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.

This seminar series is co-organised in partnership with the European Institute for the Mediterranean (IEMed) and is now linked to EuroMedMig.

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

Main venues: 

• UPF: Campus Ciutadella (map), Building 40 Roger de Llúria, Calsamiglia Room

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

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Inaugural Session– IEMed*

Seminar: “Integrating migrants for integrating regions - Shared challenges around the Mediterranean”

Tuesday, 21 October 2025 | 18:30–20:00 | Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

Invited Speaker: 

• Philippe FARGUES (Robert Schuman Centre of the EUI, Florence)

Chair: Ricard Zapata-Barrero (GRITIM-UPF)

Synopsis

Focusing on two supranational entities with a history of political construct and a sense of shared identity --the European Union and the Arab world --the presentation will address the following question: is migration working for integration from within, at national level in each country, and from without, at the Mediterranean regional level? It will review the most pressing migration-related challenges, whether they are common to all countries or specific to some of them, and conclude on issues to overcome for migration to fully work for progress.

Bio

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Philippe Fargues is a Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence), where he was Robert Schuman Chair and Founding Director of the Migration Policy Centre.  He held senior positions at the American University in Cairo and at the French national institute for demographic studies. He taught at Sciences Po-Paris, Harvard, and various universities in the Middle East, Europe,

and Africa. He served as a consultant to international organizations including ILO, IOM, The World Bank, UNESCO, ESCWA, and the European Commission. His research interests include demography, migration, politics and development. He has published more than 200 academic books, articles and chapters.

Session 2 – UPF

Roundtable “Racial capitalism and environmental colonialism: a dialogue”

Thursday, 13 November 2025 | 17:00–20:00 | UPF, Ciutadella Campus, Room: Calsamiglia

Invited Speakers:

• Gaia Giuliani (Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra)
• Christos Zografos (GREDS-EMCONET, UPF)

Chair: Lorenzo Gabrielli (GRITIM-UPF)

Literature on racial capitalism underlines the structural and constitutive interlinkages of capitalism with racialised hierarchies and racism, in order to exploit the labour of racialised people. From a different angle, literature on environmental/green colonialism and on sacrifice zone in the global South shows the deep colonial dynamics that promote extractivisme and resources dispossession. The consequent destruction of life and the environment, by multinational corporations and states mostly from the global North, while the consequences are paid by the racialised populations of the global South, in terms of dispossession, violence, disease, destruction of living space, and forced displacement, within or outside the global South. In this session we propose to establish a dialogue between these two perspectives in order to draw a larger picture allowing to understand current power configuration, both at global and local scale, as well as the implications for the movement of people and global justice. 

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Gaia Giuliani is an Italian critical whiteness studies pioneer and an anti-racist feminist activist and scholar. She is a political philosopher and a permanent researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her research work aims to deconstruct post colonial gendered and racialised (visual) archives of monstrosity through the analysis of texts coding 'fears of disasters and crisis'; and their symbolic and material impact on European and Western self-representations in the context of the post-9/11 terrorist threat, the so-called migrant and refugee crises, and environmental catastrophes. She is the author of several monographic books, among which Monsters, Catastrophes and the Anthropocene. A postcolonial Critique (Routledge 2021), Race, Nation, and Gender in Modern Italy. Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture (Palgrave Macmillan 2019), Zombie, alieni e mutanti. Le paure dall’11 settembre ai giorni nostri (Le Monnier Mondadori Education 2016), Bianco e nero. Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani with dr. Cristina Lombardi-Diop (Le Monnier-Mondadori Education 2013) - First prize in the 20th-21st century category by the American Association for Italian Studies. On her topics, she teaches and gives lectures and seminars in many universities (e.g. in Portugal, the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Brazil, the US,
Canada, Australia and India).

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Christos Zografos is an environmental social scientist who works in the interdisciplinary fields of political ecology, ecological economics, degrowth, and on the topic of green colonialism. He is Vice-Director GREDS-EMCONET, Associate Professor in Environmental Social Sciences at UPF’s Department of Political and Social Sciences, and part of the Johns Hopkins University Public Policy Center (JHU-UPF). His contributions include more than 50 scientific articles, book chapters and reports on social and political challenges of implementing climate policies. His research in political ecology looks at the politics of implementing low carbon (just transition) and climate adapted futures in a warming world, by examining social and political challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation policy responses. His ecological economics work has explored ways of improving environmental governance through the inclusion of plural values and languages of valuation in environmental decision-making by means of deliberation. Another line of research uses mixed methods to look at attitudes and narratives about socio-ecological transformations; and a final line of work involves degrowth, where he examines the role of radical democracy and masculinities for degrowth transformations.

