This event is part of the RECET Festival of Historical and Social Sciences "Migration & Transformation".
Event venue: Campus of the University of Vienna („Altes AKH“), festival tent in Hof 1
Position of the tent: https://goo.gl/maps/8FjYQNtdnaUiKCcs6
The development of migration processes and the related debates over migration have become key issues in contemporary social transformation. The talk will argue that we have to analyze material and discursive processes together in order to understand migratory changes and discourses on migration within the framework of social change and historical dynamics. It will highlight that cum ulative causation of migration, marketization and economic openness have been key factors not only in changing migratory tendencies, but also effected discursive change together with inherited biopolitical considerations. This combination was also crucial for making Eastern Europe a special and important terrain where processes and discourses led to particular contradictions and tensions, and thus we can understand how this topic could be instrumentalized by competitive authoritarian regimes like Hungary. The talk will finally argue that in the era of late globalization, and in the new period of deglobalization, the emerging East European neoliberal nationalisms will deepen and not solve the contradictions, thus leading to further change.
The keynote will be moderated by Dorothee Bohle (University of Vienna).
Attila Melegh is a sociologist, economist and historian. He studied economics and sociology at Karl Marx University of Economics and social history at Oxford University. He has a PhD in history from Debrecen University. He is a habilitated full professor at Corvinus University, Budapest, and a scientific advisor at the Demographic Research Institute. He was the founding director of Karl Polányi Research Center at Corvinus University between 2014-22. Melegh has participated and conducted more than 12 major international research projects. In 2024 he was the seventh Vienna Karl Polanyi Visiting Professor (University of Vienna, Vienna University of Economics and Business [WU], Central European University [CEU]), the International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS) and the Volkshochschule Wien (VHS Wien) and is supported by the Vienna Chamber of Labour and the City of Vienna). Attila Melegh is also a Doctor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and President of the Demographic Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is a member of Academia Europeae. Beside many publications he is the author of the book On the East/West Slope, Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses on Central and Eastern Europe published at CEU Press. His new, 2023 book at Palgrave-Macmillan is: The Migration Turn and Eastern Europe: A Global Historical Sociological Analysis
Dorothee Bohle is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Vienna. She was previously Professor of Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence and at the Central European University, Budapest. Her research is at the intersection of comparative politics and political economy, with a particular focus on East Central Europe. She is the author of Capitalist Diversity on Europe's Periphery (Cornell University Press 2012, together with Béla Greskovits), which was awarded the Stein Rokkan Prize in Comparative Research in 2013.
