Mobility
Late modernity has produced an unprecedented mobility of people and mixing of populations. This mobile world is driven by different kinds of forces be it the global inequalities in wealth (the richest 20% controlling 80% of world income and the poorest 20% just 1.2%), the flows of global capital and the mobility of elite workers or political catastrophe and war. The mobility of people is a fact of life and the movements are not just of persons but also of imaginations and the flows and interconnections that take place within the virtual realm.
Labels
EU states have developed different categories of persons and techniques of border control to meet and contain the flow of people and the profusion of cultural difference. How are these categories of persons the result of racial and racist ontologies of difference? How might we conceptualise racism in the context of the EU as a whole? These categories of persons are key, not only because they help us understand how difference is constructed but it also tells us how the normative ‘us’ of the majority is constituted in contrast to the them of the ‘immigrant’.
New structures
The mixing of populations is ordered by new structures and inequalities within EU states. How much are the structures and inequalities an echo of the techniques of control and differentiation outlined above? These new structures are not experiences in a complete or totalising way. In this sense we want to try and understand the combinations of marginalisation and integration within individual lives and biographies.
New fears
The mobility of persons in Europe is being met with anxiety, panic and fear and a growing securitization of border control. The issues of ‘terrorism’ and ‘radical Islam’ are transforming the immigration debate across Europe and this is having a variety of affects. To what degree are new forms of racism being generated across the EU as a whole? How does this take on another dimension in the context of economic recession and financial crisis?