A conference held under the auspices of the ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) and the RGS-IBG Population Geography Research Group (PGRG)

2^nd-3^rd July 2012, University of St Andrews

We are pleased to announce that participant registration for this conference is now open. The meeting is timed to finish at lunchtime on Tuesday 3^rd July to allow delegates to travel to the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in Edinburgh. Conference costs are as follows:

a) Registration £71. This includes refreshments throughout both days; as well as a finger buffet lunch and the conference dinner on Monday 2^nd July.

b) Accommodation is also available in New Hall on 1^st and 2^nd July 2012 at the cost of £43 per night. This rate covers single occupancy bed & breakfast accommodation.

Participants wishing to register should proceed directly to the University of St Andrews online shop at: http://onlineshop.st-andrews.ac.uk/. From here, click ‘Conferences and Events’, ‘Conferences’ and then ‘Geography and Geosciences’. Please select the CPC/PGRG meeting and click ‘Book Event’. After registering with the online shop you will then be able to select and pay for your chosen registration and accommodation package. Participants are asked to register by Tuesday May 15th.

If you would like to receive a conference programme or have any further queries, please contact Rory Coulter at rcc28@st-andrews.ac.uk.

We look forward to welcoming you to St Andrews in July for what promises to be a very stimulating series of discussions.

After six successful and pleasant previous International Conferences on Population Geographies in St Andrews (twice), Liverpool, Hong Kong, Dartmouth and Umea, the Population Research Centre of the University of Groningen is proud to present:

The 7th International Conference on Population Geographies, Groningen, 25-28 June 2013

Note the dates in your agenda!

Call for abstracts expected September 2012

Deadline for abstracts expected January 2013

Conference website (under construction): www.rug.nl/frw/icpg2013

Conference e-mail address: icpg2013@rug.nl

The organising team: Clara Mulder, Ori Rubin, Hans Elshof, Daniel Herbers, Eva Kibele, Kim van Dam

BSPS Annual Conference 2012 

Monday 10 – Wednesday 12 September 2012, The University of Nottingham

 SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS: DEADLINE 11th May 2012.

The 2012 BSPS Conference will be held at the University of Nottingham from 10-12 September. All Conference sessions will be held on site, where Conference catering and accommodation will also be available at very reasonable rates. Booking forms will be available from early June, together with a provisional timetable. Registration is expected to cost in the region of £75 (members) to £100 (non-members) and accommodation packages will be about £165. To be confirmed in early June.

There will be a full programme of simultaneous strand sessions of submitted papers. Proposals or abstracts for papers and posters are invited across the entire demographic and population studies spectrum. Presenters are requested to submit ongoing work with incomplete analyses and findings as posters rather than papers.  Oral presentations should include results. For organizational purposes, strand organizers have been allocated to specific themes: email queries may be addressed to the strand or session organizer shown. There is a strand for ‘other papers’ which do not appear to fit the strands announced. Submissions of quantitative and qualitative papers are welcome.

Some sessions within strands have been suggested and these will be organised by the person named as session organiser, within an overall strand. Sessions within strands are shown beneath the overall strand title.

Training sessions: Proposals for training or ‘how to’ sessions are welcome, using the Conference online submissions system or by direct contact with BSPS at pic@lse.ac.uk. One such session will be organised by Piers Elias as part of the local authority stream.

There will be two plenary sessions.

*             Professor Peter McDonald (Australian National University & President of the IUSSP), provisionally entitled A century of population studies, society and Population Studies’ Societies.

*             A  double plenary, 90 minute session on the 2011 Census and its quality with two speakers and 30 minutes for questions and discussion:

Professor Danny Dorling (University of Sheffield), on Can we trust the 2011 one number?

Glen Watson (ONS Census Director)

Fringe sessions: Proposals for debates or other sessions on demographic matters/history that do not fit into the usual framework of contributed papers can also be positively considered. These should be submitted as soon as possible, using the online submissions system, or by direct contact with BSPS at pic@lse.ac.uk.

