This seminar series critically evaluates how migration research is conducted by hosting different researchers and experts. Scholars and practitioners in the fields of migration, governance, and diversity will interact with the audience, focusing on the practice of research and expertise.

The lectures and roundtables will occur at UPF and IEMed (European Institute for the Mediterranean).

 

 

Those interested in joining the whole Seminar Series are kindly asked to send their interest to <[email protected]> and <[email protected]> in CC. We will issue a certificate at the end for those who require it and certify that they have attended all sessions (except one).

UPF: Campus Ciutadella (map), Building 40 Roger de Llúria, Casamigla Room | Building 24 Mercè Rodoreda, Room 24.S01 

IEMed: Carrer Girona, 20. 08010 Barcelona, Aula Mediterrània

 

 

Inaugural Session – UPF

Roundtable: “Externalisation, violence and coloniality. Questioning European governmentality of borders and people on the move”

Thursday 17th October 2024, 16:00-19:00, Building 24 Mercè Rodoreda, Room 24.S01 (UPF)

 

Invited speakers:

• Paolo Cuttitta (Università di Genova; associate researcher at IDPS, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord)
• Lorena Gazzotti (IMEDES – UAM; former visiting scholar at Casa de Velasquez, Madrid; former researcher at Crassh Cambridge)
• Elsa Tyszler (CRESPPA-GTM, CNRS, Paris; Fellow of Institut Convergences Migrations,;collaborator of Border Forensics)

 Chair: Lorenzo Gabrielli

 

Synopsis

In the last decade the governmentality of borders and people on the move in Europe is growingly characterised by a dynamic of externalisation toward third countries and the increasing violence by institutional actors. A necropolitical racial border emerges in which the life of people from the global South seems worthless. Moreover, this dynamic is supported by a spectacularisation of this violent exclusion, re-activating and updating the historically built imaginaries of otherness related to colonialism, as well as framing collective perceptions of immigration at the Southern borders of Europe. This seminar will put into question the apparatus deployed at borders and beyond, as well as the governmentality of people on the move (at least those from the global South).

This seminar is organised by Servei Civil Internacional, GRITIM-UPF and Consell de la Joventut de Barcelona, in the frame of the project “Catalunya, la Mediterrània i l’Abya Yala: articulant aliances i estratègies juvenils transformadores” funded by Agencia Catalana de Cooperació al Desenvolupament (ACCD).

 

 

Bios

Paolo Cuttitta is a research fellow within the ERC project SOLROUTES (Solidarities and migrants’ routes across Europe at large) at the University of Genoa (Dipartimento di Scienze della Formazione) and an associate researcher at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University (Institut de Droit Public, Sciences Politiques et Sociales). His main research interests include  the socio-spatial processes related to the proliferation and differentiation of borders, with specific attention to migration dynamics between Southern Europe and North Africa, the role of (humanitarian/political) non-governmental actors in bordering/de-bordering/re-bordering practices, and the concept of externalization.

 

Lorena Gazzotti is a Geography teacher at the British School of Gran Canaria and an affiliated researcher at IMEDES, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. She held research positions at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, and the Casa de Velazquez. Her research focuses on spaces of care and control at both sides of the Spanish-Moroccan border. She is the author of Immigration Nation. Aid, control and border politics in Morocco, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

 

Elsa Tyszler is a Doctor in Sociology and a Researcher at the Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris (CRESPPA). Her research lies at the crossroads of migration, race, gender and border studies. She has carried out extensive fieldwork on the Moroccan-Spanish borders (between 2015 and 2017, for her doctorate) and on France's internal borders (between 2020 and 2022, as part of the GBV-MIG international project). She recently took part - as principal investigator - in a counter-investigation into the Melilla massacre of 24 June 2022 (Border Forensics et al. 2024). She is currently one of the principal researchers and authors of the SOLIFRO project (2024-2026), funded by the French National Research Agency, which focuses on violence in support/solidarity practices for people migrating across borders. Her new book, Se battre aux frontières de Ceuta & Melilla. Race, genre et contrôle migratoire (PUV editions), was published in July 2024.

