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.

Members of the MIGREC team – Nevenka Žegarac and Natalija Perišić, together with Katarina Lončarević– participated at the conference “Human Relationships – Keys to Remaking Social Work for the Future” organised by the International Association of Schools of Social Work and International Council on Social Welfare with presentation “Co-production of Knowledge for the Protection of Children Affected by Migration: Curriculum Development”, on April 16, 2021.

The Conference was structured around 5 topics: Promoting human relationships, global context and sustainable development; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in fostering human relationships; Social policy to enhance human relationships; Gender and minority issues, and social inclusion and integration; and Challenges and capacities of Social Work Education and Research in promoting human relationships.

Prof. Žegarac pointed to numerous challenges brought up for social work practice by a migrant “crisis”. She pointed that in Serbia, for a relatively short period, social workers had to acquire new knowledge and develop specific competencies to response to the needs of migrant families with children, especially unaccompanied migrant children. Her presentation focused on designing and trial of the process of co-creation of knowledge in the development of social work curriculum in order to equip students and professionals for responding to new vulnerabilities of children in the context of migration.

In order to create a curriculum integrating existing and emerging knowledge and comparative experience, a specific process was designed and implemented. It involved national and international perspectives, achievements and shortcomings from different policies and experiences, social work practice wisdom, gender studies experts’ knowledge focusing on gender based violence (GBV), cultural differences and gender positioning of children in the context of migration. It comprised of review and evaluation of training courses for professionals during the migrant “crisis”; analysis of curricula for social work with migrant children from universities worldwide; mapping and systematization of experiences of social services operating in the migration field in Serbia; and a series of consultations with frontline practitioners, program managers, volunteers, policy makers and migrant children. The main points of the process were framing, designing and leading ethical and inclusive consultations and diligent documenting of the process and its outcomes. Finally, it included verification, reflection and critical review of experiences.

In March and April 2021 the MIGREC project held its first Publishing Seminar on the theme ‘What to expect: understanding the international academic publication process’. The seminar was led by ELIAMEP team members of MIGREC, Drs. Ioannis Armakolas and Julianne Funk, who are also editors of the journal Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (SEEBSS). The four sessions of the seminar were held online and attended mostly by University of Belgrade MA students, PhD candidates and professors, but also other MIGREC team members from ELIAMEP and SEERC. The goal of the seminar was to improve the understanding of the publication process for prominent international scientific journals.

The first and second sessions, on 3 and 5 March, focused on identifying the academic journal that best fits one research article. The first session featured a guest lecturer, Anthropology professor Russell King of the University of Sussex who shared his experience as the editor of the well-known migration journal JEMS. The second session expanded on this excellent foundation to discuss the topic from an area studies perspective, as provided by the Armakolas and Funk, editors of SEEBSS. Topics covered in these sessions included: choosing one’s audience, journal aims and scope that match one’s research, the importance of journal metrics and types of publishing options.

The third and fourth sessions of the seminar, on 31 March and 7 April, provided detailed information about preparing a manuscript to submit to an international journal and what happens to that manuscript while you are waiting, from the perspective of the editors of SEEBSS and other examples provided by participants. The goal of the third session was to give inside tips to students and scholars about crucial elements editors look for in a newly submitted manuscript and how to avoid desk rejection. The fourth session covered how to engage with international journals, including specific submission requirements and instructions for authors, online submission systems, English language copy-editing, and what to expect during the process of peer review towards publication. In both sessions we worked with the titles, abstracts and keywords of students participating, suggesting improvements.

The MIGREC team looks forward to the next Publishing Seminar, to be held hopefully in May / June 2021, ‘Publish or Perish. Marketing your research to reach an international audience’, which aims to grow participants’ capacities to produce more appealing research outputs for prominent international scientific journals.

The First MIGREC “Training workshop in applying for external research funding with emphasis on HORIZON EUROPE” took place online during 3 days: March 22, 24 and 29, 2021. Research staff from FPN, GEF and other Faculties including PhD candidates plus researchers from ELIAMEP and SEERC participated in an intense workshop led by Nikos Zaharis, SEERC Director.

The workshop started with a definition and basic principles of externally funded research and went on to discuss in detail the aims and mechanisms of the main EU research funding programs H2020 and HORIZON EUROPE along with relevant aspects of ERASMUS+. Emphasis was given to research topics that are relevant to migration studies. As examples, two calls were examined in detail:

• Mapping and overcoming integration challenges for migrant children (closed call; the workshop studied the resulting projects) and
• Return and readmission of irregular migrants in the EU (future call)

The participants studied the second call and formed three groups that worked together on “Skeleton Proposals” which were presented and discussed the third day of the workshop. The “skeleton proposals” included an outline of the following items: i) Proposed progress beyond the state of the art, ii) Project Objectives, iii) Project Foreseen Impact, iv) Potential Project Partnership and v) Project Work-Plan.

