Migrants’ Anchoring in the Time of Uncertainty – Zoom Seminar

We are pleased to invite you to our next Zoom seminar!

Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska ( University of Warsaw) will speak about Migrants’ Anchoring in the Time of Uncertainty. The Author’s presentation will be followed by brief comments from discussants: Anna Gawlewicz (University of Glasgow), Konrad Pędziwiatr (Cracow University of Economics) and Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach (Cracow University of Economics).

The upcoming Multiculturalism and Migration Observatory seminar will be devoted to the latest book by Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska entitled “Rethinking settlement and integration: Migrants’ anchoring in an age of insecurity” (Manchester University Press 2020). The Author in her short presentation will shed light on the concept of anchoringlinking the notions of identity, adaptation and settling as well as underlining migrants’ efforts at recovering their feeling of safety and stability. She will argue that anchoring can provide an alternative lens to the concept of integration, offering a more multidimensional and processual perspective. This is needed to better understand the experience of adaptation and settling among today’s migrants in new, complex and fluid societies, particularly in the current time of uncertainty. The proposed model of anchoring developed in her research outlines layers of anchoring, from external footholds related to the legal and institutional frameworks and work opportunities, through more complex anchors embedded in social relations, to deeper internal anchors, such as constructed familiarity and closeness. Her research highlights the significance of practices for anchoring; the importance of cognitive, emotional and spiritual anchoring as well as changes in anchoring, and the uneven and relational character of settling. It sheds light on the flexibility and reversibility of anchoring, including the processes of re-anchoring or un-anchoring. Aleksandra Grzymała-Kazłowska’s study also shows how migrants are constrained by existing anchors, limited resources and societal structures; how certain anchors disadvantage or disable migrants, producing insecurities and what are inequalities in the processes of anchoring – how individuals’ positionality influences both their levels of exposure to risk and uncertainty as well as migrants’ capacities for agency, ability to deal with challenges and make use of opportunities

Meeting will be held in English.