Transnational Friendships

Call for Papers

Research panel at the 14th IMISCOE Annual Conference

Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 28-30 June 2017

Organizers: Başak Bilecen and Louise Ryan

Friendship is a facet of social life. The voluntary, less standardised and non-hierarchical nature of interaction it involves makes friendship a unique type of relationship. Despite the overstated, pessimistic claims that the social relationships as well as their quality are weakening and that individuals have become lonely, isolated, self-interested, uncaring and lacking in trust as a result of the ‘individualisation’ of contemporary ‘Western’ life, relationships today are far more subtle, complex and multifaceted. Changing patterns of employment and leisure, and family, household and domestic life, as well as increasing individualisation and the declining importance of locality for solidarity in our time pose challenges to friendship relationships. Friends no doubt play a crucial role in many people’s lives also for internationally mobile ones. In the previous literature examining personal ties of international migrants, families received ample attention, while friends were usually mentioned as sources of support and affection but not investigated in-depth. In this panel we aim to address this gap in research through focusing particularly on friendship relationships.
Topics could include, but are not limited to:

• How friendship ties are formed and maintained in the lives of mobile and non-mobile individuals?
• What is the role of short-term or long-term migration on the friendship relationships?
• How do friends support each other across national borders?
• Whether and how gender dynamics are at play when friendships are ‘done’?
• What factors contribute to dissolution of friendship ties?

Abstract submissions

We welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words including authors’ names, titles, emails and institutional affiliations by December 2nd, 2016 at the latest. All files must be submitted in word or pdf format to Başak Bilecen (basak.bilecen@uni-bielefeld.de) and Louise Ryan (louise.ryan@sheffield.ac.uk). All authors will be informed about our decision on December 15th, 2016. All authors will be informed on February 1st, 2017 on the final decision of acceptance of the research panel by IMISCOE.