The MIGREC is preparing a series of exciting workshops. See what you might be interested in.

• WP3.1_Migration Development programme

Online IMISCOE Annual Conference was held from July 7 to 9, 2021 under the title “Crossing borders, connecting cultures”. The conference proposed to zoom deeper into people’s migration experiences by foregrounding how migration is connected to culture and language. Nexus of migration, and culture was explored in more depth by asking how migration is lived, experienced, mediated, and reflected in general and through everyday cultural, linguistic, and artistic practice. This year conference gathered scholars around the following topics:

• Reflexive Migration Studies
• Migrant Transnationalism
• Migration, Citizenship and Political Participation
• Superdiversity, Migration and Cultural Change
• Older Migrants
• Gender and Sexuality in Migration Research
• Immigration, Immigrants and the labor market in Europe
• Migration Politics and Governance
• Education and social inequality
• Methodological Approaches and Tools in Migration Research
• Privileged Mobilities: local impacts, belonging and citizenship
• Revisiting Return Migration in Shifting Geopolitics
• Norms and Values in Migration and Integration

MIGREC Team participated with its stand-alone panel under the title “Migration governance in the time of Covid-19: case studies of ‘crisis’ management in South-East Europe”. The panel comprehensively examined the “crisis” management through policy, media and behavioural lenses, and as related to different groups of migrants (irregular, regular and returnees). By interrogating intersections between migration, health, security and economic development, the panellists considered the impact of Covid-19 on different aspects of migration governance, such as border control, domestic sociopolitical parameters that have been steering decision making toward securitization of migration policies toward further “campization” of migrants as well as the patterns of interpretation of migration issues found in the media. Beside the governmental, media and NGO role, the panel provided insight into the intentions of Covid-19 triggered returnees in regard to permanently settling in their home country and potential solutions to mitigate emigration flows from the region.

The panel was chaired by Dragana Stoeckel from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science. The discussants were Izabela Grabowska, a Professor at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland and Dejan Pavlović from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science. The panel gathered five presentations.

“Migration governance in the time of Covid-19: ‘crisis’ management in South-East Europe” was presented by Majella Kilkey, Rebecca Murray, Aneta Piekut and Ryan Powell from the University of Sheffield, UK. The panelists interrogated what the ‘crisis’ framing of Covid-19 has entailed for migration policy across the region. They found that policy responses, to some extent, have built upon pre-existing cognitive frames and practices, highlighting the enfolding of ‘crisis’ one within another, as well as the mutually reinforcing relationship between ‘crisis’ and ‘routine’. Moreover, policy responses have been largely instrumental and ad hoc, seeking to find a solution to the immediate ‘problem’. The ‘crisis’ frame, therefore, works to conceal underlying systemic problems within migration policy, and fails to embed deeper social and political change.

Alexandra Prodromidou and Faye Ververidou from the South-East European Research Centre (SEERC) presented on “The impact of COVID-19 on policy responses to the ‘migrant crisis’ in Greece in the first year of the pandemic (2020-2021)”. The main premise of their presentation was a framework of multiple crises in the EU periphery, which reenact each other. The combination of a prolonged period of strict economic austerity measures, political and social turmoil dating back to 2010, had left the country severely unable to deal with the influx of irregular migrants. The COVID-19 pandemic reduced significantly the influx of migrants, while it created an urgency for speeding up processes for access to housing and to health services for migrants already in Greece, a group described as a ‘health time bomb’ because of the living conditions they have been subject to.

“COVID-19 and migration in the public spheres of Greece and North Macedonia: agenda setting and (re-) framing in the context of the pandemic (2020)” was presented by Ioannis Armakolas and Panagiotis Paschalidis from the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). They studied the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the dominant patterns of interpretation (frames and agenda setting) of migration issues in the public sphere of Greece and North Macedonia. The presentation provided a qualitative discourse analysis of opinion papers from various media sources (print and digital) in Greece and North Macedonia and an analysis of discourse on social media platforms (i.e. Facebook and Twitter).

Natalija Perišić, Dragana Stoeckel (both from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science) and Nermin Oruč (Centre for Development Evaluation and Social Science Research, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) presented on “Encampment and marginalization of irregular migrants as a policy response to COVID-19 along the Balkan route”. Within the overall context of the impact of COVID-19 on irregular migrants in the countries along the Balkan Route, their presentation was focused on Serbian and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s government measures targeted at irregular migrants from the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. They analyzed the regulation of their life in the camps and effectuation of rights to services in the two countries, as well as the roles of the public and the civil sector organizations, both international and national, and their contribution to the welfare of migrants in the camps in the changed reality.