Information updates on the Conference will be posted to the BSPS website as available. See:

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/BSPS/annualConference/Home.aspx

Presenters of posters will be expected to attend the scheduled poster session on the first evening of the Conference, but posters will remain on display for the duration of the Conference.

Submissions for oral presentations and posters should be made online by Friday 11 May 2012.  Presenters are asked to submit a short abstract of up to 250 words, plus an extended abstract of up to 2000 words. Please note that extended abstracts should be emailed directly to pic@lse.ac.uk, preferably in PDF format. If you are unable to provide an extended abstract at the time of submission, please note the research question, methods, data sources, and any preliminary results in the space provided on the online form, plus a note on the nature of any potential applications of the results. Strand organisers may request further details of a potential presentation or an extended abstract before decisions are made on acceptance. Short abstracts of all papers will appear in the printed Conference programme. Extended abstracts will be posted to the Conference website.

Choose an appropriate strand and submit online at:

https://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/lsewebsite/bsps2012| 

If you are unable to submit online, please contact pic@lse.ac.uk, for alternative arrangements.

The 2011 UK Census is estimated to cost in excess of £500m. This, together with concerns about timeliness, has led to the government investigating alternative approaches to acquiring information on the population. However, the census also provides a framework for considerable social analysis. It is thus vital that the impact of any replacement to the census on the scope of social research is fully taken into account.

This conference seeks to contribute to this conversation by examining:

• the use of administrative data and the research based on it in Scandinavia
• the existing use of administrative data in the British Isles
• the potential use of survey data.

It is anticipated that the audience would be comprised of academics involved in social science research, government statisticians and policy makers currently involved in the census or using its results; politicians and those working in the voluntary sector concerned with social needs.

Costs: £50 per head. A light lunch will be provided, together with tea and coffee at the other breaks. A buffet will be served after the panel discussion that will give an opportunity for informal discussion.
Booking: For any further information and booking please email: life_after_the_census@ulster.ac.uk

PopFest is an annual population studies conference for postgraduate students organised by fellow postgraduates. PopFest has been organised by various universities with the support of sponsors for nineteen years. The twentieth PopFest is to be held at Loughborough University from the 21st – 23rd June and will reflect on the past 20 years of population studies and look forward to the challenges facing population studies in the next 20 years.

Professor John Stillwell from the University of Leeds will be the keynote speaker for the event reflecting on increasing ethnic diversity of the UK population over the last 20 years. Professor John Stillwell’s research interests include internal and international population migration, geographical information systems (GIS), and regional development and planning.

Sir Jonathon Porritt, founder director of “Forum for the Future” and former chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission will deliver a plenary exploring the “next 20 years”, considering future challenges to populations. Sir Jonathon is an environmentalist and writer, dedicating his time to advising, campaigning, broadcasting and lecturing.

The call for papers is now open – deadline for presentation abstracts and proposals for poster presentations is 20^th March 2012 – these should be submitted to Popfest2012@lboro.ac.uk

More details about the event including details on registration, travel and accommodation can be found on the PopFest website: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy/popfest/index.html

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: 28th March 2012

Population Geography:

Inter-Generational Patterns and Processes

Third Biennial British-Irish Population Conference, Belfast, 18-19th April 2012

Hosted by Queen’s University Belfast under the auspices of the Population Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG

The conference programme along with further information, registration form and payment form can now be downloaded at:

http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/TheInstituteofSpatialandEnvironmentalPlanning/bipconf2012/

ANY QUERIES or HELP REQUIRED?

Please don’t hesitate to contact us on any one of the following:

Conference email address:   bipopgeog@qub.ac.uk

Conference administrator:   Carole Maslowski (Tel: 02890 97 4679 or Email: c.maslowski@qub.ac.uk)

Conference organisers:   Aileen Stockdale (Tel: 02890 97 4771 or Email: a.stockdale@qub.ac.uk)

Gemma Catney (Tel: 02890 97 3362 or Email: g.catney@qub.ac.uk)

We look forward to welcoming you to Belfast

CALL FOR PAPERS

  Innovative Perspectives on Population Mobility:

Mobility, Immobility and Well-being

2^nd-3^rd July 2012

Hosted by the University of St Andrews

under the auspices of the Population Geography Research Group (RGS-IBG) and the ESRC Centre for Population Change

The ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) and the RGS-IBG Population Geography Research Group invite contributions for a conference on innovative perspectives on population mobility. This conference will be held in St. Andrews on 2^nd and 3^rd July 2012.

