Call for papers | Workshop “The social life of names and naming practices in migration contexts”, Paris, 20-21 November 2025 — LIMITE : 31/05/2025
We are very pleased to launch a call for papers for an international workshop titled “The social life of names and naming practices in migration contexts,” to be held in Paris on November 20-21, 2025. The aim on this multidisciplinary workshop is to look into names and naming practices in the context of migration, from a variety of disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, tackling present or historical situations, as long as these are based on empirical case studies.
Names, whether they refer to people, places, businesses, languages etc., are not mere labels disconnected from a social fabric, they are “a repository of accumulated meanings, practices, and beliefs, a powerful linguistic means of asserting identity (or defining someone else) and inhabiting a social world” (Rymes 1999: 165). Through their referential function and multiple connotations, they “identify, categorize, tell stories and provide social tools for interactions” (Bramwell 2016: 276). The agency of names may differ in significant ways and touch upon varied domains, yet the fact that names “do” things remains unquestioned. Embedded in social relations and histories, names and naming “shape, and are shaped by, worlds-in-the-making” (Rose-Redwood 2021: 196). Our workshop offers to reflect on names and naming practices in the more specific context of migration. While names have often been taken as an indication of the degree of integration into the host community as opposed to ethnic maintenance and discrimination (e.g. Khosravi 2012, Pennesi 2016, 2019), we posit that names and naming have the potential to reveal much beyond the integration/estrangement dichotomy.
Several scholars have pointed out that names appear as “an ideal object for cross-disciplinary research, because they are cultural artefacts and because their bestowal, change, and everyday usage are so manifestly related to the social organization of a community” (de Stefani 2016: 65; see also Rose-Redwood 2021). But names and naming “remain conspicuously absent as a dedicated area of interest in relevant sociolinguistic perspectives on language and migration”, and anthropological studies focusing on personal names and migration remain rare (Waldispühl 2024: 16). Migrations go together with the development of multilingual repertoires and the encounter of different social systems, and the study of names and naming provides an entry point for understanding the linguistic and social reconfigurations at work in the migratory experience. This is why our workshop hopes to enrich research on migration by looking into names and naming practices from a variety of disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, tackling present or historical situations, as long as these are based on empirical case studies.
The workshop will be held at Inalco’s Maison de la Recherche (75007 Paris) on November 20-21, 2025. In-person participation is preferred, but not 100% compulsory. The deadline for sending in abstracts is May 31, 2025, and notifications of acceptance will be sent by June 30, 2025.
For details and the full call for papers, please refer to this document : CfP_20-21_Nov_2025_WorkshopNamesNamingMigration
More information here
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Chargé de diffusion scientifique (20 mai 2025). Call for papers | Workshop “The social life of names and naming practices in migration contexts”, Paris, 20-21 November 2025 — LIMITE : 31/05/2025. IISMM. Consulté le 19 juin 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13zoy