This workshop, which takes place on 27 and 28 April, explores the interrelations between mobility, democracy, and resilience in the 19th and 20th centuries, a period marked by unprecedented transformations in the movements of people, goods, ideas, and information.
Processes such as industrialisation, urbanisation, colonisation, mass migration, war, and post-war reconstruction profoundly reshaped political participation, social cohesion, and institutional stability. In this context, mobility acted simultaneously as a catalyst for democratic inclusion and as a source of social tension.
Bringing together scholars from history, social and political sciences, historical geography, and related disciplines, the conference explores how mobile populations negotiated citizenship, rights, and belonging, and how democratic institutions adapted to accelerating movement and communication. It further investigates resilience as a social capacity to adapt to crises and reorganise social and political structures in the face of war, displacement, economic breakdown, and technological change.
By integrating these three dimensions into a single analytical framework, the conference seeks to historicise contemporary debates on globalisation, migration, democratic legitimacy, and social cohesion. Through comparative, transnational, and interdisciplinary approaches, it highlights long-term continuities and ruptures in the ways societies have governed mobility, shaped democratic participation and built resilience under conditions of profound transformation.
Please register to get a seat or to receive the ZOOM link
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