 

 Session 2 - IEMed

Roundtable: “Collective memory, migrations and Catalonia”

Thursday 21 November 2024, 18:30-20:00, Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

 

Invited speakers:

• Imma Boj (director Museum History of Immigration in Catalonia) 
• Andreu Domingo i Valls (Deputy director of the Center for Demographic Studies, UAB)

 Chair: Ricard Zapata-Barrero

 

Synopsis

The population of Catalonia is approximately 8 million inhabitants. This number has been reached recently and is expected to continue to increase at the current rate of immigrant arrivals. There is a general consensus that in European societies the demographic increase has ceased to depend on natural factors such as births, and that the trend is that it depends on the incorporation of population from outside, especially non-European ones. In fact, without an immigrant population, Catalonia would have reduced its demographics instead of increasing it. Migration research typically assumes a historical perspective, and we are aware of the crucial role that memory plays in shaping representations, perceptions, opinions about migration, and even identities and belonging. The fundamental objective of this roundtable is to examine how Catalonia is integrating migration into its collective memory and to identify specific actions that can inform a policy of memory regarding migration. We propose to address this issue from two distinct perspectives. At a more general level, it is necessary to consider the collective memory of the migrations that Catalonia has undergone. At a more specific level, it is important to understand the diversity of collective memories that the various populations that make up society have, and how Catalonia has been incorporated as a whole. This will be addressed through a diagnosis and a critical assessment, which will allow us to identify potential avenues for social, cultural and political transformation, as well as a more institutional reflection of government. This dual perspective will facilitate a debate on the design of an agenda that will define the terms for a public debate on the collective memory of diverse Catalonia today.

 

Bios

Imma Boj obtained a Degree in Geography and History, specialized in History of Art at UB. She obtained a Master's in Immigration and Intercultural Education (UB) and a Master's in Cultural Heritage Management (UOC). Boj has collaborated as a guest professor at the Master's in Heritage Management (UB) and has also taught the Master's of Immigration and Intercultural Education. She has directed and curated several exhibition productions and published several articles on Immigration in the Franco period. Boj has been the director of the Museum of the History of Immigration of Catalonia in Sant Adrià de Besòs (MhiC) since 2003. 

 

 

Andreu Domingo i Valls is a doctor in Sociology, researcher and deputy director of the Center for Demographic Studies (CED) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Principal Researcher of the Globalization, Migration and Space Group, full member of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Specialized in international immigration and family formation, he is also interested in population theory. Among his publications on migration to Catalonia we can highlight: Catalonia in the mirror of immigration. Immigration and national identity, published in 2014, and Catalonia 3D: Demography, Diversity and Democracy, both published by L’Avenç.

 

 Session 3 - IEMed

Provisional Roundtable: “Migrations in the Mediterranean: The African Perspective”

Date (TBD) February 2025, 18:30-20:00, Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

 

Provisional invited speaker: Iván Martín (GRITIM-UPF)

Chair and discussant: Oriol Puig (GRITIM-UPF)

 

Synopsis

In migration studies as in migration politics, in the media and in public discussion, we are generally exposed to the European narratives on African migrations through the Mediterranean. However, the vision of migration and the Mediterranean migration routes are not the same in the countries of origin of migrants. And the African vision of migration to Europe only reaches us through the media accounts of vulnerable migrants in transit or in any case of those who have already reached Europe. In this seminar, we will explore and discuss the vision, interests and priorities of African societies and States when it comes to migration through the Mediterranean and international cooperation in the field of migration.

 

 

Session 4 - IEMed

Lecture: “Women and Borders in the Mediterranean”

Thursday 20 March 2025, 18:30-20:00, Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

 

Invited speaker: Camille Schmoll (EHESS, Paris)

Chair: Rafik Arfaoui (GRITIM-UPF)

 