Population mobility is one of the key components of demographic change in contemporary Western societies. Given the strong links between mobility and spatial processes in housing and labour markets, the current economic crisis and rapidly rising levels of ethnic diversity provide impetus for looking afresh at how we conceptualise and investigate population mobility. Motivations for moving arise from an entangled mix of economic and non-economic factors. Understanding why people move and the (un)intentional consequences of mobility therefore requires consideration of perceptions of subjective wellbeing, as well as economic gain.

Increasingly diverse household structures and more complex life course trajectories (across educational, employment and housing ‘life careers’) make it ever more important to understand migration events and the impacts of moving within the context of long-term individual and household biographies. Furthermore, understanding how the outcomes of mobility vary for different social groups and across different geographical spaces is also of value.  Developing new longitudinal techniques and harnessing new sources of data on migration decision-making and behaviour are therefore key mechanisms to help understand the new geographies of mobility. As Western populations age, understanding why people do not move and the consequences this immobility could have for individuals, households and geographical regions is also of great policy relevance.

The conference will have two strands. The first strand will showcase and critically discuss the principle findings of the first three years of the ESRC’s Centre for Population Change research programme, with particular reference to population mobility and well-being (mainly focussed on UK-based research using a range of secondary datasets such as the BHPS). Rapporteurs will evaluate and critique a range of innovative research undertaken under this multi-disciplinary programme.

The second strand, which is the focus of this call for papers, invites other researchers (such as members of the RGS PGRG) to present papers on a range of new approaches to the study of population mobility, immobility and wellbeing, as well as on other innovative concepts or data sources relevant to analysing mobility. International case studies will be particularly welcome. Contributions in this strand could address (but are not limited to) the following topics:

1)    Population mobility and human wellbeing

2)    New data sources and techniques to analyse mobility decision-making behaviour

3)    Population (im)mobility in times of economic uncertainty

Abstracts of 100-200 words should be submitted to Rory Coulter, Department of Geography and Sustainable Development, School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews: e-mail <rcc28@st-andrews.ac.uk> by 29th February 2012.  Notification of abstract acceptance will be acknowledged by email by 8^th March 2012. Rory Coulter and Allan Findlay <amf21@st-andrews.ac.uk> are also happy to answer any questions about the meeting.

Further Particulars: The St Andrews meeting is timed to fit with the RGS Annual Conference, being held in Edinburgh 3-5th July 2012. The St Andrews conference session on Tuesday 3rd July will finish in time to allow those delegates who wish to travel to Edinburgh to arrive for afternoon sessions on 3rd July. Registration and details about booking accommodation (in New College, St Andrews) will be circulated in early March.

Population Geography Research Group-sponsored sessions at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2012

Please find below CFPs for paper sessions sponsored by the Population Geography Research Group (PopGRG) at the 2012 RGS-IBG Annual Conference in Edinburgh (3^rd-5^th July). The deadline for submission of abstracts to session convenors is 20^th January 2012. The PopGRG will also sponsor a panel session on the emerging challenges and opportunities facing population geography – the abstract is provided below.

The PopGRG in collaboration with the ESRC Centre for Population Change will also co-host a pre-Edinburgh meeting at St. Andrews University, focused on migration. This meeting will take place on 2^nd-3^rd July 2012. Further details and calls for papers will be circulated shortly.