Danica Šantić and Milica Todorović from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Geography presented on “Returnees in Serbia in times of COVID-19”. They presented a research obtained from a total of 336 respondents to an online survey during the period 25th September – 20th October 2020. The purpose of information gathering was to provide an opportunity for better understanding the reasons for outward migration, characteristics of life abroad, as well as the insight into potential systematic solutions to mitigate permanent emigration flows.

The second set of workshops in the MIGREC series focused on migration governance and spanned from April to May 2021 to include eight speakers.  It sought to engage an exciting interdisciplinary group of external scholars whose work speaks directly to the themes of MIGREC.  The speakers covered the global context of migration governance, crises and migrant solidarities and also touch upon the geographical focus.  Most important however, was the opportunity for Belgrade team members to present their work, obtain feedback and continue the dialogue from the last workshop series.

Jennifer Erickson, an Associate Professor and Assistant Department Chair of Anthropology, affiliated faculty member in Women’s and Gender Studies and African American Studies, and a member of the steering committee for the Association of American University Professors at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, presented her chapter ‘Race-ing Fargo: Mobility, Context, and Global Refugee Flows’. In her talk, prof. Erickson examined refugee resettlement to Fargo, North Dakota, a small city in the United States. She highlighted the ways in which global political, economic and cultural structures, such as (post)colonialism and (post)socialism, flow through and intersect with local histories, norms, and practices.

Dragana Stoeckel, an Assistant Professor at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science presented ‘Stranded migrants on the Balkan route in the Covid-19 era: selectivity in border management on the way to European Union’. She pointed that the coronavirus pandemic had caused a global health crisis with large-scale and far-reaching consequences which are deteriorating an already existing migrant crisis. The Covid-19 prevention measures, aimed at restricting the movement, increased health risk for migrants, led to many incidents in/around the camps, but also to mistreatment of the migrants by border officers, police and military staff and “pushbacks”.

Will Haynes, a PhD Candidate from the University of Sheffield presented his work ‘The railway station as a key site of mobility for homeless migrants in Rome’. Building on debates around Europe’s spaces of exclusion and urban marginality, he investigated into how homeless migrants navigate their lives within an essential and multi-faceted urban transit space: the train station in Rome.

Suzanne Hall, an interdisciplinary urban scholar from the London School of Economics presented ‘The Migrant’s Paradox: edging against the state of contradiction’. She showed that a migrant is a person required and refuted by Western sovereignty. To inhabit this impossible dualism requires living with a steadfastly unstable status, readily questioned at the onset of national elections or economic crises, while tenuously embraced under the banners of celebratory multiculturalism.

Danica Šantić, an Associate Professor at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Geography, presented ‘Policy coherence on Migration Governance in Serbia’. Her overview provided an analysis of existing policies, strategies and practices in the field of migration governance at the national level, and identifying national priorities with references of the legal and policy frameworks for migration regulation and governance.

Danijela Pavlovic, a PhD from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science, presented ‘Asylum Policy Governance in the Republic of Serbia’. She pointed out that the government and civil society organizations have developed various services to ensure the effectuation of the rights of asylum seekers and analysed the asylum policy with a focus on the existing normative and institutional framework in this area.

Marta Stojić Mitrović from the SASA Institute of Ethnography and Ana Vilenica from the London South Bank University presented ‘Movement and encampment in Serbia: institutional closures and informal solidarities in the Balkan Circuit’. They discussed bordering enacted by the state actors and informal migrant support in Serbia, a state lying on the land migration route from Turkey to central Europe, in the Western Balkans, a EUropean “periphery within”. They described versatile dynamics in a diachronic perspective, with special emphasis on 2020-2021, when the pandemic crisis rhetoric energized securitarian practices and anti-migrant discourse.

Migration governance workshops is to be followed by Migration development nexus workshop in October to December 2021.

Members of the MIGREC team Violeta Marković, Danijela Pavlović and Sanja Polić Penavić participated at the conference „Neuchatel Graduate Conference of Migration and Mobility Studies“ organized by the University of Neuchatel with presentation „Protection of Migrants and Refugees during COVID-19 in the Republic of Serbia – perspective of professionals in the social protection system“ on July 2, 2021.

