Heritage in Motion: Performing (trans)national Diasporic and Migrant Heritage across Borders.

Panel at The 8th Biennial Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS).
Panel Conveners: Prof Sandra Uskokovic (University of Dubrovnik) and Dr Rishika. Mukhopadhyay (University of Southampton).

In an era of global displacement and transnational migration due to the climate crisis, political-economic instability, heritage is emerging as a living and negotiated practice. It is continuously transformed, made and remade through movement, encounter and (trans)national identity politics. Migrants and diasporic communities maintain, carry, reinterpret, mediate and sometimes, reinvent heritage production that challenges traditional, place-bound understanding of cultural continuity. Heritage production is complex in ways informed not only by these communities' globalised and mobile identities but also by an identity rooted in the idea of homeland as well as an intersectional identity of inhabiting a transnational space. The tension that emerges around diaspora being both bounded and unbounded Mavroudi 2007), rooted and dispersed, where boundaries are maintained and eroded (Brubaker 2005), provides a rich ground for critically interrogating the role of diaspora and migrant communities in shaping transnational heritage.

Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, the panel explores how diasporic and migrant communities, including institutions, third sector organisations and artists engage in the process of heritagisation, transmission and re-inscription to sustain and redefine heritage. In what ways is migrant and diasporic community heritage transformed by the political, economic, and technological changes in the global order? How heritage formation is influenced by these communities’ collective memory and negotiated self between national and international citizenship. By highlighting the performative and transformative dimensions of transnational heritage, this panel invites us to rethink heritage not as a fixed inheritance but as a dynamic process of cultural negotiation in motion.

We particularly invite contributions that will expand the scope of transnational heritage ontologically and enrich the discussion through empirical debates across various scales and geographies.

Please email your abstracts to us at r.mukhopadhyaysoton.ac.uk and sandra.uskokovicgmail.com by 6 February: Max 150 words and 50 words bio.

https://www.achs2026.nz/call-for-papers