The members of MIGREC team, Tamara Mihajlović and Ljiljana Ćumura, participated at the 5th edition of the NGC – Neuchâtel Graduate Conference that took place from 7 to 8 July 2022 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The topic of this year was “Tensions in Migration and Mobility”. The Conference was organized by the NCCR – on the move, Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) for migration and mobility studies. It provides a stimulating environment in which PhD and Postdoctoral fellows from different universities and research institutions can exchange ideas, establish networks, and initiate collaborative research.
The program included plenary events, public lectures, panels and workshops.
On July 7th, Adrian Favell, from the University of Leeds, gave a public lecture on topic “The Integration Nation: Towards a New Critical Political Demography”, and day after, on July 8th, there was a panel on Ethics in Migration Research with Libby Bishop, from the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Tina Miller, from the Oxford Brookes University, Elodie Malbois, from the University of Geneva and Didier Ruedin, from the University of Neuchâtel, moderated by Matteo Gianni, University of Geneva.
More than 50 participants presented their researches in the field of migration and mobility studies, such as demography, economics, geography, law, political science, sociology etc. in six working groups:
- Policy and Governance Tensions in the Fields of Migration and Mobility
- Understanding Citizenship under Tension
- Tensions Developed in a Transnational Social World
- Between Access and Exclusion: Tensions in Attitudes and Preferences in the Attribution of Rights to Migrants
- Tensions in Refugees’ and Migrants’ Integration
- Rising Tensions in the Anthropocene: The Strained Relations between Mobility and Global Warming
Tamara Mihajlović and Ljiljana Ćumura presented their research “The Integration of Migrant Children into the School Systems in Malta and Serbia (The Comparative Analysis)”. In this research Mihajlović and Ćumura seek to investigate what it means to be fully “integrated” into the educational system and how Serbia and Malta have implemented the integration of migrant children.
- The education of migrant children has received significant attention from various organizations, experts, and national and international institutions. The process and the quality of integration of migrant children into the educational system and school environment face various challenges regarding cultural and language barriers, migration and integration policies, education staff: teachers, cultural mediators, community liaisons, etc. – said Ćumura during the presentation.
- The focus is on the presentation and analysis of teachers’ perspectives on the current model of integration of migrant children into the primary and secondary school system, the perspectives of educators from the civil society organizations as well as the perspectives of key creators of educational policy toward migrants, refugees and asylum seekers – concluded Mihajlović.
This is the second time that MIGREC team is participating in the NGC – Neuchâtel Graduate Conference. Hopefully, next year we will again present news, project activities and initiatives from our researches in the filed of migration.