Calls for Papers – RGS-IBG 2012 paper sessions

Dismantling diasporas: rethinking the geographies of diasporic identity, mobility and development

Session convenors: Elizabeth Mavroudi, Loughborough University; and Anastasia Christou, University of Sussex

This session wishes to re-energise debates on the conceptualisation of diasporas in geographical scholarship and beyond. In particular, there is a need to engage with the potential tension between ‘roots and routes’ that those in diaspora often face and geographers are in an excellent position to further such debates. This session aims to open up discussion on the complex ways in which diasporas create and maintain connections and spaces with each other and their homelands, how they construct and imagine place, and the repercussions in terms of homeland involvement and development. Perhaps more importantly, it stresses the need to consider diasporas as dynamic and evolving, rather than as static entities or categories. In this way we can pay attention to the power relations, inclusions and exclusions that take place within and beyond diasporas. We therefore want to shed more light on the conceptual use of diaspora but also on the changing geopolitical/social/economic/cultural role diasporas play in contemporary home/host societies through empirical case studies.

Themes we would like to focus on include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Constructing diasporas: ambivalence, in-between-ness, actively creating, invoking and using identities, homes, belonging, nationalism, national identity and place
• Affecting diasporas: embodied diasporas, emotionalities, defying representation and categorization
• Dividing diasporas: power relations, tensions, disunities, fragmentation, inclusions, exclusions within and between diasporas
• Extreme diasporas: how and why diasporas may become involved in extreme, strategic activities, such as terrorism, extreme and exclusive notions of nationalism, geopolitics and geographies of security involving diasporas
• Bridging diasporas: symbolic, material, virtual socio-cultural, economic and political connections and spaces within, between and beyond diasporas
• Returning diasporas: physical/virtual return, circular migration, brain circulation, brain exchange, transnational/translocal homecoming visits
• Empowering diasporas: agency, impacts on homeland/host country socio-cultural, economic and political development and security, conflict resolution, self-determination, liberation movements.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Liz Mavroudi (E.Mavroudi@lboro.ac.uk) and Anastasia Christou (A.Christou@sussex.ac.uk) by 20^th January 2012.

Calls for Papers – RGS-IBG 2012 paper sessions

Rethinking the (In) security/ Migration Nexus

Session convenors: Nir Cohen, Bar Ilan University (Israel); Ibrahim Sirkeci, Regents College London (UK).

While the migration / security nexus is hardly new, as exemplified by anti-migration laws implemented in some countries during both World Wars, the last decade has witnessed a considerable increase in interest in its various forms and manifestations. Driven largely by the events of September 2001, the US-led so called ‘War on Terror’ and, more recently, the global financial crisis, migrants – including asylum seekers and refugees – are often conceived as a threat to the socio-economic, cultural and political security of ‘Western’ nations. Vilifying, xenophobic discourse, anti-migrant riots, and tightened, high-technology border control systems geared to ‘contain’ in-migration flows are now a daily spectacle in an ever-growing number of countries and cities. Nevertheless, concerns of (in) security are not limited to wars or armed conflicts; indeed, a broader definition of conflict – including latent or explicit forms of it (e.g. community level tensions, individual disagreements, disputes) – provides a useful framework to understand the perception of insecurity and its relevance to human mobility. Migrants and non-migrants alike react to the perceived insecurities around them, be they economic (e.g. lack of suitable jobs), political (e.g. paucity of participation channels), or socio-cultural (e.g. ethnic discrimination).

The purpose of this session is to rethink old and debate new linkages between migration – and other forms of mobility – and security at multiple scales. Informed by recent understandings of security as both a strategic objective and a socio-political value (Huysmans & Squire, 2009), we seek papers that articulate security as a broad array of real and imagined practices, technologies and discourses that manage, control and govern people’s migratory experiences. We are particularly interested in papers that embed securities in urban contexts and attend to the contested politics of securitized spaces and places in cities. Possible topics include:

• Security in/of/through borders and barriers
• Economic (in)security and migration
• Migration as a threat to national security
• Migration and personal (in)security
• ‘Compromising our lifestyle’ – migrants as threat to cultural security
• Securing migratory routes
• Migration and (in)security in cities
• Securities in/of/for households
• (In)securities at destination
• Gender and (in) security
• (In)security and return migration
• Remittances and (in)security
• Perceptions of (in)security

Please send abstracts (up to 300 words) to Nir.Cohen@biu.ac.il and Sirkecii@regents.ac.uk by 20^th January 2012.