Synopsis

The lecture will  offer a history of migration in the Mediterranean written about and from the perspective of women. It gives a complex picture of individual journeys of migrant women, and in a radical departure from the miserabilist or culturalist approach through which women are usually viewed, the lecture argues for a politically and socially aware, activist feminism that is attuned to what border-obsessed migration policies actually do to women.The research presented is based on multi-sited fieldwork that led the author to closely follow migration survivors. The lecture depicts the journey of women as they experience brutal separations, have to make heart-wrenching decisions and end up wandering from one place to another, but also as they make acquaintances and find new opportunities. The first-person accounts collected here demonstrate that the reasons behind these women’s decision to leave are anything but simple and linear: they combine various forms of persecution and oppression, a desire for autonomy and a yearning for new horizons, as well as changes in gender relations in their countries of origin. The lecture further explores the daily lives of women in reception centres, where they are in limbo, their journey as if “suspended,” as they wait for this Europe rejecting them to acknowledge their presence. These women live on and “in” the border – a border that relentlessly haunts them and pursues them everywhere they go. Boredom is constant and, likewise, racism and marginalisation processes are pervasive. At the same time, this study shows that these women are also resisting, strategising, taking charge of their own destinies and journeys, and looking for a way out.

 

Bio

Camille Schmoll is a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris) and a member of Institut Convergences Migrations. Her work focuses on migration practices and migration policies and in Europe and in the Mediterranean region. Inspired by feminist geography, she is interested in women in international migration and the gendered dynamics related to migration. As a geographer, she explores the relationship bPdfetween migration and the transformation of Mediterranean spaces and places (particularly islands and cities). She has recently published "Women and borders in the Mediterranean. The wretched of the sea" (Palgrave, Mobility and Politics, 2024).

 

 Session 5 - UPF

Lecture: “Nativism and immigrant integration in Europe: from assimilation to exclusion?”

Thursday 10 April 2025, 15:00-17:00, Building 40 Roger de Llùria, Casamigla Room (UPF)

 

Invited speaker: Christophe Bertossi (Institut Convergence Migrations, Paris)

Chair: Cristina Rodríguez-Reche (GRITIM-UPF)

 

Synopsis

Public discourse has been suffused by negative claims about multiculturalism, Islam and immigration in Western Europe. In these debates, Islam and Muslims have become a central issue regarding common values, integration and belonging, while citizenship has increasingly been framed as an issue of cultural norms rather than one of civic and social rights. What are the consequences of these recent politics of identity on the way Western European societies produce cultural and moral boundaries, and define who belongs and who doesn’t? How can we analyze what is conceived of as "public values" (secularism, equality, freedom, belonging, etc.) and how they are produced, contested and reframed today in Western traditional liberal democracies? To address these questions, I will discuss the notion of nativism and its interplay with narratives about immigration, national political traditions, and democratic principles.

 

Bio

Christophe Bertossi (PhD, Habil.) is Director of the Institute for Democracy (IDEM) and a fellow at the Institut Convergence Migrations in Paris. His research interests concern citizenship, immigration, and Muslims in Western Europe. He recently co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on "Past in the Present: Migration and the Political Uses of History in the Contemporary Era" with Jan Willem Duyvendak (2021) and in Appartenances & Altérités on "Nativism and nostalgia. Temporalities in the politics of race and ethnicity in Europe and the US" with Jan Willem Duyvendak and Nancy Foner (2022).

 

Session 6 - IEMed

Lecture: “Migration Diplomacy as a Three-Level Game in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Case of Greece and Turkey”

Thursday 8 May 2025, 18:30-20:00, Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

 

Invited speaker: Gerasimos Tsourapas (University of Glasgow, London School of Economics and Political Science)

Chair: Ainara Huarte Aranda (GRITIM-UPF)

 

Synopsis

The emerging literature on states’ migration diplomacy traditionally centres on how cross-border mobility affects, and is affected by, governmental foreign policy strategies. Yet, little attention has been paid to strategic interactions between domestic political priorities, bilateral foreign policy negotiations, and supranational organisations, particularly the European Union. This paper draws inspiration from Robert Putnam’s work on the entanglement of domestic and international politics and puts forth a theorisation of migration diplomacy as a three-level game. Beyond the importance of intergovernmental negotiations, we propose that migration diplomacy actors absorb domestic-level concerns as well as supranational pressures, particularly at instances of crisis. We apply this framework on the February/March 2020 border crisis between Greece and Türkiye, in which tens of thousands of migrants sought to enter European territory, with the two countries reaching dangerous levels of escalation. We identify how both Greek and Turkish use of migration diplomacy was shaped by three sets of policy goals, namely domestic, international, and supranational. We conclude with a discussion of how such a framework can shed valuable light on border crises and the interplay between migration, geopolitics, and foreign policymaking.

