Le SSRC (Social Sciences Research Council), basé à New-York, est une fondation qui propose des bourses pour les sciences sociales. Une de ces bourses, appelée Doctoral Pre-Dissertation Fellowship (DPDF), est destinée aux étudiants en début de thèse. Jusqu’à l’an passé, ce programme DPDF, qui recrute 60 étudiants à travers 5 thèmes spécifiques (changeant chaque année), était uniquement à destination des étudiants d’universités Américaines. Depuis 2010, un des ces 5 thèmes est international et se destine à 6 étudiants Français et 6 étudiants Américains. L’an passé celui-ci s’intitulait "Multiculturalism, Immigration & Immigration in the US & Western Europe". Cette partie Franco-Américaine du programme est co-financée par le SSRC, l’ANR, le Reseau Francais des Etudes Avancées (RFIEA) et la fondation Mellon.

Cette année le programme international est reconduit autour du thème : Bridging, Bonding and Bordering : Migrant Strategies and State Policies et sera dirigé par Virginie Guiraudon (CNRS- Lille 2) & Ruben Hernandez-Leon (UCLA)

Presentation 

Over the past two decades, a gap has developed in the field of migration studies between scholars studying border controls and transnational migration flows -- the building and bridging of borders. Political scientists and legal scholars have focused on the significant policies and resources deployed to prevent the movement of people across borders. Ironically, research interest in borders resurfaced in the 1990s as the most obvious border, the Berlin Wall, tumbled down and a few years before intra-European borders were also lifted. Re-bordering and migration control were concomitant to the fall of the Iron Curtain and therefore scholars studied the new “Wall around the West,” to use the title of a 2000 volume comparing the situation in North America and Europe.

In contrast, sociologists and anthropologists have been more likely to underline transnational sociocultural ties and the success of migrant entrepreneurs entangled in global networks. Scholars in these disciplines led research on those living across borders and their transnational communities. In fact one of the theories of migration is called “transnationalism,” an approach which builds on network theory to bring attention to cross-border dynamics.

It is time to go one step beyond and study exactly how bordering, rebordering, bridging and bonding interact. For example, what are the national and local policies that affect migrant practices? How have border control policies affected not only migration but also migrants’ social strategies, economic achievements and cultural practices? How do non-state actors and organizations assist migrants in bridging the ‘here’ and ‘there’ despite new forms of border enforcement? How do efforts of internal rebordering and differentiation between members ‘of’ and persons ‘in’ the polity affect post-migration experiences and the emergence of bonding in the long term? How do local social and economic effects of immigration inform government border policies?

Our goal in these workshops is to engage an interdisciplinary cohort of students working with qualitative, ethnographic, comparative and quantitative methods to address these questions of bridging and bordering between sending and receiving societies. We seek proposals that explore bridging, bonding, bordering and rebordering as interactive and dynamic phenomena, contingent on the variable effect of national and local immigration policies, migrant strategies, and institutions and organizations functioning across borders. We seek submissions with research designs that compare these issues internationally across migratory systems and/or entail data collection in both sending and receiving countries of a given migratory flow. We also seek proposals that study migrant populations and streams with both European and U.S. destinations. In their applications, students should describe how they think their particular research will contribute to or benefit from international comparisons of research across European and US contexts.

NOTE: Unlike other fields of the DPDF Program, this research field will be organized internationally. Participating student fellows will include six French students (or foreign students enrolled in a French institution) and six American students. Its research directors are based in France and the United States. Workshops and assignments will be conducted in English. The first field workshop will take place at the Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées in Marseille, France, from June 10 to 14, 2011 (fellows in this field will not attend the earlier Spring DPDF workshop in Monterey). The first day of the workshop in France will be a conference at which several senior researchers from Europe and the United States will explore comparative perspectives on the workshop themes as part of the field orientation offered to students. Following the conference, some of the senior scholars will participate in the workshop with the student fellows. After the summer research, the second workshop of this field will take place along with the other DPDF fellows in Philadelphia, September 15 to 18, 2011.

The organization of this field is a collaborative undertaking between the Agence Nationale de Recherche (ANR), the Réseau Français des Instituts d'Études Avancées (RFIEA), with the l’Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées de Marseille (IMéRA), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.

Applications online: http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/dpdf-fellowship/

Deadline reportée au 4 février pour les étudiants inscrits dans une université en France.