Across continents and centuries, people have always moved—pushed by danger such as war or natural catastrophe, pulled by promise for a better life, or stirred by an inner call to widen their horizons. Yet for many migrants the journey is shadowed by what French psychoanalyst Abdelmalek Sayad named the double-absence: leaving one place but never fully arriving in the next. A piece of home is lost, while a part of the new land remains out of reach. Long after the borders are crossed, yearning and fragmented identity keep travelling within.

In our postcolonial, hyper-connected age, migration has taken on fresh intensity. Where once European white powers imposed themselves on darker nations, we now witness a counter-flow: peoples of colour entering white-majority societies—yet doing so not as conquerors but as under-resourced underdogs. Modern passports, walls and visa regimes turn ancient human movement into a high-stakes test of belonging.

https://p-cca.org/othering-conferences/