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*Session organised in the framework of the project “Defensem la terra: articulant lluites juvenils de Catalunya, la Mediterrània i l’Abya Yala per una justícia climàtica global”, funded by Agència Catalana de Cooperació al Desenvolupament (ACCD) (ACC310/24/000084), in collaboration with Servei Civil Internacional de Catalunya (SCI-cat) and Associació Col·lectiu Maloka Colòmbia.

Session 3 – IEMed

"The Mediterranean's Atlantic route: the African-Canary Islands Necrocorridor" 

Thursday, 29 January 2026 | 18:30–20:00, Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

Invited Speaker: 

• Mohammed Ouhemmou (Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco)

Chair: Luisa Faustini (GRITIM-UPF)    

Synopsis

This lecture focuses on one of the most deadly corridors in the Mediterranean: the African-Canadian Atlantic route, which can take 1,600 km and several weeks of navigation. If migration corridors in a broader sense refer to the routes taken by migrants, which can be influenced by various factors, including geopolitical, social and environmental conditions, the concept of "necrocorridors" could imply routes that are particularly dangerous or deadly for migrants. This means that not all migration corridors are necrocorridors. Therefore, we are interested in proposing a model that can help us understand the processes of necrocorridor formation. Namely, what are the conditions that make a corridor a particular necrocorridor, and then to contribute to the already broader debate on necropolitics. By highlighting the specificity of the Canary Corridor, we will combine necropolitics with Butler's suggestive theory of grievability to discuss how structural, political and media neglect serve to systematically prevent mourning and remembrance. Also we will take some arguments put forward by global justice debates. The chapter will have three main parts. A more conceptual and theoretical one, in which we will introduce the category of necropolitics and justify why the Canary Island corridor is particularly illustrative. A second part, in which the methodology and data sources will be presented, together with the theoretical model of the necrocorridor that we are trying to construct. And then a third part, more evidence-based, where we will try to propose a model of the necrocorridor using the data and ethnographic information from an empirical study. The basic argument we will put forward is that a necrocorridor is politically constructed and banalised by the same politics that provoke it, together with the media and public opinion.

Bio

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Mohammed Ouhemmou is an assistant professor at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco. His fields of interest include public policy analysis, migration and internationalization policies. His research investigates the link between foreign policy and the politics of mobility. He has published a number of articles on international mobility and migration policies in Morocco and North Africa, including “Tense Neighbors, Algeria and Morocco Have Divergent Migration Histories” (2023), “Migration, Governance and Geopolitical Conflicts in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Moroccan Algerian Migration Policies” (2021), “Moroccan Migration and Integration Policy: The Intersection of Culture and Public Policy Making” (2020), and “Comparative Analysis of Migration Policies and Social Transformations in the MENA Region” (2020). Mr. Ouhemmou is also interested in policies of educational mobility from sub-Saharan Africa into Morocco and he particularly focuses on how African students in Moroccan universities navigate symbolic and social borders.

Session 4 – IEMed

“Governing Diversity in Polarized Times: Mediterranean Cities and the Ideological Turn”

Wednesday, 25 March 2026 | 12:00-14:00 | Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

Invited Speakers:

• Sari Hanafi (Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Media Studies; Director, Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, American University of Beirut)
• Luisa Faustini (Associate Professor, GRITIM-UPF; EuroMedMig Project Officer)
• Amel Boubekeur (Associate Professor, LEST – Laboratoire d’Économie et de Sociologie du Travail, CNRS / Aix-Marseille Université)

Chair: Ricard Zapata-Barrero (Professor, Department of Political and Social Sciences; Director, GRITIM-UPF; Coordinator, EuroMedMig. Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Synopsis

Mediterranean cities and regions have historically served as laboratories for pragmatic and relational diversity governance, relying on coexistence, civil-society engagement and informal practices. In recent years, local and regional diversity policies have undergone an ideological turn, where inclusionary and/or diversity frameworks increasingly intersect with securitization, conditionality, and nativist political narratives. Some contend that certain forms of immigration pose challenges to liberal democratic principles, while others argue that immigrant conservatism can be consistent with the conception of justice and compatible with a pluralistic conception of the good, and is therefore not inherently illiberal. This transformation reflects broader dynamics linked to migration crises, border externalization, and political polarization.
The roundtable examines this phenomenon through three complementary perspectives:
1. Conceptual Perspective: Explores the ideological turn itself, analyzing how local policies actively shape political imaginaries of belonging, social mixing, and urban coexistence.
2. Policy and Governance Perspective: Focuses on concrete instruments such as reception systems, housing allocation, integration programs, and regional inclusion frameworks, highlighting how policy design and implementation can reinforce or mitigate nativist narratives.
3. Critical and Comparative Perspective: Investigates how policies are contested, reframed, or instrumentalized in public discourse, emphasizing the interaction between governance practices and populist or mixophobic mobilization.
By integrating these perspectives, the roundtable provides a holistic understanding of the complex relationship between Mediterranean diversity governance and the ideological pressures shaping local and regional policy environments.

