Monthly Phenomenology: Alba Montes Sánchez (10 February 2023)

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Alba Montes Sánchez presents the paper ‘Towards a Phenomenology of the Sense of Belonging and the Emotional Impact of Migration’.

MONTHLY PHENOMENOLOGY
An online forum of discussion on recent work in phenomenology

Description: This series of talks gathers together scholars interested in phenomenology and its relation to contemporary issues in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of mind. It establishes a forum of discussion where people can meet on a regular basis and present their work-in-progress or recent publications. The topics addressed will stretch from the history of early phenomenology to the systematic application of phenomenological insights in recent debates in analytic philosophy.

Schedule: The talks will take place once a month on a Friday from October to May. Time: 10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET. Talks last 90 minutes, including a 45 minutes Q&A.

Participation: Talks are held on zoom. To participate, please send an email to [email protected] with the heading “Registration Monthly Phenomenology”. A zoom link will be sent to you the day preceding each talk.

Programme:

Next talk – Alba Montes Sánchez (University of Copenhagen)
Towards a Phenomenology of the Sense of Belonging and the Emotional Impact of Migration
Friday, 10 February 2023
10:15am ET, 3:15pm GMT, 4:15pm CET

Abstract: In this talk I seek to articulate a notion of “sense of belonging” that can shed light on the emotional impact of migration. Psychology research into the latter focuses on two complex phenomena, acculturation stress and migratory grief, but studies them in isolation from each other, and pays little attention to their common root: a challenged sense of belonging. The sense of belonging has recently been conceptualized in two ways. According to one account, it is an “existential feeling”: a background affective orientation that shapes an individual’s space of possibilities (Ratcliffe 2008). As such, it amounts to a pre-reflective sense of togetherness that allows us to experience the world as a shared space (Wilde 2021). According to another proposal, the sense of group belonging is an episodic feeling, akin to other standard emotions, with an intentional target (the subject’s relation to the group), a formal object (the hedonically positive value of certain commonalities between oneself and the group) and a focus of concern (roughly, fitting in and being valued by other group members) (Szanto forthcoming). I argue that both notions are necessary. Episodic feelings of belonging arise against the backdrop of an existential feeling and respond to its disturbances and alterations, and these in turn shed light on the relations between acculturation stress and migratory grief.

Upcoming talks

Davide Bordini (University of Fribourg)
Self-Representationalism, Intimacy, and Mental Representation
31 March 2023

Jonathan Mitchell (Cardiff University)
The Intentional Horizons of Visual Experience
21 April 2023

Marie Guillot (University of Essex)
TBA
26 May 2023

Convenors:
Guillaume Fréchette (University of Geneva)
Marta Jorba (Pompeu Fabra University)
Alessandro Salice (University College Cork)
Hamid Taieb (Humboldt University Berlin)
Íngrid Vendrell-Ferran (Philipps University Marburg)

Organized on behalf of the Network for Phenomenological Research