Paper short abstract:

The Southwest North American Region of S.W.U.S and N Mexico is a caludron of cultural dimesnions that are multidirectional and multilayered emerging over time in contradistinction to state sponsored prisms of nationhood and create conflicts of identity, cultural efficacy, and linguistic loyalties. 291 characters

Paper long abstract:

Culturally and historically, many Mexican-origin populations in the transborder arena of Southwest North America have in fact been living transborder and transborder lives which cannot be not reduced to a category of citizenship nor to the engagement of persons in transnational networks . Simply, events and history has prevented the development of a single tracked citizenship-based personality development in which Mexican-origin populations are tied only to an American civil life. The acculturation model has been pretty much devastated by the recognition that there are multiple dimensions of cultural personalities that cannot be reduced to simple unilineal identities. Mexican-origin populations live American civil lives but contextualized within multiple transnational and transborder points of reference. Therefore, culturally the population amass and discard layers of cultural skins that simply do not refer to only a simple cultural referent such as citizenship. Rather the population gathers in the midst of social relations as old as the Romans, worship in religions older, and from told and lived experiences participate and are reminded of their transnational and transborder selves on a daily basis and simultaneously die in American wars. This has been the actuality of social and cultural processes in the region since the 19th century.

Paper short abstract:

Middle-grounds problem of Nepalese society: phenomenon of educating youth from Dolpo and Mustang; ways of building modern transcultural identity; the clash of local traditional education with trans-tibetan and global education abroad and with the national-nepalese culture in the country.

Paper long abstract:

The lecture refers to the new phenomenon of educating children and youth from borderlands in the Himalayas, in different culture and national surroundings that influences on building modern transcultural identity. As a middle-grounds problem of Nepalese society, the Himalayan youth from Dolpo and Mustang presents the new self-creating group. Sometimes that young people have to clash with different tendencies. The worldwide system of NGO's supporting much often Tibetan refugees than Himalayan indigenous people, has been adapted by families from Dolpo and Mustang in order to take profits from Western organizations and Tibetan Central Administration in India. Many of them send their children to Tibetan schools in India and register them as "refugees". Hundreds of children are educated and bringing up in typical national Tibetan system and in Indian mass culture, far from their homes and Nepalese surrounding. When they become adult, they come back Nepal. Usually they do not know who they are: Tibetan, Nepalese or others. They start to build in a difficult socio-psychological process their identity as transcultural, and they clash with quite different self-identity of their relatives. Brothers and sisters grew up in different cultural, national and social environments. The common problem of breaking family relationship among people in Dolpo and Mustang, opportunity of educating children in Tibetan schools in India influence on developing new transcultural identity of young generation, which is based on Tibetan nationalism and Indian mass culture on the one hand, and on Himalayan regional tradition and Nepalese national culture on the other hand.

Paper short abstract:

The bloody defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was witnessed, and experienced as a defeat, by many Sri Lankan Tamils in diaspora in Toronto, Canada. This paper seeks to discuss how this defeat altered diasporic Tamil identity in some rather surprising and almost constradictoryways, increasing at once that communities communal sense of self, and a newly felt distance from its now lost home.

Paper long abstract:

In May 2009 Sri Lanka's 26 year inter-ethnic civil war was concluded in a bloody fashion when the remnants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or LTTE), a ruthless separatist organization seeking a separate Tamil state, were caught by the vastly larger Sri Lankan army on a ten mile strip of beach along with roughly 300,000 Tamil civilians. The resulting final battle, which left thousands of civilians dead, and the LTTE destroyed, was witnessed by the Sri Lankan Tamil community in Canada through the complex web of media -- TV, radio, and internet -- owned and controlled by the LTTE prior to its defeat. The collective trauma this engendered provoked, I believe, a brief period of intense soul-searching and debate that resulted in a new, fairly widely shared consensus about Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism and the proper role Canadian Tamils should now play within it. This debate, I think, redefined Canadian Tamil identity in seemingly contradictory ways: on the one hand re-enforcing its difference from Canadian identity as a whole; on the other apparently sundering forever a diasporic hope of return to a Sri Lankan homeland that formerly defined it. This paper seeks to map out this communal reassessment based on several years of interviews in Canada and Sri Lanka between May 2009 and the present. Theoretically, this paper seeks to investigate the cultural consequences of defeat for a diasporic community's sense of collective self.

