easa

Dear colleagues,

Members of this list might be interested in our panel 'Social Mobility in
the Neoliberal Age' tomorrow at the EASA conference in Stockholm.

*Social Mobility in the Neoliberal Age: Practices, Relations, Expectations,
and Desires* (P132)

Time: Tuesday, 14 August, at 10.30-12.15 and 13.15-15.00
Location: SO-E487

https://nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6612


*Short abstract*: This panel explores the practices, relations,
expectations and desires with which people navigate differential fields of
power while seeking social mobility in this age of neoliberalism. How do
people experience and imagine social mobility? What happens when mobility
backfires?



*Longer abstract*: The current, neoliberal moment of global capitalism
encourages people to seek social mobility as an individual and spectacular
endeavor. Some seek fast, immediate routes to becoming rich in talent
contests, pyramid schemes or entrepreneurial start-ups. Others project
their expectations of social mobility onto the narrative of migration
(Kalir 2013, Pelican 2013), hoping to convert geographical mobility into a
radical economic break-through. In practice, however, social mobility is
increasingly rare (Piketty 2012) and highly structured by class, race, and
gender (Wilk 2017). It is moreover almost always a longer temporal process,
highly dependent on social relations. Structures that go far beyond the
individual shape particular projects of seeking social mobility,
complicating them in unexpected ways.



This panel explores the types of practices, relations, expectations and
desires with which people navigate differential field of power in their
quest for social mobility (Glick-Schiller and Salazar 2013). How do people
experience and imagine social mobility? Under what circumstances is
mobility imaged as an individual versus a collective effort? What happens
when mobility stalls, backfires or goes around in circles? How do processes
of social (im)mobility affect relations within families and wider social
networks? How are particular trajectories of mobility gendered, racialized,
sexualized and shaped by age or access to citizenship? Possible topics
include social mobility and marriage, the promise of mobility in the
education business, experiences of (im)mobility through migration, the
quest for social mobility through criminal activities, or the imagining of
social mobility through changing daily routines and spiritual
transformation.


Regards,


Heidi





Dr. Heidi H=C3=A4rk=C3=B6nen

Academy of Finland Post-Doctoral Researcher

Social and Cultural Anthropology

University of Helsinki

e. hkharkonen@gmail.com