Program for August 14th

Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden and other European countries, this keynote explores how people seeking asylum navigate uncertainty, precariousness, and suffering through hope. Focusing on the restrictive asylum policies introduced after 2015, it examines how hopes for the future evolve during prolonged migration processes. Hope can sustain agency, dignity, and resilience, but it can also generate pain and become a tool of bureaucratic control. By analysing lived experiences and the emotional and embodied consequences of asylum regimes, the presentation argues for a critical examination of welfare-state practices and renewed commitments to social justice and human rights. It highlights hope as a key lens for understanding everyday life.

https://lnu.se/personal/philip.lalander/

Panel 15 schedule and abstracts pdf, 249.7 kB.

Co-convenors: Simon Roland Birkvad (University of Bergen)

Law regulates access to categories of residence, mobility, and social rights, and thus fundamentally shapes the experiences and living conditions of people on the move. At the same time, legal infrastructures and determinations regulating mobility and residence are increasingly informed by extra-legal expertise, such as medical, forensic, and biometric knowledge. The entanglements and co-workings of law and extra-legal expertise are particularly present in asylum adjudication, due to the combination of a difficult evidentiary situation and a “climate of suspicion” surrounding the category of asylum seekers. Increasingly decision-makers rely on expert knowledge to generate evidence about asylum seekers’ identities, health and conditions in their countries of origin. Novel forms of expertise, such as automated facial recognition and speech biometrics, are used alongside “traditional” forms such as country-of-origin information (COI), identity documents and medical expertise. Underlying all these practices, however, is a desire to make the decision-making process less insecure and more “objective.” Yet expert knowledge is increasingly contested inside and outside court rooms, leaving, perhaps even amplifying, room for discretion for decision-makers.

In this workshop we welcome papers that explore the contentious relationship(s) between migration law and expert knowledge both inside and outside the courtroom, and trace how various actors navigate these spaces of uncertainty and risk. We call for papers, empirical and/or conceptual, that touch upon some of these sets of questions (but not limited to):

• What does it mean as migration scholars to take law seriously as an object of study? How do we analytically and methodologically approach law when seeking to explore legal (technical) expertise and knowledge practices? In the encounters between “us” and the knowledge practices we strive to understand, what causes tension, friction and even contestation? How do we deal with these epistemological (even ontological) frictions (or not)? (researcher-law-relations)
• How do law and (other forms of) expert knowledge mutually inform and influence each other in local contexts of decision-making? How does expert knowledge travel in legal spaces and through which practices of translation? (Law-expertise relations)
• How are “high” (e.g. biometrics) and “low” (e.g. documents) tech, machinic (e.g. algorithmic and x-ray) and human vision (e.g. experts, judges, witnesses) used to make bodies and places known and “objective”? (Evidence-relations)
• What does the co-existence of novel and traditional ways of seeing and knowing tell us about hierarchies of knowledge in society at large? (legal knowledge-societal knowledge relations)

Contact: kari.drangsland@uib.no

Panel 14 schedule and abstracts pdf, 187.1 kB.

Co-convenors: Vilde Fastvold (University of Oslo)

Across the Nordic region, temporary labour migration has become an integral part of the economy. Seasonal and short-term contracts bring thousands of workers into contact with the welfare states every year. Although many migrants have formal rights, their access to social protections and healthcare remains fragmented and partial. This panel explores transient migration — continuous movement without long-term settlement — and access to healthcare services. It aims to examine migrants’ lived experiences of navigating fragmented rights and systems, and to discuss models for more sustainable and equitable access to healthcare and labour rights. In doing so, the panel aims to contribute to broader debates on welfare bordering, social justice, and the future of inclusive welfare regimes in the Nordic context.

We invite papers that investigate temporary labour migration or other forms of transient migration and their relationship with healthcare services. Topics may include, but are not limited to, continuity of care, chronic illnesses, the development of migrant‑friendly services, co‑production of knowledge, and rights‑based approaches. The panel will explore the paradox of economic dependence on migrant labour while systematically limiting migrants’ social inclusion and will ask how continuity of care can be secured for populations whose lives are characterised by mobility and precarity. We are also particularly interested in how health and welfare institutions respond to transient migrant populations.

