Decolonizing, decentering, and deracializing: A critical cultural sociology of migration

Nadya Jaworsky presented her work at the International Conference on the Cultural Sociology of East and West:

"Migration studies has, of late, become much more reflexive. A recent (2023) issue of the journal Sociological Forum has published a special issue on “decolonizing” the field. The authors variously suggest different forms of paradigm shifts, which, besides decolonizing, include decentering or adopting a Du Boisian approach that takes race seriously. My goal is to bring these perspectives into conversation with cultural sociology, to explore the ways in which studying meaning-making processes and hermeneutically reconstructing cultural structures can help understand migration-related phenomena. In particular, I argue that the analytical tool of symbolic boundaries represents a useful common language and a bridge of sorts. To illuminate the possibilities, I provide empirical examples from a research study on attitudes toward migration in Czechia, a country that presents a compelling analytical puzzle: there are few 'migrants' yet the issue of migration looms large on political and public agendas."

Nadya Jaworsky

The full program and all abstracts can be found HERE.