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Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe (Book Talk)

Wednesday, April 24, 2024 4:30pm to 6pm

3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97202-8199

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On any given day, the remains of countless deceased migrants are shipped around the world to be buried in ancestral soils. Others are laid to rest in countries of settlement, sometimes in cemeteries established for religious and ethnic minorities, where available. For immigrants and their descendants, perennial questions about the meaning of home and homeland take on a particular gravitas in death. When the boundaries of a nation and its members are contested, burial decisions are political acts. Building on multi-sited fieldwork in Berlin and Istanbul – where the author worked as an undertaker – Dying Abroad offers a moving and powerful account of migrants' end-of-life dilemmas, vividly illustrating how they are connected to ongoing political struggles over the stakes of citizenship, belonging, and collective identity in contemporary Europe.

Osman Balkan is Associate Director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on borders and migration, race and ethnicity, identity and inequality, and the politics of collective memory with a transregional concentration on Western Europe and the Middle East. Balkan's first book, Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023 as part of its LSE International Studies Series, which showcases transdisciplinary and transnational approaches to pressing contemporary issues in global politics. He earned his B.A. from Reed College and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and has held faculty positions at Cornell University and Swarthmore College. For more information, please consult his personal website at: http://www.osmanbalkan.com

Co-Sponsored by Anthropology and CRES 

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