To facilitate discussion, we highlight three interconnected aspects that papers might address:

1. Identification regimes and bordering practices: Temporary identification numbers and registration systems create differentiated access to welfare, producing new forms of precarious belonging. These bureaucratic technologies not only regulate mobility but also stratify rights, reinforcing exclusion from primary healthcare.
2. Healthcare vulnerabilities and continuity of care: Lack of access to general practitioners, who function as gatekeepers in Nordic health systems, forces migrants to rely on emergency and ad-hoc services. This undermines chronic disease management, increases reliance on costly acute care, and erodes trust in institutions.
3. Labourmarket conditions and social rights: Precarious contracts, poor housing, and weak enforcement of labour rights intersect with restricted healthcare access, amplifying vulnerabilities. Migrants’ temporary status makes them particularly exposed to exploitation and systemic inequalities.

We welcome submissions from a range of disciplines, including social medicine, history, sociology, anthropology, clinical medicine and health sciences, as well as public health.

Contact: frode.eick@ldh.no

Panel 34 schedule and abstracts pdf, 272.6 kB.

The panel will examine how migration intersects with demographic change, welfare systems, belonging, governance, and social protection across a range of European contexts. Presentations will explore topics including rural repopulation, migrant integration, remittances, legal consciousness, domestic violence support, family reunification, recognition and belonging among second-generation migrants, and the role of language and policy in shaping migration experiences. Together, the contributions will highlight both the opportunities and challenges of creating inclusive societies, emphasizing the importance of equitable institutions, responsive governance, and community support in addressing contemporary migration-related inequalities

Contact: anna.tarasenko@helsinki.fi

Panel 1 schedule and abstracts pdf, 222.1 kB.

The papers selected for this panel will examine how immigrant civil society organizations (ICSOs) shape social integration, civic engagement, and political participation in an era of intensified restriction and contestation around diversity and inclusion in Europe, the Nordic countries, and beyond. Focusing on immigrant CSOs as organizations situated between the state and immigrant communities, the panel explores how these organizations navigate collaboration with state and municipal actors, welfare institutions, and political parties, and how these interactions create both opportunities and obstacles for inclusive democratic participation of immigrants.

Methodologically, the panel aims to bring together qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research that takes different angles on immigrant civil society organizations - for example, case studies of ICSOs engaged in state-funded collaboration; interview-based studies with foreign-born politicians and activists with strong links to ICSOs; analyses of local partnership arrangements between ICSOs, schools, community police, and social services; and investigations of how ICSOs operate in different local contexts, including rural settings and stigmatized urban neighborhoods.

ICSOs are an important topic for research for many reasons. First, ICSOs can offer organizational supports, networks, and interpretive resources that help migrants navigate institutions and claim rights. Second, collaboration regimes and organizational gatekeeping can simultaneously instrumentalize or tame ICSOs, limiting their capacity to articulate contentious claims or challenge racialized hierarchies and group boundaries. Third, ICSOs’ impacts are profoundly shaped by intersectional dynamics of gender, class, religion, and generation, revealing uneven opportunities for participation and leadership that can have broader social impacts.

This panel theme speaks directly to the conference theme by situating ICSOs at the heart of everyday multicultural governance: as actors that mediate between local communities and authorities, contest hostile discourses, and experiment with new forms of solidarity—yet also operate under intensifying surveillance, conditionality, and expectations of “responsibilized” integration. By focusing on ICSOs, the panel hopes to advance scientific understanding of immigrant civil society organizations, and offer empirically grounded insights for scholars and practitioners seeking more just and collaborative infrastructures for immigrants' civic participation and social integration.

Contact: andrea.voyer@sociology.su.se

Panel 16c schedule and abstracts pdf, 213.8 kB.

A sub-theme of panel 16, this panel explores how migration governance, public policy, and civil society shape migrants’ opportunities for participation, inclusion, and belonging in contemporary societies. It focuses on the effects of restrictive migration policies, algorithmic forms of governance, public discourse, and gaps in state support, while highlighting the crucial role of community organizations and local partnerships in addressing migrants’ needs. Together, the contributions underscored the importance of collaborative and rights-based approaches to integration, social cohesion, labour market inclusion, and protection for vulnerable migrant populations.

Contact: sheila.ghose@sh.se

Panel 3 schedule and abstracts pdf, 203.2 kB.

