LECTURE: Human Smuggling and the Circuit of Capital

You are invited to a free public lecture by

Dr Khalid Koser, Human Geography, Migration Research Unit, University College London

For Transnationalism, Racisms, Communities, Settlement (TRACS) Workshop Scheduled for August 17 - 20, 2004 on the theme of Generations of Migration

Date and Time: Tuesday 17 August at 6.00pm Venue: Geography Lecture Theatre 1, UWA (See map at http://maps.uwa.edu.au/crawley/display/6)

Profile:

Dr Khalid Koser is Lecturer in Human Geography at University College London and a member of the Migration Research Unit. He is also Vice-President of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration. From 1 September 2004 he will be seconded for one year to the Global Commission on International Migration as Senior Policy Analyst. He is editor or co-editor of: The New Migration in Europe (Macmillan, 1998), The End of the Refugee Cycle (Berghahn, 1999), New Approaches to Migration (Routledge, 2001) and New African Diasporas (Routledge, 2003).

His talk will draw on his current research on human smuggling between Afghanistan/Pakistan and Western Europe, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (UK). It will ask the question 'Does smuggling pay?', and answer it by looking at how much smugglers charge, how migrants and their families raise the money, how the money is disbursed through the smuggling network and how much smuggled migrants remit once they arrived in their destinations.

Khalid Koser’s research: My principal research focus is forced migration. My research has contributed to conceptual developments in this field in three main ways. First, it has challenged the traditionally sharp distinction between voluntary and forced migrants, demonstrating similarities between the two types in terms of decision-making, the role of social networks in the migration process and negotiation of the changing political context. This contribution is best illustrated in my paper in International Migration Review (1997). Second, my research has significantly contributed to understanding what happens once refugees go home. In particular, it has demonstrated that repatriation does not necessarily bring to an end the refugee cycle, and it has explored the meaning of the concept of home for refugees. These ideas are developed in an edited volume on The End of the Refugee Cycle? (1999, with R. Black). Third, my research has uniquely tried to locate refugees within the wider concept of transnationalism, demonstrating how refugees form particular types of transnational communities. The book I am currently writing for UCL Press on Refugees, Transnationalism and the State develops these ideas further.

ALL WELCOME. NO RESERVATION IS REQUIRED

For more information please contact The Institute of Advanced Studies, UWA on

Tel (08) 6488 1340; Email [email protected]; www.ias.uwa.edu.au