PANEL 1: Human rights issues in current migration trends within and from Latin America
This panel deals with human rights issues in the context of current migration trends within and from Latin America. The risk of human rights violations affecting migrants, both during the process of migration and after arrival to the place of destination, has become the focus of increased attention in recent years. While it can be debated whether intolerance has signiifcantly risen in some countries, it is clear that realities such as human trafficking, the criminalization of unauthorized status, excessive detention practices, unlawful border control (through corruption, vigilantism, etc.) appear to have become more widespread in certain places. Moreover, the dramatic upsurge in transit and temporary migration crontributes to the potential for abuse of vulnerable groups (by officials, employers, organized crime) and, given their inherently fragile legal and political status, as well as their social “invisibility”, may lead to government neglect and unaccountability. The growing incidence of enforced disappearance may be seen as the most extreme form of such denial of basic human rights.

Organizers:
Victor Armony (Université de Québec à Montréal)
Jorge Pantaleon (Université de Montréal).
 Claudia Masferrer (Colegio de México): A migration system in the making: Demographic dynamics and migration policies in North America and the Northern Triangle of Central-America
 Patricia Martin (Géographie, Université de Montréal): Canada lifts the visa: The shifting geopolitics of Canadian asylum policy and its impact on Mexican asylum-seekers
Leticia Calderon (Instituto Mora, Mexico): The response of Mexico’s organized civil society to vulnerable migration
 Tanya Basok (Sociology, University of Windsor): Access to justice? Mexican Seasonal Workers and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom

PANEL 2 : Poéticas de la frontera y del desplazamiento en las Américas
Las formas que adquiere “el desplazamiento” da lugar, no sin conflictos, a movimientos continuos donde corporalidades y subjetividades migrantes develan sus similitud(es) y diferencia(s). La acción de desplazarse visibiliza al mismo tiempo los propios espacios intersticiales que delimita; de manera que las condiciones fronterizas, propias de estos espacios, ceden paso a formas relacionales, comunitarias e identitarias en constante conformación y confrontación. Por otra parte, las disímiles expresiones de “lo cultural” se inscriben privilegiadamente en la memoria, que estas relaciones habilitan. Este panel busca poner de relieve la localización en cuerpo y lengua histórico-política desde dónde se piensan y son pensadas por otros estas prácticas diaspóricas, locales, transnacionales.

Organizadores:
Amanda Holmes (McGill University)
Tatiana Navallo (Université de Montréal)
 Amanda Holmes (McGill University): Framing the Country Lifestyle in Argentine Cinema Antonio Giménez Micó (Concordia University): Alejandro Saravia: del tránsito “al otro lado del Muro” a su cuestionamiento.
Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba (University of Texas at Austin): Estética y política del arte urbano fronterizo
 Constanza Camelo (Université du Québec à Chicoutimi): Déplacements circonstanciels Comentarista: Tatiana Navallo (Université de Montréal)