Francesco Vacchiano: Mobility, materiality and modernity скачать в хорошем качестве

Francesco Vacchiano: Mobility, materiality and modernity

About this event: http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/projects/demi... Francesco Vacchiano presents his paper ‘Mobility, materiality and modernity: global expectations as determinants in Morocco and Tunisia' in Session 8 of the Determinants of International Migration – DEMIG Conference, held at the University of Oxford from 23–25 September 2014. Download the presentation (PDF) for this presentation: http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/projects/demi... Abstract In a recent article on migration and social transformation, Stephen Castles argued for “the need to embed migration research in a more general understanding of contemporary societies”. This call seems to be relevant well beyond the unquestionable need to theorize contemporary human mobilities. If migration has been a normal aspect of social life throughout history, every epoch may have configured some peculiar patterns of mobility, based upon time-related forms and reasons. Observed from the so-called “sending countries”, contemporary reasons seem to take up some specific features, which are representative of a sort of “global form of life” with hegemonic traits. Whereas people have normally explained their desire to move as a search for a better life, criteria against which ‘better life’ is defined today are influenced by standards whose origin is situated in a wider field of models and values. In countries like Morocco and Tunisia, for instance, young people frequently associate their desire to migrate to the possibility to live a “normal life” (ma‘īsha ‘adiyya), described through a series of “life conditions” (shurūţ dyal ‘aīsh) that configure a truly “modern” (‘aşryy) social and personal status. If material achievement through consumption is conceived as the primary source of visible success – a sort of “material citizenship” that enables to think to oneself (and to be deemed) as different – circulation across borders is regarded as the primary way to “become first class” (Ferguson) in a world in which movement represents one of the clearest forms of social power. Drawing from a fifteen-year research in anthropology and psychology between the Maghreb and Europe, this contribution analyses the impact of hegemonic global values in Morocco and Tunisia, transforming mobility from a “way to have” to a “way to be”. In this sense, alongside the structural factors normally evoked to explain migration, I propose to consider global expectations (that is: the desire to be “modern” through movement, consumption and self-construction) as important determinants to understand the contemporary migration drive.