Finally, the workshop’s speaker Nikos Zaharis presented in more details the upcoming call for the MSCA Post-doctoral fellowships, which is a prospect that should interest both young researchers (as potential post-doctoral fellows) and the Faculties of the University of Belgrade (as possible host organisations).

Members of the MIGREC team – Danica Šantić, Marija Antić and Milica Todorović – participated at the conference “COVID-19: socio-demographic processes, challenges and consequences of the pandemic” organized by the Demographic Association of Serbia and the Center for Demographic Research of the Institute of Social Sciences with presentation “Challenges in Migration Management in the Republic of Serbia during the COVID-19 pandemic”, on March 25, 2021.

The academic conference was devoted to analyses of effects and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on demographic, social and migration processes. More than 50 prominent researchers from the Republic of Serbia and other countries of the region who treat population topics from various aspects took part in the conference. Although long-term consequences of the pandemic for population, society and migration are still uncertain, the participants on this occasion exchanged the so-far obtained research results, opinions and attitudes in the actual pandemic context. The papers were organized in three sessions: mortality due to the corona virus pandemic, COVID-19 and population and social groups and COVID-19 – migration and labour market.

Prof. Danica Šantić, Prof. Marija Antić and Milica Todorović, MSc, presented their research results within the third session: COVID-19 – migration and labour market. Their research put accent on the challenges the Republic of Serbia faced with in management of return migration flows and irregular migration in the aftermath of introduced state of emergency. The authors pointed out that mass return migration flows in the Republic of Serbia in that period made a huge challenge for the state which policy moved between “don’t stay/don’t leave” discourses. On the other hand, it was stressed that irregular migrants during the state of emergency faced with particularly unfavorable circumstances having in mind the limitation of movement from the admission centres and high level of their stigmatization. The conclusion is that in this period the migration-related policies were carried out in accordance with the conditions of global health and economic crises, which the Republic of Serbia was not exempted from.

The Twinning Project Days were held at the MS Teams online platform on March 24 and 25, 2021. The Faculty of Electronic Engineering of the University of Niš – coordinator of the ELISCIR project – was the organizer.

Out of the need for connecting and networking and exchange of experiences in implementation of the Twinning projects, the coordinator of the ELICSIR project, Prof. Goran Ristić, organized presentations of nineteen ongoing Twinning projects funded within the EU Horizon2020 programme. Coordinators from seven European countries presented goals, work packages and impact of their respective projects. A particular segment of presentations was devoted to the adjustment of project activities to new circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Project coordinators exchanged extremely useful experiences on transfer of activities to online forms, redistribution of cost, introduction of new activities etc.

Prof. Natalija Perišić presented general and particular goals of the MIGREC project, the activities realized so far within the work packages and influence of COVID-19 on current and further activities. The record of presentation of the MIGREC project is available at the link https://youtu.be/Pf9nxtKfyN0.

Member of the MIGREC team Natalija Perišić participated at the academic conference “Social Vulnerabilities and Innovation in Social Work” organized by the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Sarajevo, with online presentation “Irregular Migration Governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Serbia” on March 16, 2021.

The conference was aimed at contributing the re-creation of inclusive sociality for the post-crisis period, by launching a dialogue between academic and professional communities on possibilities for (self)critical re-description of professional paradigm on the platform advocated by the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development 2020-2030, with focus on welfare and wellbeing of all on the principles of social citizenship, human rights and social justice. The conference was envisaged as a place for presentations, discussion and critical reflection of innovative policies, programmes and approaches of professional social work in promoting, advocating and realization of inclusive, democratic, just and solidary society. The plenary session has been accompanied with four thematic panels.

Prof. Natalija Perišić’s presentation focused on the actions of the Government of the Republic of Serbia during the state of emergency proclaimed in March 2020, in the field of irregular migration. The adoption of the decision on limitation of movement of irregular migrants and asylum seekers as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in overcrowded capacities in the asylum and reception centres. In order to facilitate the situation, the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration of the Republic of Serbia increased accommodation capacities and took numerous urgent measures. However, the adjustment of other state institutions to new circumstances was extremely slow. This influenced aggravation of living conditions of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, particularly combined with limiting non-governmental sector to involve in provision of support and assistance. The presentation delivered by Prof. Natalija Perišić pointed to the needs for more careful planning of decisions and measures pertaining to irregular migration governance, in coordination with other policies important for irregular migrants and asylum seekers.