The conference was structured around six topics:

1. Borders – securitization
2. (Non)essential mobility and unequal migration management
3. Normative accesses to migration, mobility and citizenship
4. Family spatial configurations in new mobility framework
5. Social protection of movable population
6. Future of asylum

In order to analyze and understand changes in the system of social security of migrants and refugees in the Republic of Serbia during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors carried out a qualitative research with professionals working in the system of social protection of migrants. Violeta Marković pointed out that professionals faced with multiple challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Health crisis caused worries among the respondents for lives of their families and friends, their own life and lives of their dependants. She stressed that the research results showed that professionals faced many challenges deriving from 24/7 lockdown of refugees and migrants in the Republic of Serbia during the state of emergency and even after it. The lack of information for refugees and migrants, lack of appropriate cooperation with health, educational and legal systems have been the most frequent challenges; in addition, the respondents encountered aggravation of public perception of refugees and migrants in Serbia, Marković said.

She further underlined that the COVID-19 pandemic did not influence new arrivals into the Republic of Serbia, but again underlined the lack of capacities for adjustment of the social protection system and lack of readiness for critical situation – starting from the challenges in consistent and even supply of protective equipment to the lack of supervision for professionals.

Member of the MIGREC team, Danijela Pavlović, participated at the IMISCOE PhD Network Presentation Series aimed at enhancing research capacities for PhD candidates in the field of migration. IMISCOE offers to PhD candidates an opportunity to develop better presentation skills and learn how to critically analyze academic work of their colleagues and give appropriate feedback. To that end, the presentation series was structured in two parts. The first part consisted of two workshops with lectures for PhD candidates – how to deliver good (academic) presentations and how to be successful in discussion. The second part encompassed researchers’ presentations in early phase, giving them an opportunity to present their work and get feedback from their colleagues.

Danijela Pavlović spoke on May 20, 2021 about the asylum policy and challenges to and responses of the system in the Republic of Serbia, with a reference to the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. She pointed out that on their routes migrates were meeting national systems which did not recognize their requests and rights, thus making them an invisible and extremely vulnerable category of population. She stressed that the asylum system in Serbia started to be implemented on April 1, 2008, with the adoption of the Law on Asylum, but that prior to the this moment Serbia neither had a functional system of asylum protection nor the state authorities had experience in this field. Danijela Pavlović spoke about the most important novelties in 2018 and the adoption and implementation of new laws: Law on Asylum and Temporary Protection, Law on Foreigners and Law on Border. She pointed out that persons with approved right to asylum enjoy legal guarantees for rights to accommodation, stay, health care, freedom of movement, education, legal and social aid, access to labour market and assistance in integration. The adoption of new law indeed created prerequisites for improvement of asylum system in Serbia; however, on the other hand there are problems which professionals keep facing with in working with migrants. The author said that registration of asylum seeker and acceptance of new asylum requests had been stopped during the pandemic. In this period, migrant policies were carried out in accordance with conditions of global health and economic crises, which the Republic of Serbia was no exception whatsoever.

Members of the MIGREC team – Nevenka Žegarac, Anita Burgund, Natalija Perišić and Violeta Marković – participated at the conference “Children in Migration: Perspectives from South East Europe” organised by the Global Campus South East Europe / European Regional Master Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in South East Europe, the University of Sarajevo and the University of Bologna with presentation “Response System for the Migrant Children in Serbia: Challenges for the Rights-Based Approach”, on April 17, 2021.

The conference was a part of the two-year-long project ‘Children in migration in South East Europe’ which aims to strengthen education, research, training, network-building, and advocacy for the rights of migrant and refugee children in South East Europe by producing high-quality research on the topic and disseminating knowledge among students, academia, relevant stakeholders, and the wider public.

The conference focused on presenting and discussing the preliminary findings of research done by 16 researchers from five countries of South East Europe. Research encompasses different issues around children in migration through the region, from identification and arbitrariness of age assessment to guardianship and access to education and integration. The objectives of the conference were to contribute to a mutual understanding of the highest child rights standards enshrined in international and regional mechanisms, as well as to create a space for knowledge exchange between relevant stakeholders, experts and practitioners working directly with children in migration in different countries of South East Europe.

Prof. Žegarac presented her contribution on the challenges for the rights-based approach to migrant children in Serbia. She argued in favour of shifting national responses from migration perspective to child rights-based perspective and the importance of child participation and agency, gender sensitivity and diversity.  The development of child centered services in the national context passed different stages to result in some adapted and some innovative services for migrant children. Prof. Žegarac presented in more detail outreach social workers, guardianship programme, foster care, child friendly spaces, as well as shelters and small group homes for migrant children. Finally, she reflected on the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of child-rights response. The main conclusions are an unprecedented dose of adaptability and resilience, openness to innovation and the need to respect the rights-based approach, flexible usage of resources, and quick shifts to changing situations, but also the lack of institutional memory of the response system, as well as the absence of an authentic approach based on the rights of children.