|
|
|
Email: a.elliot@ucl.ac.uk
Year of start: 2008
Subject: Social Anthropology
Research Topic
The outside inside, the inside outside: emigration and the imagination of life in Central Morocco
Supervisor(s)
Professor Sara Randall, Dr Rebecca Empson
Introduction
My research attempts to explore the pervasive phenomenon of emigration to Southern Europe characterising the regions of Central Morocco by tracing a) how migration is part of an ethnographic-specific imagining of life and b) what migration is doing to a specific cosmology, i.e. to how people imagine the world and their existence within it. My interest lies in particular in deciphering how emigration and its goal, l-barra - literally meaning ‘the outside’ and both a geopolitical place and an ‘imaginary elsewhere’ (Yurchak, 2005) -, are on the one hand transformative and engender specific types of personhoods and, on the other, penetrate the ‘inside’ (the town, the neighbourhood, the household, the person), becoming fundamental aspects of how life is imagined and unravels in Central Morocco.
Research interests
- Cosmology of migration
- Morocco and North Africa
- Anthropology of personhood
- Movement, stillness, waiting
- Kinship, gender, reproduction
- Europe, migration and political imagination
- Anthropology of the imagination
- Anthropological theory
Academic Background/Education
Master of Research in Anthropology (Distinction) University College London, 2008 UK Economic and Social Research Council Studentship BSc Anthropology (1st Class Hons.) University College London, 2007
Honours and Awards
BSPS Annual Prize for Best UK Master's Dissertation in Demography (joint winner), 2009
Dean's List 2007, UCL Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences
Gay Clifford Bursary for Outstanding Women in the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences, UCL, 2007
Conference Papers
“A life of waiting: the threatening uneventful in Central Morocco” (forthcoming) EASA2012 Uncertainty and disquiet, 10th-13th July 2012, Nanterre University, France.
“A methodological shift towards idiocy: three ethnographic ambiguities tripping each other up” (co-author with Julia Sauma and Antonia Walford; forthcoming) EASA2012 Uncertainty and disquiet, 10th-13th July 2012, Nanterre University, France.
“Imagining the outside: emigration, imagination and ‘being stuck’ in Morocco”, 2nd Joint Biennial CASA-SASA Conference Of Cosmopolitanism and Cosmologies, September 2-3, 2011, Telč, Czech Republic.
“Outside spaces: emigration, imagination and knowing the unknown in Morocco”, London Anthropology Day, 20th June 2011, UCL Anthropology Department.
“Moroccan and Albanian second generations in Italy: integration and identity formation” (poster), XXVI International Population Conference of the IUSSP, 27th September- 2nd October 2009, Marrakesh, Morocco.
Publications
Elliot, A. (forthcoming) “Book review of 'Moroccan households in the world economy: labour and inequality in a Berber village’ by David Crawford” Africa
Mondain, N., S. Randall, A. Diagne and A. Elliot (forthcoming) “Les effets de l’émigration masculine sur la situation des femmes au Sénégal: renforcement ou ébranlement des équilibres traditionnels?” Autrepart: Revue de sciences sociales au Sud 61
Elliot, A. (2011) “‘E per fortuna o purtroppo lo sono’: percorsi identitari e appartenenze plurime di giovani di origine marocchina e albanese . Una ricerca etnografica.” In C. Volpato (ed) Nuovi cittadini: I giovani immigrati tra accoglienza e rifiuto. Edizioni Unicopoli
Elliot, A. (2009) “Legal, social and intimate belonging: Moroccan and Albanian second generation migrants in Italy”, UCL Anthropology Working Papers Series, Working Paper No. 05/2009
Funding
UK Economic and Social Research Council
