When
Responsibility and Accountability in Migrant Solidarity Work
Megan Carney
Associate Professor, School of Anthropology
University of Arizona
How do local communities commit to social solidarity amid nation-states' chronic deflection of responsibility surrounding transnational migration, refugee "crises", social reproduction and care, and material and psychosocial well-being? This talk will draw from multiple years of fieldwork with frontline communities in the central Mediterranean - e.g., Sicily - as they have responded to unprecedented migration into southern Europe and repeated waves of economic austerity. I will explore the material and psychosocial dimensions of these events as well as the grassroots forms of solidarity and collective care that have emerged and proven highly significant in the context of subsequent calamities such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Finally, I will discuss the challenges with "solidarity" not only as an ethnographic object but also as a research method, one that is arguably required for an ethical, responsible, and accountable research practice.
Dr. Megan Carney is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and is the Director of the UA Center for Regional Food Studies. During 2021 and 2022, Dr. Carney is also a Fulbright Scholar with the Fulbright Schuman European Union Affairs Program. Dr. Carney's research focuses on global human displacement and migration, the intersections of food and migration, migrant health, reproductive labor and the politics of care, and the affective dimensions of state-sanctioned violence and economic restructuring. Her latest book, 'Island of Hope: Migration and Solidarity in the Mediterranean', is an ethnography of the politics of austerity and migrant reception in southern Europe (https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520344518/island-of-hope). You can also find out more about her research and scholarship here: https://anthropology.arizona.edu/user/megan-carney
Please email Amanda Percy for the Zoom link