Blockade the Planet!
There is a resurgence in the study of blockades, and for no small reason. Blockades have re-emerged as a widespread tactic of control and resistance in diverse contexts. States are increasingly deploying maritime, land, air, and digital blockades to further their military, political, and economic goals. Activists mount blockades to contest, disrupt, and prevent mobility in the context of fossil fuel infrastructures, global supply chains, incursions onto Indigenous lands, etc. At the same time, all of these blockades are met with new forms of blockade-running as both states and activists attempt to bypass, undermine, or evade attempts to block circulation and movement. This research project investigates blockades as kinopolitical sites where encounters occur, connections take place, and claims are made precisely because things are in motion. The project studies blockades not only for their effectiveness in an activist’s toolkit, but also for the kinds of relationshipsthat are enacting during their existence. A relational approach to the blockade allows us to ask questions that are outside the scope of assessments that are exclusively focused on the efficacy of particular blockading action. What forms of solidarity are enacted at the blockade? What kind of antagonistic, agonistic, or ambivalent relations are performed at the blockade? What kinds of political subjectivities, collectivities, and citizenships are produced at the blockade? And finally, what is politically generative about investigating the blockade as a site of decolonizing citizenship?
Refugee States
A SSHRC funded project led by Thy Phu (University of Toronto) and Edward Ou Jin Lee (UQAM) and involving members of the Critical Refugee & Migration Studies Network-Canada, Refugee States seeks to challenge meta-narratives about forced migration. We partner with migrant and refugee community organizations to engage individuals in digital storytelling. Through workshops that empower participants to develop skills in oral history, digital storytelling, and digital preservation, this project shines new light on the experiences of migrants and refugees.
Liberating Migrant Labour
This SSHRC funded project, led by Leah Vosko (York University), critically investigates the politics of new ‘international mobility programs’ (IMPs), such as programs for postsecondary students and recent graduates, spouses of students and skilled workers, working holiday makers, and intercompany transferees. We are interested in understanding the relationship between IMPs and the role of racialized and gendered distinctions between and among workers, set in the context of settler-colonial states, whose political economies are premised upon the dispossession of Indigenous lands, resources, and political autonomy, and immigration regimes shaped by racialized distinctions between migrants and settlers. We have established a research partnership of engaged scholars, representatives of national government agencies, international organizations, public interest groups, and transnational networks with a focus on three settler-colonial countries: Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada. The ultimate goal of this research partnership is to generate knowledge towards the liberation of migration for employment.
Peter Nyers 