The UCD School of Sociology and the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), in collaboration with and the Policy Institute at TCD, has initiated a series of public lectures in which internationally acclaimed speakers will discuss contemporary sociological issues. The aim of this TCD-UCD Sociology Public Lecture Series is to promote informed debate and to offer new ideas on cutting-edge sociological issues including but not limited to responses to the current crisis. The series features two public lectures per term with one event hosted at TCD and the other at UCD. Opening Addresses: Dr. Patrick Prendergast, Provost of TCD and Dr. Brian Nolan, Principal of the College of Human Sciences at UCD Professor Saskia Sassen is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is currently the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. In this lecture Prof Sassen explores the topic of Expulsions: The Fifth Circle of Hell: In the last two decades there has been a sharp growth in the numbers of people that have been 'expelled', numbers far larger than the newly 'incorporated' middle classes of countries such as India and China. She uses the term 'expulsion' to describe a diversity of conditions: the growing numbers of the abjectly poor, of the displaced in poor countries who are warehoused in formal and informal refugee camps, of the minoritized and persecuted in rich countries who are warehoused in prisons, of workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job and rendered useless at far too young an age, able-bodied surplus populations warehoused in ghettoes and slums. One major trend is the repositioning of what had been framed as sovereign territory, a complex conditions, into land for sale on the global market -- land in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Central Asia and in Latin America to be bought by rich investors and rich governments to grow food, to access underground water tables, and to access minerals and metals. Prof Sassen's argument is that these diverse and many other kindred developments amount to a logic of expulsion, signalling a deeper systemic transformation in advanced capitalism, one documented in bits and pieces but not quite narrated as an overarching dynamic that is taking us into a new phase of global capitalism. The talk is based on the author's forthcoming book Expulsions. The inaugural lecture by Professor Sassen, a key thinker in the areas of globalization and migration focuses on 'expulsions' and discusses the growing tendency of contemporary capitalism to 'expel' those seen as surplus to requirements. Following the lecture, there will be a panel discussion and time for questions from the audience, chaired by Professor Mary Corcoran of National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM).

• published: 18 Dec 2013
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