Minorities in Times of Scarcity and Conflict

You are welcome to attend the latest CMR seminar series.

The event will bring together scholars working crossdisciplinarily on migration, colonialism, othering, indigeneity and diversity who go beyond the conventional approach to resource scarcity as the product of demographic stress on the natural environment.

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased perceptions that the availability and access to resources is limited and tightly controlled – from health and welfare to employment opportunities, state aid provision to community support networks. Recent public attention to the competition for resources is built on longer-term neoliberal ideas concerning selected allocation of limited goods to particular social groups. Real or imagined scarcity potentially ignites social conflict, in some cases leading to radical views of Otherness, pitting community against community. In government and civil society, such tensions lead to the withholding of resources from ‘undeserving’ populations.

The concept of scarcity is placed in a context of ongoing and unresolved political violence, populist-fuelled social friction, and affective labour economies. The aim is to reconceptualise scarcity as a key point of negotiation in minority governance and as a pivot for reconsidering neoliberal policy toward resource allocation in a post-pandemic world.

**The seminar series will be submitted as an edited volume to an international press**

Event details:

Wednesdays 4 – 5pm (UK TIME)

*exceptionally 4.30-5.30pm on the 6th of April*

Online Meeting