Each year the Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Graduate Student Association (SAGGSA) at Florida International University hosts an interdisciplinary conference around an overarching theme that speaks to current issues and debates in anthropology, geography and sociology. This conference is intended to provide a supportive and collaborative forum for graduate students to present original research and engage with other graduates and faculty researching similar topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. As such, we welcome and encourage presentations on research in any stage, formative or finished, and from any social science perspective. This year we invite papers that critically engage with migration and mobilities, broadly defined.

Migration and mobility are constantly shaping the social, political, and ideological fabric of our world, as they have done throughout history. From people and ideas to goods and resources, every movement encounters friction in its path as it comes into contact with existing structures of identity, violence, and economy. This friction produces inconsistencies in the progress of movements, rendering some subjects immobile while others incorporate seamlessly into the structures that resist them. From the immigration system and its impact on the lives of those fleeing violent social and climatic changes to the impact of social and economic systems, which selectively embrace, commodify, and reject people and material culture, the topic of migration and mobility is rife with inequalities. This conference is an invitation to interrogate these inequalities and the structures that create them. Potential topics may include current and historical discussions of: human and non-human migration, human rights, climate change, climate justice, disaster response, diaspora studies, colonization, decolonization, race, gender, intersectionality, spatial inequalities, food access, health care, supply chains, trade, and the complex entanglements of material and non-material elements of society as it is shaped by migration. Potential topics may include, but are not limited to, broad themes such as:

• Climate Change, Disaster Recovery, and Human Rights o Security and environmental change o Environmental activists and social movements o Globalization, Neoliberalism and Resilience • Health and Resource Disparities o Race and structural violence o Access inequalities in healthcare, food, or education o Impact studies • Theories and methodologies for studying migration and mobility o Gendered perspectives o Indigenous knowledge and technologies o Flexible citizenship • Mobility and Immobility: State, structural, or systemic “pathways” o Informal economies o Parallel and alternative systems o Community organization and activism o Trade and international relations

Abstracts should be submitted via the conference website by December 15, 2019. Please limit abstracts to 250 words. Accepted participants will be notified before the start of the Spring 2020 semester. Accepted papers will be organized topically by the conference organizing committee. .

Any questions can be directed to Susannah Barr (sbarr144@fiu.edu).