Paper short abstract:

Exteriority is a decisive component for the survival of social groups in the Highlands of New Guinea, by giving an impetus for defining their boundaries. Be it foreign ritual knowledge, foreign planting material or strangers, all contribute to maintaining a social network in a highly diverse region.

Paper long abstract:

For the Gawigl-speakers of the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, exteriority is a creative focus in several different contexts, namely in relation to the regeneration and reproduction of human beings, pigs and food-plants in itinerant gardens and social groups. Exteriority refers here not to national or 'ethnic' borders but to a regular transcending of cultural and linguistic boundaries between neighbouring groups. A striking example for the social necessity of boundary crossing is 'foreign' ritual knowledge that travelled in the region till some forty years ago. This movement of ritual knowledge, which was time and again considered to be new as well as unknown, resulted in maintaining a certain degree of difference between neighbouring groups through reference to a foreign 'outside'. It was this mechanism of an innovational exteriority that guaranteed a solid regional network interlinking the different social groups of this area. Nowadays, we can perceive a variation of it in various other forms of boundary-crossing social relationships.

Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Fátima this paper explores the experiences of Portuguese migrants visiting this shrine that is also a national heritage site. Pilgrimage emerges as a powerful tool to come to terms with migration experiences as well as to effectively develop the multiple identity work required.

Paper long abstract:

Based on fieldwork at the Marian shrine of Fátima in Portugal, this paper explores the experiences of Portuguese migrants living in Europe or North America who make pilgrimages to Fátima. It analyses the ways in which Fátima emerges as a pilgrimage site but also as a national heritage shrine. Our Lady of Fátima, worshiped as the queen of Portugal and Mother of the Nation but also as the Heavenly Mother, becomes a reference figure that is especially important for Portuguese migrants forced to leave their home country for economic reasons.

Through their creative rituals and through walking pilgrimages to Fátima these migrants embody their love and longing for their "motherland" as well as their troubled belonging to two different nations, the one they live in and the one they come from. This double belonging is also manifested through specific official celebrations organized at the shrine such as the "Pilgrimage of Migrants" held every August. The presentation of Fátima as a religious shrine but also as part of Portuguese national heritage through a process of "heritagization of the sacred", allows also self-proclaimed non-religious migrants to find in Fátima a place where they can experience a sense of belonging. Building on findings from scholars exploring other pilgrimage shrines, this paper shows how pilgrimage sites emerge as a powerful catalyst allowing its visitors to come to terms with migration experiences as well as to effectively develop the kind of multiple identity work required.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we use personal experiences as cross border commuters to better understand how free movement in the European borderlands transform borders and thereby requires people to juggle between emerging possibilities and the human costs of this lifestyle.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we use personal experiences as cross-border commuters to further extend our understanding of and elaborate on how cross-border commuters practice European borders. Our work takes recourse to the notion of Borderwork, coined by Chris Rumford (2008), thus investigating the borderwork required from free movers responding to the "muddled complexity" (Jago, 2002) of the every-day life of cross-border commuters. Attention has been paid in border studies to the role non-state actors play in practicing borders but it is still little researched in relation to cross-border commuting. This stands in contrast to Rumford's claim that ordinary citizens are increasingly active in envisioning, constructing, shifting, and/or even erasing borders.

What is particularly interesting about the notion of borderwork in the context of cross-border commuting is how the figure of the cross-border commuter has come to reincarnate "the good European citizen", a true borderlander who makes active use of the possibilities opened by the Schengen border regime. Harvesting on personal experiences, the paper is a collaborative autoethnographic account (Ellis, 2007; Chang, 2013) created in dialogue between the two authors as well as others whose stories remain central to the writings but whose identities are not made explicit. Using this methodology provides the possibility of grasping the social and emotional investments of cross-border commuting. In so doing we contribute to the above-sketched academic field that seeks to better understand how free movement in a European context requires people to juggle between emerging possibilities and the human costs of this lifestyle.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation engages with religious mobility by looking at how migrants from Papua New Guinea are relocating Catholic shrines and ritual celebrations to Australia in order to celebrate their National Patron Saint Peter To Rot.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation engages with religious mobility by looking at how migrants from Papua New Guinea (PNG) are relocating Catholic shrines and ritual celebrations to Australia in order to celebrate their National Patron Saint Peter To Rot. In relocating rituals, regalia and images associated with Peter To Rot, PNG migrants generate 'belonging', as well as new connections and communities, fostered through the circulation of specific material religion. By looking at Peter To Rot celebrations in both Australia and PNG and migrant pilgrimages to the site of the Blessed Peter To Rot in Rabaul (East New-Britain, PNG), I aim to unravel the effects of ritual mobility in both locations. This shows how religious rituals and regalia can be an important source of identity and belonging for both Catholic and non-Catholic migrants. This confirms observations made elsewhere that mobility is implicated in re-assertions of the importance of place for the religious, and that religion is at the centre of many migrants' identities, with religious institutions, such as the Catholic Church, becoming a focal point for PNG migrant gatherings and opportunities to share and circulate knowledge and information.

