Special sessions at the AAG Annual Meeting 2025 in Detroit

Researchers in TheGame organized and participated in two special sessions at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting 2025, held this year in Detroit, USA from March 24-28. Both sessions were hybrid sessions, including virtual and in-presence audience and presenters, and took place on the first day of the conference.

The first session, “Inhabiting the Route? Transit camps, safe houses, shelters and other sites of refuge along informal migration corridors” was organized by Yolanda Weima and Claudio Minca. The session focused on the distinct transitoriness and temporariness of accommodation sites within camps and other shelters established along informal migration routes, encompassing a spectrum of formal and informal sites.

Both Yolanda and Claudio presented papers in the session, along with papers from scholars from Canada, the US, and Brazil, addressing migrant shelter in Mexico and Brazil. Claudio presented on “Makeshift geographies of the Balkan Route,” broadly drawing attention to the changing archipelego of camps across the route over the past decade. Yolanda’s presentation, “Routing camp temporalities: Temporarines and/of Reception Centres in Sarajevo” focused on recent research on camps in Sarajevo specifically.

The second session, organized by Yolanda, was an Author Meets Critics addressing the recently published book, “A Spatial Theory of the Camp” by Richard Carter-White and Claudio Minca.

After a brief introduction by Yolanda, three panelists presented their reviews of the book: Professor Kara E Dempsey (Appalachian State University), Professor Carl Dahlman (University of South Carolina), and Sharif Wahab (Indiana University, Bloomington). Following the panelist presentations, Richard and Claudio responded to their engaged readings, critiques, and questions, and then further responded to questions from the audience.