Co-convenors: Irma Mačkiné (Vilnius University), Svitlana Odynets (Vilnius University & Mid University of Sweden)

In this panel we invite researchers who are/have been involved in empirical research and theoretical conceptualisations on circulation of care in migrant contexts and in local as well as transnational welfare settings. Our focus is on care arrangements (both digital and physical) directed to elderly people who are dependent on other people´s care in their daily life. We are interested in care arrangements from the perspectives of either the elderly, their informal or formal care givers, or professional care. The elderly person in need of care and the caregivers, could either be among those who have migrated or among those who is left in the country of origin.

We invite papers that reflect on how political and institutional settings in a specific historical time interact with the needs and capacities of the caregiving network situated in transnational welfare settings.

In this panel we wish to deepen our theoretical and empirical understanding about how care is done, arranged, facilitated, restricted and felt by those parties who are involved. The actors may be informal as well as formal and situated at a distance from the elderly person or in proximity.

Contact: charlotte.melander@socwork.gu.se

Panel 21 schedule and abstracts pdf, 201 kB.

This panel brings together research examining experiences and narratives of queer migrants from Russia to Northern Europe and the Baltics. Previous studies have examined politically motivated migration from Russia as a result of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the tightening of queerphobic legislation before 2022. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which the ongoing conflicting politicization of LGBTQ rights are experienced by individuals escaping state-sponsored homophobia in Russia and how these discourses enable and constrain engagement with local communities in hosting societies. The papers of the panel are united by a common approach in which sexuality and gender are understood to shape mobilities across Northern Europe (Sweden, Finland) and the Baltics and affect LGBTQ migrants’ experiences and geopolitical positionalities. Drawing on feminist and queer theories, and on ethnographic methods, such as interviews and observations, the papers foreground the intersection of queer migration with identifications along the axes of class, sexuality, ethnicity, and transness. This panel attempts to map a research agenda that moves beyond celebratory narratives of inclusion to critically examine the stratifications and new solidarities within queer migrant communities. The panel explores how queer migrants from Russia negotiate belonging across shifting political, social, and cultural landscapes: considering this as an ongoing relational and emotional process, it highlights how queer Russian migrants actively reshape the terms of membership, participation, and recognition in their new environments. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which Russian queer migrants in Sweden, Finland, and the Baltics navigate privilege, seek support, and mitigate vulnerabilities through engagement with local communities, civil society spaces, and transnational networks. Thus, we are interested in analyzing the paradoxical effects of state-sponsored queerphobia on Russian migrants. While it engenders political alienation, it remains an open question whether this forges a cohesive "queer diaspora" or, conversely, fragments the community along multiple lines of identification. We explore the ways in which this alienation severs ties to Russian society entirely and instead cultivates new, fluid forms of transnational belonging that challenge the hegemony of the nation-state.

Contact: kirill.polkov@sh.se

Panel 20 schedule and abstracts pdf, 261.8 kB.

Co-convenors: Olga Sasunkevich (University of Gothenburg), Andrea Spehar (University of Gothenburg), Viktoriia Svidovska (NGO Help Ukraine Gothengurg)

In this open panel we invite scholars and representatives of local communities and NGOs to reflect on their experiences of research on and community work with Ukrainians displaced by the Russia’s full-scale invasion in various Nordic societies. The panel encourages multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral dialogue between participants with various backgrounds, working with the reception, establishment, providing support and guidance, as well as collaborating with Ukrainian diaspora and displaced Ukrainians across the Nordic region.

The panel aims to problematise situation of displaced Ukrainians against the background of migration and integration policies in the Nordic countries, diminishing their ambitions day by day. While displaced Ukrainians received a special protection status under the EU Temporary Protection Directive, the general policies aimed at decreasing the number of migrants and their social rights in the Nordic countries significantly shape their life chances. For Ukrainians, majority of whom are established as residents in the Nordic countries, albeit with limited possibility to stay longer than 2027, this presents a new challenge. Many of them have managed to find employment and created tangible social anchors in host societies, by reuniting with their families, building new families and through education opportunities for children and young people. While the Russia’s brutal war is still ongoing, Ukraine is suffering heavy demographic crisis and expects its citizens to return. At the same time, European and Nordic migration governance advance the trope of restricted welfare support for the displaced and voluntary return to the country origin. The future of Ukrainians remains uncertain, especially approaching 2027, but they seem to already begin a transformation from ‘welcomed guests’ to ‘unwanted migrants’.

