2025

Navigating Migration Research Amid Shifting Political Climates: Critical Conversations on Academic Space, Mental Health & Research Autonomy

In the midst of evolving political landscapes, shifting approaches to migration governance, and changing civic and academic environments, researchers are called to navigate complex methodological and ethical questions while caring for their own well-being. This workshop, organised by ARC-M's early-career network Migration Dialogue, created a reflective and supportive space to think critically and collectively about how political and institutional dynamics intersect with mental health, academic freedom, and researcher safety. It invited early-career researchers to share experiences, strategies, and sources of resilience as they pursue justice-oriented migration research within challenging contexts, affirming that care, integrity, and collaboration remain vital forms of resistance and renewal in scholarly life.

• 10 November
• Professor Kyoung Mi Choi

From Liberation to Incarceration: the Criminalisation of Migration and Targeting of Boat Drivers in the EU

An evening of discussion, art, and solidarity action in support of people accused of steering small boats across the Mediterranean and Channel, and facing unjust trials as a result. This event brought together a range of guest speakers to discuss the criminalisation of these boat drivers - often asylum seekers themselves - and how we can resist it.  While migration has received significant attention in recent years, the fate of those prosecuted for driving boats remains largely invisible. Supported by an exhibition of artworks responding to this criminalisation - including pieces created by people with lived experience - this event hosted a roundtable discussion with lawyers, activists and scholars supporting boat drivers on trial in Greece, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom.

• 7 November
• Maria Hagan, Ioanna Begiazi, Francesca Cancellaro, Luca Geppert, Elise Hagan, Victoria Taylor

The Ethics of Being an Immigrant: Living under the 'Integration Gaze'

In this talk, Ashwini Vasanthakumar (Queen's University, Canada) discussed her book project, in which she aims to explore the ethics of being an immigrant: what does it mean to be a good immigrant? How do you make a home in a place where other people(s) are also making a home?

• 16 October
• Ashwini Vasanthakumar

Migration Politics residents in-progress sessions

This year's cohort of Migration Politics residents (Jackson Sebola, Megan Bradley, Keyvan Dorostkar) were at the University of Amsterdam from 6-10 October. The residents spent their time at UvA discussing and reworking their papers to prepare them for submission to the journal Migration Politics.

• 6-10 October
• Jackson Sebola, Megan Bradley, Keyvan Dorostkar

International Labour Migration from Below: Workshop by the International Institute of Social History (ISSH) & the Amsterdam Research Centre for Migration (ARC-M)

In this two-day workshop, Marcel van der Linden and Jan Breman, senior fellows at the IISH, discussed their three recently published essays on labour migration from below. These essays deal with the experience of migrants in the countries they have managed to reach, and elaborate on the consequences of their absence far away from home and the impact on the households left behind. The authors have aimed to stay as close as possible to the identity of these migrants, split up in class-based clusters. Though subjected to migration politics and policies of both the countries of departure and destination, the focus is on the migrants themselves.

• 28-29 October
• Speakers: Marcel van der Linden, Jan Breman, Hein de Haas, Leo Lucassen

Screening of documentary: Bhashaili (Adrift)

As part of the small workshop Identifying Minorities, the Amsterdam Research Centre for Migration (ARC-M) hosted a screening of the documentary Bhashaili, directed by Jawad Sharif. Bhashaili tells the story of Pakistani Bengalis living in Karachi, many of whom face issues around citizenship and statelessness despite being in their fourth generation. We follow the everyday stories of young and old Pakistani Bengalis as they chase their dreams, find love, stand up for injustices, and face despair around their lack of recognition in Pakistan. The film is about 60 mins long. 

• 3 July

Talking Citizenship: lunch talk by Engin Isin

Engin Isin is a key contemporary thinker of citizenship. Over the past four decades, he has challenged traditional views of citizenship as a legal status granted by the nation-state and instead re-defined it as struggle. 

During this lunch seminar, Isin explained some of the theoretical and methodological challenges of writing his most recent book, Citizenship (2024), considering the tumultuous historical moment in which we are living. This was followed by an open conversation, where you can share your take on citizenship (from dismissing to radicalizing it), and the difficulties you may also find in grappling with it.

• 15 May
• Speaker: Engin Isin

Technologies of (de)migranticization

Building on her earlier work on "de-migranticization," this masterclass introduced some of Janine Dahinden's current work in progress on what she term the ‘technologies of migranticization’.

By this, she refers to the process by which certain individuals are assigned migrant status through various social, economic, and political mechanisms, as well as how these processes are connected to power dynamics. In line with other scholars, she proposes using "migranticization" as an analytical framework to study the implications of migration-related categories and their consequences. She understands "migranticization" as a set of performative technologies of power and governmentality that are closely tied to the logic of the nation-state and coloniality. 

• 7 March
• Speaker: Professor Janine Dahinden

SOGI Asylum in France and Denaturalizing the Category of LGBT+ Refugees

SOGI asylum has received increasing political and academic attention. Focusing on refugee status determination, academics have emphasized how normative representations of sexual and gender minorities in Northern asylum institutions lead to the exclusion of many SOGI asylum applicants. To broaden the understanding of queer people’s lived experiences of forced migration and asylum, in one to-be-published article, Florent Chossière shifts attention to what happens just before the asylum examination, namely the fact of applying for SOGI asylum itself. Based on three years’ ethnographic fieldwork, this research investigates how queer exiles come to apply for SOGI asylum in France. By emphasizing the variety of factors, besides their experiences of persecution, leading them to apply for SOGI asylum, this paper decompartmentalizes asylum from below, denaturalizing the category of LGBT+ refugees by reinserting asylum application into more general and diversified individual experiences of migration. Doing so, it also counters liberationist and humanitarian narratives associated to SOGI asylum seekers.

• Date: 3 March
• Speaker: Florent Chossière

Social Science Cinema: From Where We Stand

Screening of From Where We Stand, a documentary by Lucy Kaye. It provides intimate portraits of diverse individuals in three post-industrial northern English towns. Through the stories of people connected by place, the film explores our relationship with where we’ve come from, what we’ve left behind and where we live. Co-hosted by AISSR and ARC-M.

• Date: 27 February