CfP for 8th European Conference on African Studies (Edinburgh, 11-14 June 2019)

CfP for 8th European Conference on African Studies (Edinburgh, 11-14 June 2019)

The call for papers for the 8th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) themed Africa: Connections and Disruptions, is now open with the deadline for abstracts being Monday, 21 January 2019 (11pm CET).

The African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) is facilitating a panel at the ECAS entitled Crossing boundaries, crossing borders: subversion, disruption and LGBTQ migration on the African continent. This panel seeks to consider what happens when borders, sexuality, gender and migration meet on the African continent and what it means to do research with/on migrant LGBTQ bodies, at a time when global contestations around rights have initiated a ‘scramble’ for narratives of homo/trans/xenophobia. In doing so, it also hopes to highlight the myriad ways in which LGBTQ migrants subvert heteropatriarchal norms, forge solidarity networks and negotiate violent state structures.

On the 15th of November 1884, the major powers of Europe met in Berlin to carve up an entire continent — haggling over Africa, drawing its boundaries and creating borders. While, as an event, the ‘Scramble for Africa’ lasted less than a century, its impact in relation to legal, social and cultural change has been enduring. The way in which certain bodies were regulated by colonialism (and its aftermath) is perhaps most clearly evidenced in the ongoing use of colonial penal codes as weapons against non-normative bodies. Policing has often taken the form of violence and persecution directed at gender-nonconforming bodies or those perceived to be ‘homosexual’, portraying an often homogenous image of a brutal continent that places any expression of sexuality read outside the bounds of heterosexuality as patently unAfrican. In recent years we have seen a new phenomenon in Africa’s long history of migration: the journeying of people fleeing persecution on the grounds of their sexuality and gender.

If you’re interested in presenting on the above described panel please submit your paper abstract/proposal via the online ECAS2019 Paper Proposal Form (Anth48). Should you have any questions feel free to contact ACMS/maHp postdoctoral researcher B Camminga: cammingab@gmail.com.

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About B Camminga

B Camminga (*they) joined the African Centre for Migration & Society as a Postdoctoral Researcher in 2018.

B's previous work tracked the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North along with the physically embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considered the interrelationships between the two.

Their research interests include rights, migration, asylum and diaspora as they relate to transgender people from the African continent; the bureaucratisation of gender in relation to transgender bodies and asylum regimes globally; possibilities for mobility and migration of transgender identified people from, across and within the African region and the history of ‘trans phenomena’ in South Africa.

• LGBTI+ Asylum Seekers in South Africa: A Review of Refugee Status Denials Involving Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity - April 26, 2021
• Marooned: Transgender Asylum Seekers in Johannesburg - October 5, 2020
• B Camminga talks transgender refugees in South Africa - May 10, 2019
• WAIT Midway Conference - February 25, 2019
• CfP for 8th European Conference on African Studies (Edinburgh, 11-14 June 2019) - January 9, 2019
• Transgender Refugees and the Imagined South Africa: Bodies over Borders and Borders over Bodies - December 7, 2018
• “Gender Refugees” in South Africa: The “Common-Sense” Paradox, in: Africa Spectrum - July 4, 2018