Through this panel, we seek to illuminate and discuss the following themes and questions:

Temporariness and its consequences:

How does temporary protection shape the everyday experiences, aspirations, and wellbeing of Ukrainians and their children?

How do families navigate education, employment, housing, and long-term planning under conditions of uncertainty?

Migration governance, precarity, and racialisation:

In what ways do current interpretations or reforms of the TPD contribute to processes of bureaucratic precarity and marginalisation of displaced Ukrainians in the Nordic context?

How experiences of Ukrainians overlap and differ with those of other people displaced by war and what role racialisation play in this regard

Policy dilemmas: permanence vs. return:

What are the main challenges for policymakers in formulating sustainable solutions regarding long-term residence, integration, or return to Ukraine?

How do these dilemmas intersect with labour market needs, political priorities, and public opinion?

Agency, networks, and translocal strategies:

How do Ukrainians across the Nordic region mobilise cultural resources, economic strategies, diaspora networks, and translocal forms of support to navigate uncertainty and build resilience?

Future engagement and global Ukrainian communities:

What might constitute an effective and ethically grounded strategy for engaging with Ukrainian communities abroad—both for host countries and for Ukraine—especially for those who choose or need to remain outside the country long-term?

Contact: oksana.shmulyar@socav.gu.se

Panel 19 schedule and abstracts pdf, 263 kB.

Co-convenors: Stacey Wilson-Forsberg (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Resettlement involves a radical transition from one part of the world to another. However, resettlement entails more than a physical move; it entails a complex set of transitions that are often compounded by trauma, linguistic displacements and existential upheaval (Moustakim and Mackay 2018). Newly resettled refugees often encounter an arrival infrastructure of state and non-state actors such as NGOs, religious communities, diaspora-networks, and new neighbours, orienting and assisting the newcomers in their process of settling in new country (Rytter and Kusk in press; Jensen et al. 2024). In many receiving countries, resettled refugees are subject to work-fare programs, promoting (neoliberal) values such as independence, discipline, and self-sufficiency. Despite the differences between the receiving countries in “the global north”, precarity of camp life oftentimes continue to be salient after resettlement but may take new forms (Evans et al. 2022). Resettlement may nonetheless be imagined as a new beginning; a move towards a life marked by security and new possibilities, involving a range of transitions – from camp life to urban dwelling, from financially dependent to self-sufficient, from “woman at risk” to single mother (Mortensen 2025), from child to young adult (Kusk 2025; Mortensen et al. 2024), from school to university, university to labour market, and family formation to retirement and eldercare (Jensen and Rytter in press; Jensen et al. 2024). Each transition may involve a struggle and often resistance in various forms in the everyday.

This panel broadly conceptualizes resettlement as a process, involving a range of multilayered transitions that people are negotiating in their daily lives. This perspective brings into focus the complexity and temporality of experiences of resettlement shaped by age, gender, local policy, life histories, state and non-state actors, as well as involving individual struggle, negotiation and resistance towards local legal frameworks and social expectations and norms.

The panel invites paper proposals that explore transitions of resettled refugees and the daily struggles it might involve. We are especially interested in papers that seek to redefine how communities support resettled refugees and their struggles with transitions—not as recipients of charity, but as co-creators of their own pathways to success. The panel is further interested in papers exploring the various forms of resistance that may be involved in such transitions among resettled refugees. That is, papers that explore and address the agency of resettled refugees to affect both their surroundings and their own paths.

Contact: elm@cas.au.dk

Panel 15 schedule and abstracts pdf, 249.7 kB.

Co-convenors: Simon Roland Birkvad (University of Bergen)

Law regulates access to categories of residence, mobility, and social rights, and thus fundamentally shapes the experiences and living conditions of people on the move. At the same time, legal infrastructures and determinations regulating mobility and residence are increasingly informed by extra-legal expertise, such as medical, forensic, and biometric knowledge. The entanglements and co-workings of law and extra-legal expertise are particularly present in asylum adjudication, due to the combination of a difficult evidentiary situation and a “climate of suspicion” surrounding the category of asylum seekers. Increasingly decision-makers rely on expert knowledge to generate evidence about asylum seekers’ identities, health and conditions in their countries of origin. Novel forms of expertise, such as automated facial recognition and speech biometrics, are used alongside “traditional” forms such as country-of-origin information (COI), identity documents and medical expertise. Underlying all these practices, however, is a desire to make the decision-making process less insecure and more “objective.” Yet expert knowledge is increasingly contested inside and outside court rooms, leaving, perhaps even amplifying, room for discretion for decision-makers.

