RGS-IBG 2022: Trans-local solidarities as sites of refuge, recovery and repair in care relationships

Among its myriad of consequences, the COVID-19 global pandemic produced new modes and networks of solidarity and care and reconfigured existing ones. These trans-local ‘pop-up’ solidarities encouraged people from similar but also different walks of life to devise new solidarities and networks of support to care for others. How did these solidarities emerge during the global pandemic and how do they withstand in a post-pandemic world? What new constellations of support and care have crystallised as a result? What new forms of resilience and togetherness have been constituted? Which groups or communities have been left-out or left-behind in these ‘new’ solidarities? This panel aims to discuss the role of trans-local solidarities such as proximate and distant family networks, friends, neighbours and neighbourhood organisations, acquaintances and (un)expected others in providing and managing acts of care. Drawing on a life course perspective, we explore the contexts in which these relationships came into being and the classed, gendered, aged, racialised identities and religious practices that inform them. We approach care as a set of moral and ethical practices of physical ‘hands-on’ care, and a broader range of moral, psychosocial and emotional forms of support. We investigate trans-local solidarities in response to varying forms of precarity and disadvantage, including health, housing, work, legal and other everyday challenges and disruptions accentuated by the global pandemic. We recognise the uneven, uncomfortable and divisive nature of some care relationships that increase precarity of everyday living. We welcome papers from across geographies, particularly from regions of the world that remain understudied. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Trans-local mobilities and multi-scalar solidarities
• Ageing and intra/inter-generational networks
• Border regimes and forced immobilities
• Gender, class, race, religion in relation to trans-local care relationships
• Evictions, socio-spatial inequalities and (im)probable solidarities
• Reciprocities of care and caring from non-kin relationships
• Materiality, commodification and (im)mobility of caring from a distance

Please submit a 250-word abstract and indicate whether you plan to attend the conference in person or virtually to the session organisers by March 20: Ajay Bailey a.bailey@uu.nl and Dora Sampaio d.i.martinssampaio@uu.nl