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Multilocality describes a particular trajectory of human mobility: the continuous residence and engagement of people in multiple rural and urban places, within or across national borders, rather than a single, unidirectional move from one place to settle in another. It is a pattern visible across much of the world, yet one that conventional migration studies — built around narratives of departure, transit, and arrival — has struggled to capture on its own terms. 

The proposed workshop starts from the following premise: multilocality is normal rather than exceptional. It is closely related to the spatializing principles of global capitalism and to how people adapt to such principles. The current polycrisis (e.g., coming together of authoritarianism and geopolitical conflict, climate breakdown, economic uncertainty, biodiversity loss, and technological disruption) seems to heighten precarity and multilocal adaptation. However, at the same time, we stress the importance of context-specific, detailed examinations attuned to how the exact forms of multilocal practices hark back to historically pertinent vocabularies and cultural repertoires. 

The first objective of the workshop is empirical: to document the prevalence and local understandings of multilocal practices in different parts of the world. Where do they come from? How are they articulated in the present? What possible alternatives (emancipatory or not) emerge from them? 

But we also propose that if multi-locality is challenging how people move and live across boundaries geographically, it also challenges how we think about those boundaries, and particularly centre-periphery dynamics. Our analytical interest lies in how law and capital intersect with the multilocal, multi-pronged strategies of survival and advancement. The structural forces of global capitalism accord different degrees of recognition and opportunity to different populations, depending on when, where, and how their vital energies (as labour and as consumers) are required. Those variously peripheralised or marginalised by these forces devise solutions for accommodating or bypassing them. Examples include low-paid or gig economy jobs in the “formal” city, appropriation of formal infrastructures, informal residence near the formal city, or even seeking legal recognition, ownership (whether private or collective), or other regulatory approvals; but also  informal production and trade, DIY solutions, or continued reliance on and orientations towards “the village” as home. We are interested in exploring these processes in cities, but also rural and peripheral regions that emerge as new centres for capital investment, for example through new forms of resource extraction tied to the green energy transition. 

We therefore invite workshop participants to engage with one or multiple of the following questions: 

• How is multilocality understood and enacted in different regional and cultural contexts, and how does it depart from more conventional, unidirectional accounts of migration? 
• To what extent are particular multilocal practices rooted in historically specific vocabularies and cultural repertoires, and how do they simultaneously reflect and respond to broader structuring forces that characterise our current conjuncture? 
• How are dynamics of centralization and peripheralization being reconfigured within and beyond the city — for instance through extractive frontiers and the green transition — and what does this mean for multilocal mobility dynamics? 
• How does the current polycrisis intensify precarity, and how does it shape, accelerate, or transform multi- and translocal strategies? 
• Do multilocal practices generate genuine alternatives (e.g., new ways of caring, repairing and resolving crisis scenarios) and can they open routes beyond the centre/periphery binary itself, rather than only enabling movement toward existing centralities? 

Workshop timings & logistics 

The workshop will take place in Sheffield (and online) from 1pm on Tuesday, 15 December to 3pm on Wednesday, 16 December 2026, including one-night accommodation (Tuesday to Wednesday) in Sheffield and meals for  contributors. Contributors have to cover travel costs. If in-person participation is not possible, there is the option to participate online. Further logistical details will be sent  by mid-November to contributors whose abstracts have been accepted. 

Who should apply?

We welcome contributions from scholars - at any stage of career - including senior academics, established researchers, early career researchers and post-graduate students - working on topics related to above-mentioned questions in different settings around the world.  

Abstract submissions 

Send 250-word abstract to p.horn@sheffield.ac.uk and lalli.metsola@helsinki.fi by November  1st 2026. Please also include a 200-word statement outlining how your contribution speaks back to the call and why you would like to participate. Please include your name, title, institution, career stage, and availability to contribute in person and/ or online. 

Schedule & workshop format 

We will notify accepted participants by November 8th and arrange further logistics at this stage. Selected contributors will be asked to produce and submit a 1,500-2,000-word paper provocation by 6 December. This contribution will then be circulated before the event to all attendees. We hope you will be able to read the contributions in your sessions (and others) to fully participate in discussions. Following a brief key highlights overview by each speaker, the chair in each session will then use these contributions to instigate a panel conversation amongst the speakers and wider participants. The aim of this format is to focus on debate and conversation.

Organisers 

The workshop is co-organised by the University of Helsinki (Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology & Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science) and the University of Sheffield (Urban Institute and Institute for Global Sustainable Development). The organising team includes: 

• Philipp Horn, Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography and Planning, Cities theme lead for the Institute for Global Sustainable Development and Member of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on Indigenous urbanism, multilocal mobility, youth rights, urban informality, and participatory planning in Latin America, with a particular focus on Bolivia.  
• Lalli Metsola, Academy of Finland Research Fellow, University of Helsinki and Visiting Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the socio-material realities of city-making, including urban claim and response dynamics, politics of urban land, housing and services, and vital infrastructures in Africa, particularly in Namibia.