eye on its political and social implications.

Deadline is April 9 2018.

Best wishes,

Jeanne