Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Nichola Lowe, University of North Carolina -- Chapel Hill

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Description:

Skill—specifically the distinction between the “skilled” and “unskilled”—is generally defined as a measure of ability and training. This panel challenges this view and explores instead the way that skill distinctions shape political geographies, with particular attention to the way that skill categories have structured global regimes and national policies governing who should have the right to migrate and under what conditions. This panel uses Qatar as context to explore these questions. In the lead up to the 2022 World Cup for Soccer, Qatar has become a global site of international migration, and has emerged as a major node for the development of both migration and human rights policy around the world. Natasha Iskander’s new ethnographic study of migration to Qatar, "Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Century and Beyond" (Princeton University Press 2021) provides the platform for this discussion about how skill functions as a marker of social difference powerful enough to structure all aspects of social and economic life.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda