Reflections on the Gateway: Policies, practices, infrastructures, narratives and imaginaries
Organizers:
- Peter Hall (Simon Fraser University)
- Jean Michel Montsion (Glendon College, York University)
Outline:
The concept of gateway has enjoyed considerable prominence in public debates around the world, in Canada, and especially in the British Columbia Lower Mainland. As a policy frame, mobilizing technology and convening narrative, the term summarizes a deeper and multi-faceted set of relationships between places and the wider spatial systems in which they exist. Geographers are well placed to interrogate the gateway concept and its use in collaboration with other social scientists interested in the spatial, economic, political, social, cultural and historical dimensions of the gateway, and as such, we are interested in papers that take theoretical, empirical and/or action-oriented scholarly engagements with the concept, practice and content of gateway in Canada, and from other times and places. This special paper session encourages dialogue between sub-disciplines within Geography as well as between geographers and other social disciplines to better understand and think of the usefulness of the gateway as a conceptual tool, practice and imaginary.
Example topics:
- Gateways in Canada and around the world,
- Historical gateways & histories of gateways,
- Globalization & neoliberalism,
- Infrastructure, transportation & multi-modality
- Mobility & immigration,
- Governance, work, labour & advocacy,
- Knowledge, discourses & policy proposals,
- Cities, communities & planning,
- Networks, technologies & virtual gateways,
- Conceptions of gateways within the discipline.
Please send expressions of interest and paper abstracts (max 200 words), including the title of the proposed contribution, name of author(s), and contact information to Jean Michel Montsion (jmmontsion@glendon.yorku.ca) or Peter Hall (pvhall@sfu.ca) by March 1st, 2015.