Bios

Sari Hanafi is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. He served as President of the International Sociological Association (2018–23) and Vice President of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (2015–16). An International Fellow of the British Academy, he was also the Editor of Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology (2007–22). His contributions to the field have been recognized with some of the Arab world’s most prestigious academic awards, including the Abdelhamid Shouman Award (2014) and the Kuwait Award for Social Science (2015). In 2019, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of San Marcos, Peru.

Luisa Faustini Torres holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Prior to that, she completed a Master in Immigration Management at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2015) and a Master in International Relations at the Barcelona Institute for International Studies (2012), where she specialized in global governance and foreign policy. She also holds a B.A. in International Relations from the IBMEC University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her PhD research focused on the nexus between EU external migration policies and the democratization of countries in the Southern Mediterranean neighbourhood (with a focus in Morocco as a case study). Her main research interests are international politics, immigration policies and migration diplomacy. She is particularly interested in policy analysis and qualitative research methods (content and text analysis with CAQDAS). Starting from March 2025, she has also become  EuroMedMig project coordinator.

Amel Boubekeur is a tenure-track Associate Professor of political sociology at Aix-Marseille University, where she holds the Research Chair “Geopolitical Turmoil and Social Transformations in the Mediterranean.” Her research employs comparative political analysis to examine political economy, governance, and religious transformations across the EuroMed region, the Maghreb, and European Muslim communities.

Session 5 – UPF

"Borders control and SAR obligations in the Mediterranean: Between Human Rights and Security" 

Tuesday, 21 April 2026 | 18:30–20:00 | Aula Mediterrània (IEMed)

Invited Speaker: 

• Silvia Morgades (GRITIM-UPF)

Chair: Mahmoud Mansour (EuroMedMig, GRITIM, UPF)

Synopsis

Irregular migration has been securitised in the context of preventing irregular entries of third-country nationals to the European Union (EU) Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. In the maritime sphere, preventing irregular migration from arriving in the EU must ensure the respect for the right to life enshrined in a number of international instruments applicable to the EU and to its member states. This article will examine the tension between preventing irregular migration and ensuring the human rights of migrants in two areas: first, rescues in Frontex-led operations at sea; and second, search and rescue operations within the framework of the EU’s integrated border management activities in the Mediterranean. Finally, the article will include some final reflections on the measures that could be taken in order to address human insecurity and the weakening of human rights at the European sea borders.

Bio

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 Dr. Sílvia Morgades-Gil is a Serra Hunter Associate Professor of International Public Law at the Department of Law, Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain), and a member of the Research Group on Public International Law and International Relations and GRITIM-UPF. She teaches EU Law, Asylum and Refugee Law, and International Migration Law at UPF and CEI-International Affairs. Since 2019, she has been a Research Affiliate at the Refugee Law Initiative, University of London. She received the Extraordinary Doctoral Prize at UPF and the 2008 Human Rights First Prize from the Generalitat de Catalunya. She has conducted postdoctoral research at Université Paris 1-Sorbonne and IHEID Geneva. Her publications include articles in leading journals and the monograph De refugiados a Rechazados (Tirant Lo Blanch, 2021). ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1255-9285.

Session 6 – UPF

" Migration policies in France. Between metropolitan France and the colonies, France as a case study" 

Tuesday, 28 May 2026| 15:00–17:00 | UPF, Ciutadella Campus, Room: Calsamiglia

Speaker: Eric Savarese (Université de Montpellier – CEPEL)

Chair: Demetra Santagati (EuroMedMig, GRITIM-UPF)

Synopsis

Migration policies in France are part of a long history. Indeed, while the right of asylum was invented during the French Revolution, France became, since the end of the 19th century, a country of immigration. Under these conditions, it’s possible to explain how migration policies are chosen, from which public action instruments they are made, and how France has been able to experiment, for 150 years, all immigration policies. But migration policies do not concern only metropolitan France. They also concern colonial Algeria: with the colonization beginning in 1830, and the dynamics of the settler colony, Algeria was progressively populated by French People, but also with Spanish, Italians and Maltese. Organized for the purpose of territorial occupation, this migration policy reflects the logic of colonial governance, for which demography is the main science of government.

Bio

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 Eric Savarese is a professor of political science at the University of Montpellier. His research focuses on the question of citizenship, considered in the colonial (especially Algerian) and postcolonial contexts. Algerian independence left to the emergence of new groups of individuals (« pieds-noirs », « harkis », repatriates, former soldiers), and influenced migration policies and the politics of memory. His current research focuses on the governance of colonial Algeria through demography, viewed from the perspective of the production of ethnic statistics in the former settler colony.