Technologies of Migration – Migrating Technologies
Migration has shaped the civilized world. The circulation of people, goods, and ideas is tightly connected to technologies, as is the monitoring, control or prevention of such movements. The deep history of human migration is characterized by several waves– caused by climatic changes, economic crises, or political forces. Due to globalization, cross-border flows have increased steadily since the 19th century, and technologies of transportation and communication have been essential in mass mobilization. The current discourses on migration both witness of the transformative role of digital technologies in planning, organizing, and realizing of difficult and often dangerous migratory movements around the world and highlight the inherent politics of migratory technologies in surveillance, border control, and the creation of machine-readable bodies.
Luxembourg for instance, whose foreign-born residents account for 51.2 % of the population and a share of 60.7% in employment in 2023, turned into a European hotspot of work migration with the birth of the local steel industry in the late 19th century. Foreign workers were attracted from neighbouring countries first (especially France, Belgium, and Germany), around 1900 from the Italian peninsula and young interwar states in Central and Eastern Europe afterwards. The post-WWII migration was characterized by a strong migration from Portugal (mainly in the building sector) and by highly skilled work migration in the financial sector and European administration since the 1970s. While official sources brand the Luxembourg migration history as a “success story”, the pivotal role of migrants in turning the country into one of the richest in the world is often unacknowledged. The 2025 SHOT conference draws inspiration from this history and offers an important opportunity to reflect critically on the hidden histories and archival silences of migration and technology from multiple perspectives.
Technologies not only facilitate transfer of people and goods, but are also epistemic objects that carry gender and race inscriptions, embody practices of knowledge, and symbolic meanings that change and can be re-appropriated in unpredictable and creative ways in a complex process of translation. Migrating technologies enable knowledge transfer and shape the social construction and symbolic enrichment of material objects, infrastructures, and complex technological systems. How do processes such as the migration of data formats, the adaptation of infrastructures, or the translation of technical knowledge shape historical trajectories of technologies? Can technologies themselves be seen as “migrant”, as they shift from one technological or social ecosystem to another?
In this context we invite a critical appraisal of concepts, strategies, and narratives of migration when analyzed through the lens of technology. How does technology frame the experiences of migration and how have “technologies of memory” produced individual or networked forms of family narratives? How can we address questions of human rights and inequalities in a paradoxical temporality characterized by the global competition for talents and the growing inequality of wealth and financial resources? How do normative and legal regimes impact on “official” and “clandestine” use of migration technologies? What data driven methods are available for historians of technology and migration to study and analyze complex flows of people, goods, and ideas at different scales and in a long-durée perspective?
See, also, here.
Suggested Topics
As always, SHOT anticipates a vibrant and interesting meeting that explores the theme of migration as well as other important topics. Below are a few suggested topics and themes intended to stimulate the interest of potential contributors:
- The ethics, aesthetics, and politics of migration and migrating technologies
- Migratory tactics and strategies and the role of technology in facilitating / preventing cross-boder flows
- Invisible labor, infrastructures of support, and networks of diaspora
- Geographies of migration, from the local to the global
- The role of migration in environmental and climate (in)justice
- Indigenous knowledge and processes of knowledge transfer in migration
- Societal tensions and identity politics
- The role of conservation, preservation, and archives in understanding the past and present of migration, including oral history and public history initiatives
- Migration of technologies themselves across systems, times, and contexts, from the repurposing of infrastructures to digital preservation
While we especially hope to prompt conversations around such matters, we also welcome proposals on other topics in the history of technology. We warmly welcome proposals from the wide range of fields that study such questions, including STS, Anthropology, Economic and Business History, Historical Sociology, Communication & Media Studies, Gender & Cultural Studies, Indigenous & Area Studies, Philosophy, Political Science. We especially encourage early scholars as well as scholars in African, Asian, and Latin American Studies.
The deadline for all paper and panel submissions is 5 April 2025.
The Program Committee welcomes proposals of several types
- Traditional sessions: sessions of 3 or 4 papers, with a chair listed in the session proposal. Deadline: 5 April 2025
- Unconventional sessions: sessions with formats that diverge in useful ways from traditional sessions. These can include (but are not limited to) round-table sessions, workshops, sessions with pre-circulated papers, poster sessions, or screenings. Other creative formats can facilitate communication, dialogue, and audience involvement. For instance a “you write, I present” format in which a discussant presents a paper for the author, with authors on-site to respond. Or a session in which authors commented on each other’s papers. We are interested in sessions that include multiple short “lightning” talks (eg: 5 minutes) on a particular theme. The program committee will look favourably on formats that make sessions less hierarchical and reduce the distance between audience and author and between author and commentator. Deadline: 5 April 2025
- Open sessions: Individuals interested in finding others to join panel sessions may propose open sessions. Open session descriptions, along with the organizer’s contact information, will appear on the SHOT website (the earlier the proposal is sent to SHOT, the earlier it will be posted to the website.) For individuals who want to join a proposed panel from the open sessions list, please contact the organizer of that panel, not the Program Committee. In order to give the session organizer sufficient time to select proposals and assemble the final panel, the deadline for submitting your paper proposal to the open session organizer is 23 March 2025. Open session organizers will then assemble full panels and submit them through SHOT’s online system by 5 April 2025.
- Individual papers: Proposals for individual papers will be considered, but the Program Committee will give preference to fully organized sessions. Scholars who might ordinarily propose an individual paper are encouraged to propose Open Sessions themselves or to join an Open Session. Deadline: 5 April 2025
Pdf version: CfP SHOT Luxembourg 2025 - Version 14 feb