Paper short abstract:

Migrants’ leisure mobility choices - though limited - contain the potential of change through the logic of “motion and emotion”. The embodied experience of crossing boundaries – including those of imagination – makes travel the potential locum for the changes in migrants’ identities.

Paper long abstract:

Migrants' leisure, including leisure mobility, is a relatively understudied area. In the paper I suggest that it deserves more attention. Migrants' leisure mobility choices are, on the one hand, limited by temporal/spatial, social, cultural (e.g. language competencies) and economic constraints. On the other hand, however, travel contains the potential of change through the logic of "motion and emotion". The embodied experience of crossing ethnic, cultural, social boundaries - as well as the boundaries of one's own imagination - is what makes leisure mobility the potential locum for the changes in migrants' identities and feelings of belonging. Focusing on the materials from the ethnographic study of the first-generation post-2004 Polish migrants to West Midlands, UK, carried out in 2010 and 2011, I suggest to examine if and how leisure mobility participate in identity building processes. I will pay particular attention to three types of leisure mobility: VFR (visiting friends and relatives), short-term breaks abroad (outside of the UK and Poland) and recreational mobility to theme parks and aqua parks. I will aim at demonstrating how these types of travel are linked to ethnic and class identity construction among migrants.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is the result of a research on migration, conducted in two Transylvanian villages, Nimaiesti and Fizis. In the last years, a big part of these villages population experienced migration to Spain.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is the result of a research on migration, conducted in two Transylvanian villages, Nimaiesti and Fizis. In the last years, a big part of these villages population experienced migration to Spain. We intend to pay attention to subjective perspectives on migration, to the ways in which individuals have personal experiences of migration and then, they can identify themselves as members of a certain group of migrants, according to precise feelings and motivations of belonging. Then, we aim to investigate, using specific qualitative methodologies to which extent and how, in more practical cultural terms, these migrants feel they still belong to the community left home ( there are certain derived topics of investigation here- kinship, participation to certain rituals, religious life etc).We aim to integrate the research topic of migration into a larger one, of the forms of identity construction, the main investigation question being: Is circular migration of a big part

of the village population a coagulation factor for these communities or not? There are also many other questions derived from the main one, formulated in the paper. We collect and analyze narratives of migration, recorded when migrants are in their place of origin (their native villages), meanwhile encountering them in their new habitats (places of migration), considering these two sites as essential for the whole migratory process.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we discuss the impact of migration on various identifications of the Muslim migrants from Macedonia in northern Italy. Presenting different personal stories we contemplate the meanings of "identity" and identification in their ethnic, national, and (trans)local dimensions.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we contemplate the impact of migration on identifications among the migrants from Macedonia in Italy. However tradition of labor migration from the Balkans to other (nowadays mostly western) countries is long, today its` character have changed from seasonal to temporary, involving all families. A few cities in northern Italy, where we have been conducting our fieldwork, became a host places for migrants from various parts in Macedonia. Coming from the assumption, that "identity" is processual and relational we discuss on identifications which appear in the context of (trans)migration. In Macedonia, most of our informants would declare themselves as Muslims, sometimes as Turks, Albanians, or Torbeshes, and one "identity" often does not exclude the other. Apart from language and origin, religion in Macedonia often co-determine identifications as "our" Muslims and "they" Orthodox.

Talking on various identifications we stress the importance of the feeling of belonging and emergence of we-ness. How being on migration influence the recognition of "we" and "our"? Can we talk about transnational transfer of identifications, or rather reshaping the "identity" boundaries? Presenting various personal stories we discuss the meanings of national, ethnic, and local identities in their transnational context. We describe various strategies of identifications and reflect on their gender aspect. Thus, we contemplate the meanings of "identity" and identification in their ethnic, national, and (trans)local dimensions.