In this workshop we welcome papers that explore the contentious relationship(s) between migration law and expert knowledge both inside and outside the courtroom, and trace how various actors navigate these spaces of uncertainty and risk. We call for papers, empirical and/or conceptual, that touch upon some of these sets of questions (but not limited to):

• What does it mean as migration scholars to take law seriously as an object of study? How do we analytically and methodologically approach law when seeking to explore legal (technical) expertise and knowledge practices? In the encounters between “us” and the knowledge practices we strive to understand, what causes tension, friction and even contestation? How do we deal with these epistemological (even ontological) frictions (or not)? (researcher-law-relations)
• How do law and (other forms of) expert knowledge mutually inform and influence each other in local contexts of decision-making? How does expert knowledge travel in legal spaces and through which practices of translation? (Law-expertise relations)
• How are “high” (e.g. biometrics) and “low” (e.g. documents) tech, machinic (e.g. algorithmic and x-ray) and human vision (e.g. experts, judges, witnesses) used to make bodies and places known and “objective”? (Evidence-relations)
• What does the co-existence of novel and traditional ways of seeing and knowing tell us about hierarchies of knowledge in society at large? (legal knowledge-societal knowledge relations)

Contact: kari.drangsland@uib.no

Panel 10b schedule and abstracts pdf, 175.9 kB.

The panel will explore methodological aspects in relation to inclusion, exclusion, and participation in migration-related research and working life, with a particular focus on the experiences and agency of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Presentations will examine workplace ostracism, community-based approaches to inclusive research, and participatory methodologies that position migrants not as research subjects but as active producers of knowledge and social critique. Together, the contributions will highlight the importance of equity, representation, and collaborative knowledge production in addressing marginalization and promoting more inclusive institutions and societies.

Contact: hassan.sharif@edu.uu.se & niclas.mansson@sh.se

Panel 34 schedule and abstracts pdf, 272.6 kB.

The panel will examine how migration intersects with demographic change, welfare systems, belonging, governance, and social protection across a range of European contexts. Presentations will explore topics including rural repopulation, migrant integration, remittances, legal consciousness, domestic violence support, family reunification, recognition and belonging among second-generation migrants, and the role of language and policy in shaping migration experiences. Together, the contributions will highlight both the opportunities and challenges of creating inclusive societies, emphasizing the importance of equitable institutions, responsive governance, and community support in addressing contemporary migration-related inequalities

Contact: anna.tarasenko@helsinki.fi

Panel 1 schedule and abstracts pdf, 222.1 kB.

The papers selected for this panel will examine how immigrant civil society organizations (ICSOs) shape social integration, civic engagement, and political participation in an era of intensified restriction and contestation around diversity and inclusion in Europe, the Nordic countries, and beyond. Focusing on immigrant CSOs as organizations situated between the state and immigrant communities, the panel explores how these organizations navigate collaboration with state and municipal actors, welfare institutions, and political parties, and how these interactions create both opportunities and obstacles for inclusive democratic participation of immigrants.

Methodologically, the panel aims to bring together qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research that takes different angles on immigrant civil society organizations - for example, case studies of ICSOs engaged in state-funded collaboration; interview-based studies with foreign-born politicians and activists with strong links to ICSOs; analyses of local partnership arrangements between ICSOs, schools, community police, and social services; and investigations of how ICSOs operate in different local contexts, including rural settings and stigmatized urban neighborhoods.

ICSOs are an important topic for research for many reasons. First, ICSOs can offer organizational supports, networks, and interpretive resources that help migrants navigate institutions and claim rights. Second, collaboration regimes and organizational gatekeeping can simultaneously instrumentalize or tame ICSOs, limiting their capacity to articulate contentious claims or challenge racialized hierarchies and group boundaries. Third, ICSOs’ impacts are profoundly shaped by intersectional dynamics of gender, class, religion, and generation, revealing uneven opportunities for participation and leadership that can have broader social impacts.

