Governing Subjectivities In Turbulent Times

Turbulent times are characterized not only by accelerating and increasingly complex transformations but also by more conflictual negotiations of social issues. Both shape the formation of subjectivities across different fields. While subjectivities are experienced bodily, they are simultaneously politically addressed and mobilized for particular agendas. This session explores the dynamics of subjectivation in highly contested fields to better understand the interplay of policies, institutions, and identities.

Research on ecology and migration has highlighted the nexus of governmentality and subjectivity through the concepts of deportability (De Genova 2002) and environmentality (Agrawal 2005). In the context of deportation, deportable subjects are constituted through citizenship, belonging, migration, stigmatization, and legal-bureaucratic practices. Policies, institutions, and discourses continuously reshape deportability, as evident in contexts as diverse as Iran, the USA, and Europe. Similarly, environmental subjectivities emerge as individuals are governed through environmental regulation while simultaneously constituted as environmental subjects. Efforts to establish rights of nature and climate litigation both reflect and produce particular understandings of subjectivity, while also shaping perceptions of vulnerability.

The session examines how subjectivities are constructed in these unequal and politically contested fields amid ongoing institutional and social transformations. It focuses on the specificities of subjectivation and their implications for sociological theory in order to gain insights from the two different fields. We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions, both case-based and comparative, primarily from migration and/or ecology, while welcoming comparative perspectives from other fields with similar dynamics.