Paper short abstract:

The combination of a human with a non-human perspective allows to explore borders, its human and environmental histories. In dialogue with zoological research on wolves, I move along the linguistic border exploring it through the eyes of the shepherds as well as through the adaptation of the wolf.

Paper long abstract:

Based on fieldwork in two small villages in South Tyrol - Trentino this ethnographic study combines the human perception on the wolf with the adaptation of the lone wolf to this terrain. The debate on the return of the wolf has been intense among peasants, herders and policy makers. Shepherds reject to bring their sheep and cows to the alpine pastures were they traditionally meet with shepherds from the other side, easily crossing the linguistic German-Italian language barrier. While shepherds evoke the moments they met, they would also recall the times the wolf was poached. Their experience of crossing these borders in dusk or even at night, carnally knowing when one is "on the other side" will be looked at in light of the new presence of the wolf on this terrain. On the other side there is the wolf who arrived in this region approximately four years ago migrating from the Italian Apennine to recolonize the Alps. How is he sensing the area? What about his perception of borders, which are or are not traversable? In this paper I aim to combine the human perception of this border region, which according to my interlocutors is not carrying conflictual lines despite linguistic differences, with what zoologists have studied as the wolves adaptation to a changing environment. Through this double perspective, I aim to shed light on the new construction of frontiers in a region that has long historical experience with negotiating linguistic, ethnic, cultural and political borders.

Paper short abstract:

Shores are spaces of periphery and domesticity; a local as well as transcultural arena. To track that which drifts upon it brings one on a journey through its connecting seas and shifting borderlines and, in this presentation, to case studies of Iceland's shores and transnational media images.

Paper long abstract:

Shores and beaches are spaces of both periphery and domesticity; a local as well as transcultural and transnational arena. To track that which drifts upon this liminal "borderland" brings one on a journey through its connecting seas and various shifting borderlines. The North Atlantic and Arctic seas present us with dynamic cases and representations of peace and conflict. They are a source of curious, yet crucial, transarctic resources but also narratives of hazardous journeys and encounters with "the other". Narratives and material objects on northern shores offer cultural and gendered perspectives on these spaces as gateways to a remote, and sometimes masculine north. Ranging from Old-Norse poetry and prose to contemporary legends, narratives of the shore express both worldviews and local knowledge of beaches as crucial to transnational networks. They express also how traditional and familial life stretches into this liminal territory and how it is affected by climate change and human conflict. Whether it be driftwood, polar bears, warships, or people, whatever washes ashore has particular local significance and, ultimately, global implications in the representation of the north and its people. Narratives in both traditional folk narrative and in new media also reveal imaginaries of the "foreign" and "foreigner", and of human and non-human in-betweenness. They present images of movement, displacement, bounty, escape and crises, and the moral dilemmas of encountering refugees. This presentation explores vernacular aspects of these dynamics through case studies of Iceland's shores and transnational media images.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of the report is to study some aspect concerning the Vlachian movement activists' work in eastern Serbia and relating in particular the preservation and development of their native language, as well as political and religious life.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of the report is to study some aspect concerning the Vlachian movement activists' work in eastern Serbia (the territory bordering with Bulgaria and Romania) and relating in particular the preservation and development of their native language, as well as political and religious life. The report is based on the author's field data collected in 2013-2017 in the cities of Zaječar, Bor and Negotin. The materials were mainly collected by conducting non-structurized (free) interviews. Materials from web-sites and books created by the people referred to in the report, as well as mass-media materials, were also used in the report. The report covers only some aspects related to ethnic activism of the Vlachs (Romanians) of eastern Serbia. Questions concerning the activities of Vlachian activists aimed at the preservation, development and study of their ethnic group traditional culture require special consideration.