This panel theme speaks directly to the conference theme by situating ICSOs at the heart of everyday multicultural governance: as actors that mediate between local communities and authorities, contest hostile discourses, and experiment with new forms of solidarity—yet also operate under intensifying surveillance, conditionality, and expectations of “responsibilized” integration. By focusing on ICSOs, the panel hopes to advance scientific understanding of immigrant civil society organizations, and offer empirically grounded insights for scholars and practitioners seeking more just and collaborative infrastructures for immigrants' civic participation and social integration.

Contact: andrea.voyer@sociology.su.se

Panel 16c schedule and abstracts pdf, 213.8 kB.

A sub-theme of panel 16, this panel explores how migration governance, public policy, and civil society shape migrants’ opportunities for participation, inclusion, and belonging in contemporary societies. It focuses on the effects of restrictive migration policies, algorithmic forms of governance, public discourse, and gaps in state support, while highlighting the crucial role of community organizations and local partnerships in addressing migrants’ needs. Together, the contributions underscored the importance of collaborative and rights-based approaches to integration, social cohesion, labour market inclusion, and protection for vulnerable migrant populations.

Contact: sheila.ghose@sh.se

Panel 3 schedule and abstracts pdf, 203.2 kB.

Co-convenors: Irma Mačkiné (Vilnius University), Svitlana Odynets (Vilnius University & Mid University of Sweden)

In this panel we invite researchers who are/have been involved in empirical research and theoretical conceptualisations on circulation of care in migrant contexts and in local as well as transnational welfare settings. Our focus is on care arrangements (both digital and physical) directed to elderly people who are dependent on other people´s care in their daily life. We are interested in care arrangements from the perspectives of either the elderly, their informal or formal care givers, or professional care. The elderly person in need of care and the caregivers, could either be among those who have migrated or among those who is left in the country of origin.

We invite papers that reflect on how political and institutional settings in a specific historical time interact with the needs and capacities of the caregiving network situated in transnational welfare settings.

In this panel we wish to deepen our theoretical and empirical understanding about how care is done, arranged, facilitated, restricted and felt by those parties who are involved. The actors may be informal as well as formal and situated at a distance from the elderly person or in proximity.

Contact: charlotte.melander@socwork.gu.se

Panel 25 schedule and abstracts pdf, 209 kB.

Research on forced displacement, and on asylum seekers in temporary hosting infrastructures, is typically informed by a strong participatory mandate. The idea that refugees should be actively involved in knowledge production and circulation reflects a basic and general ethical stance. However, it also articulates a more fundamentally transformative view: making research relevant for participants, and societally impactful, would rely on them becoming active collaborators at different stages of data collection and analysis, as well as of writing, dissemination, and advocacy. Research wise, this participatory drive feeds into the increasing emphasis on art- and community-based or policy-relevant methods with "vulnerable" subjects. At a societal level, it resonates with local inclusion policies for community engagement as a precondition for refugee "integration". As far as qualitative research is concerned, however, active participation can encounter significant challenges and limitations. While these are not necessarily new for refugee studies, they have taken new salience in research on asylum reception facilities, most visibly in Nordic countries.

This panel invites reflexive and critical contributions from colleagues who have done in-depth fieldwork into refugee housing and with young asylum seekers in general, from different disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical positionings. Since the 2015 "refugee crisis", insider ethnographies on the lived spaces of asylum have made for a constellation of small-scale studies all across Europe. One of these is my recent book Undoing Nothing: Waiting for Asylum, Struggling for Relevance (University of California Press, OA, 2025). This ethnography, centred on what young men waiting for asylum do while claiming that they are "doing nothing", raises a number of methodological points on participation as a desire and an achievement - and for the need to recalibrate it along the way.

