April 2023

Master students of the Faculty of Political Science visited the Asylum Center in Krnjaca on April 7, 2023. Djurdja Surlan, the Manager of the Center, introduced the students and their professors to a brief history of the Center, which began its work in 1992 when refugees from the former Yugoslavia began to arrive in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since 2014, the Center has accommodated asylum seekers from the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. The Manager presented the work of the Center and the services it provides to asylum seekers and pointed out the good practices applied in the Center in order to integrate migrants. In cooperation with international and domestic non-governmental organizations, the Asylum Center provides support for children living in the Center, which includes different workshops adapted to their age. Employees of the Center, in coordination with employees from the non-governmental sector, but also from other sectors of the state (health, social protection and employment), invest efforts in providing employment opportunities for asylum seekers in Serbia. Currently, the Center is populated by families and the number of migrants is several times below the capacity offered by the Center, due to the departure of a large number of irregular migrants from Serbia.

Members of the MIGREC team, Natalija Perisic, Dejan Pavlovic, Danica Santic and Danijela Pavlovic visited the ICMPD from March 24 to 27, 2023, in order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge at a regional level and to promote the MIGREC project by exploring possibilities for future synergies and cooperation. From the side of the International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), the meeting was attended by Alexander Maleev, Project Manager, Veronika Bliger, Head of Research and Irina Lysak, Project Officer. The ICMPD is active in over 90 countries around the world and it takes a regional approach in its work to create efficient cooperation and partnerships along migration routes. Priority regions include Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Mediterranean, Silk Routes, Western Balkans and Turkey. Its three-pillar approach to migration management – structurally linking research, migration dialogues and capacity building – contributes to better migration policy development worldwide.

Regional migration events in the Western Balkans, engagement of the Diaspora, the Prague Process, and the three-pronged approach that strives for comprehensive, sustainable and future-oriented migration governance were discussed at the meeting. To this end, cooperation with ICMPD is very important for the MIGREC because it will enable the analysis of current and potential migration flows to European receiving countries, monitoring and examination of the situation in the main countries of origin of migrants and development of measures for better recognition and control of migration movements. The ICMPD invited the MIGREC to network with them and to participate in its research activities.

On the same occasion, the MIGREC team members visited the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), whose Director, Mr. Ivan Vejvoda, is the MIGREC’s Advisory Board Member. Essential to the IWM’s mission is reaching out to a variety of interested publics, including opinion influencers and policymakers. IWM organises public lectures, debates and conferences, publish books, articles and digital exchanges. Along with Mr. Vejvoda, from the side of IWM, the meeting was attended by Ayse Caglar, Permanent Fellow and Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Viena and Katerina Koci, the Research Director.

It was pointed out that the sustainability of the MIGREC requires finding new partners and new projects. Also, it was pointed out that MIGREC should bring together scientists, policy makers and practitioners from different disciplines and that it would be very useful to organise some kind of internship for PhD students or other researchers who can come into contact with MIGREC and in this sense achieve cooperation between different institutions. Regarding the MIGREC’s PhD studies in Migration Policy, a support was offered in terms of its potential improvement, if needed and harmonization with the programme structure and mobility of the National Research Competence Center for Migration and Mobility Studies.

PhD candidate Nataša Milošević from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science, participated in a two-week study visit in Thessaloniki, Greece from March 12 to 26, 2023.

As part of the study visit, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the oldest Archaeological Museum in Greece, she visited an exhibition dedicated to the history of Thessaloniki as a city with the epithet “mother of migration” due to intensive centuries of immigration. Through the exhibition, elements of Greek, Jewish and Oriental culture were presented, which strongly influenced the socio-cultural and spatial identity of the city.

As part of her research work on the topic of her doctoral dissertation “The policy of integration of forced migrants into the labour market from 2015 to 2022 in the Republic of Greece”, Nataša Milošević visited York City University Campus, where a summer school on migration is organized every year. In the university library, she collected useful data for the needs of her research.

As a part of the dissertation research, she conducted interviews with experts in the field of migrant employment and migration management, representatives of the Red Cross in Greece, Caritas, Ecopolis and the organization Pervolarides from Thessaloniki.

Also, the researcher visited the Social club, the oldest non-governmental organization in Greece “Ecopolis”, which provides help and support to refugees, and the Multifunctional Center of the Red Cross in Greece, where counseling services are provided for refugees and asylum seekers.

This study visit enabled Nataša Milošević to complete part of the research within the doctoral dissertation, which involved conducting semi-structured interviews with interested parties on the subject of the policies of integration of forced migrants in the Republic of Greece.