 

Bio

Gerasimos Tsourapas is Professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow, and Visiting Professor at the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also the Chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies (ENMISA) Section of the International Studies Association, as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Migration Studies (Oxford University Press). He works on the international relations of the Middle East and the broader Global South, with a particular focus on the politics of migrants, refugees, and diasporas. He is currently the Principal Investigator of a five-year European Research Council Starting Grant project on migration diplomacy, and his work on migration interdependence in North Africa and the Levant was recognised with the 2017 Martin O. Heisler Award by the International Studies Association. His latest book, Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa – Power, Mobility, and the State, was published by Manchester University Press in 2021, supported by research grants from the British Academy and the Council for British Research in the Levant.

 

Closing Session - UPF

Roundtable: “On cities and migration governance capacities: the rural-urban dichotomy”

Tuesday 3 June 2025 (Provisional date), 15:00-17:00, Building 40 Roger de Llùria, Casamigla Room (UPF)

 

Invited speakers:

• Olga Jiménez (Deputy Coordinator of the People Services Area, Equality and Social Sustainability Area, Sabadell City Council)
• Oriol López (Coordinator Micropobles)

Chair: Gemma Pinyol (GRITIM-UPF)

 

Synopsis

The aim of this roundtable is to explore with two key practitioners how migration governance capacities might be developed. We would be grateful for your input on a number of topics, including resources and infrastructures, values orientating decisions and practices, as well as constraints and alliances with civil society organisations, networking with other cities for governance capacity building. In order to facilitate a productive discussion, we propose to focus on key challenges, similarities and differences between rural and urban settings.

 

Bios

Olga Jiménez Palau is a dedicated public servant committed to enhancing civic life and social equity. She holds a degree in Philosophy and a Certificate of Pedagogical Aptitude from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with additional studies in Political Science. Olga's career in municipal governance began as a Management Assistant in Sabadell's Citizen Participation Area. She has since held various roles, including Commissioner of New Citizenship, where she established the New Citizenship Office and developed policies for the city's diverse populations. As Head of the Service of Coexistence and Citizenship and later the Civil Rights and Citizenship Service, she advanced social inclusion and civic engagement. In her recent positions, Olga has overseen City Promotion, Participation, Feminism, Animal Welfare, and Social Sustainability, driving initiatives for transparency, good governance, and social equity. Her leadership has facilitated numerous policies and programs aimed at improving community well-being and fostering intercultural understanding. Olga Jiménez Palau's dedication to creating inclusive and equitable urban environments has made her a respected figure in municipal governance and social policy development, reflecting her deep commitment to public service and civic enhancement in Sabadell.

 

Oriol Lopez is a hacker and maker who believes in using social innovation as a tool for inclusion. Trained as an environmentalist and oceanographer, he worked in the oil and gas industry from 2012 to 2017, coordinating the implementation of biodiversity management strategies. With the business acumen he gained during this period, he founded CHAPTER#2 in 2017, a social enterprise dedicated to hosting migrants and refugees in rural municipalities in Catalonia. CHAPTER#2 is affiliated with the Social Economy Network in Catalonia and specializes in designing entrepreneurship programs, organizing participatory processes, and providing consultancy services. Oriol has contributed to several significant initiatives, including working for the Generalitat de Catalunya to implement a mentoring program for migrants and refugees from 2019 to 2021. He has also been involved with the Autonomous University of Barcelona on European projects focused on migrant integration from 2020 to 2022. Currently, he coordinates the Opportunity500 project, which aims to host migrants in rural municipalities as part of the Rural Municipalities Network in Catalonia (Associació de Micropobles de Catalunya). Additionally, Oriol is a founding member of Miceli, a second-degree cooperative offering regenerative services for rural areas, and De Bat a Bat, an organization focused on community health to inspire individuals with neurological diseases.

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