For one thing, approaching asylum seekers raises dilemmas that have not to do only with their frailty, or with the hostile environments that surround them. Researchers also have to navigate the consequences of their temporal suspension, and the underlying sense of emptiness and meaninglessness; reckon with the meanings and functions of silence, and with the shifting line between what could or should be articulated or not; acknowledge the aftermath of past suffering and present uncertainty, and of the tension between the moral imperative to achieve adulthood, and meet transnational kinship obligations, and the little scope available for that. Participation may risk over-exposing people who wish little exposure. Many, perhaps most field interlocutors may find little point in it. Even in the best case, participation is inherently selective and graduated. As far as effective forms of active participation do take place, however, they can yield both epistemic and societal benefits. How far these play out at a community level - e.g facilitating a better informed public debate, and deeper sensitivity to asylum - or produce tangible improvements for refugees themselves is, in turn, a question that requires a critical dialogue across case studies, as is the aim of this panel.

Contact: paolo.boccagni@unitn.it

Panel 11 schedule and abstracts pdf, 194.3 kB.

Co-convenors: Anca Enache (University of Helsinki)

Although migration research has increasingly emphasized “stakeholder involvement” and the importance of “giving back” to researched communities, the actual modes of dissemination have not been fully addressed as situated endeavors. This panel aims to explore how recognizing and employing communication forms held in high regard and practiced in the specific minority community involved in research, might contribute to decolonizing migration research – specifically by grounding dissemination in local epistemologies, situated and reflexive research practices and co-creation of knowledge. By sharing findings through communication forms recognized by and embedded in communities where the research has taken place, community members can truly engage with, and ultimately challenge, the findings. We are inspired by scholars who call for reflexive, experimental and dialogic forms of writing and storytelling (e.g. Behar 1996; Tuhiwai Smith 1999; Ahmed 2004; Lawrence-Lightfoot 2005; Abu-Lughod 2008; Kazubowski-Houston 2010; Khosravi 2010, Blasco and Hernandez 2020; Hagatun 2020; Hardy, 2023).

We invite contributions from scholars across disciplines who engage with methods of dissemination, communication, and collaboration with historically oppressed minority communities, such as Roma and Indigenous groups. Examples of questions to explore are:

What kinds of methods and practices enable ethical and sustainable dissemination and communication in historically oppressed minority communities?

What ethical issues should be considered when disseminating one’s findings within such communities? What forms of dissemination can contribute to decolonizing specific disciplines engaged in migration research?

Contact: Kari.Hagatun@uib.no

Panel 19 schedule and abstracts pdf, 263 kB.

Co-convenors: Stacey Wilson-Forsberg (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Resettlement involves a radical transition from one part of the world to another. However, resettlement entails more than a physical move; it entails a complex set of transitions that are often compounded by trauma, linguistic displacements and existential upheaval (Moustakim and Mackay 2018). Newly resettled refugees often encounter an arrival infrastructure of state and non-state actors such as NGOs, religious communities, diaspora-networks, and new neighbours, orienting and assisting the newcomers in their process of settling in new country (Rytter and Kusk in press; Jensen et al. 2024). In many receiving countries, resettled refugees are subject to work-fare programs, promoting (neoliberal) values such as independence, discipline, and self-sufficiency. Despite the differences between the receiving countries in “the global north”, precarity of camp life oftentimes continue to be salient after resettlement but may take new forms (Evans et al. 2022). Resettlement may nonetheless be imagined as a new beginning; a move towards a life marked by security and new possibilities, involving a range of transitions – from camp life to urban dwelling, from financially dependent to self-sufficient, from “woman at risk” to single mother (Mortensen 2025), from child to young adult (Kusk 2025; Mortensen et al. 2024), from school to university, university to labour market, and family formation to retirement and eldercare (Jensen and Rytter in press; Jensen et al. 2024). Each transition may involve a struggle and often resistance in various forms in the everyday.

This panel broadly conceptualizes resettlement as a process, involving a range of multilayered transitions that people are negotiating in their daily lives. This perspective brings into focus the complexity and temporality of experiences of resettlement shaped by age, gender, local policy, life histories, state and non-state actors, as well as involving individual struggle, negotiation and resistance towards local legal frameworks and social expectations and norms.

The panel invites paper proposals that explore transitions of resettled refugees and the daily struggles it might involve. We are especially interested in papers that seek to redefine how communities support resettled refugees and their struggles with transitions—not as recipients of charity, but as co-creators of their own pathways to success. The panel is further interested in papers exploring the various forms of resistance that may be involved in such transitions among resettled refugees. That is, papers that explore and address the agency of resettled refugees to affect both their surroundings and their own paths.

Contact: elm@cas.au.dk