Colloquium

9-10 October 2025

FULLY-FUNDED PHD AND POSTDOC COLLOQUIUM IN FORCED MIGRATION AND REFUGEE RESEARCH

The Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1604 “Production of Migration” and the BMBF-funded project “Forced Migration and Refugee Studies: Networking and Knowledge Transfer” (FFVT) offer a fully-funded two-day colloquium in the field of forced migration and refugee research. It is open to PhD researchers and early career Postdocs based in Germany.

The colloquium aims to provide support and facilitate exchange among junior researchers who work on issues related to forced migration and refugee studies. It provides a platform for presenting and discussing ongoing PhD and Postdoc projects alongside opportunities for joint reflection on concepts, categories, and methodologies in dialogue with reflexive approaches in migration research. The colloquium aims to foster exchange and networking that can extend in future workshops. By joining forces, the FFVT-project and the SFB with its Integrated Research-Training Group offer vast resources and expertise and thus a unique environment for spurring and supporting early career researchers.

We invite contributions on a broad range of topics such as conflict-related internal and international migration, climate-induced migration, the governance or control of migration including restrictions, borders and barriers to migration and mobility, topics related to arrival, integration or exclusion as well as deportation, return and reintegration; also, theoretical, conceptual and methodological considerations are welcome.

The colloquium will be fully-funded. Travel, accommodation and catering will be covered. We will be able to host around 15 participants.

Applications should consist of an abstract of the PhD or Postdoc project (ca. 500 words) including a section on the aspect or chapter to be presented, a brief letter of motivation (ca. 250 words) and short bio (ca. 100 words).

Please send your applications to franck.duvell@uni-osnabrueck.de until 15 May 2025.

Selection will be based on the quality of the applications. We will also consider a balanced representation across career stages, thematic foci as well as institutional affiliation.

For further questions, you can contact Franck Düvell and Christine Lang.

Find the CfA here as PDF.

Workshop

27.-28. November 2023

Ukraine: 18 Months of Displacement – What Do We Know So Far?

It is now about 18 months ago that Russia attacked Ukraine. The war is already dragging on longer than many initially assumed. As a result, several million Ukrainians and no few foreign residents in Ukraine were displaced internally and internationally, including a large number who were deported to Russia many of whom are now trying to move on. Some of the displaced persons moved on to other countries whereas others even return home. On the one hand, the duration of the war prolongs the period of uncertainty for displaced persons whilst on the other hand compels people to make plans, at least for the near future.

We aim to (a) take stock of the state of research on migration and integration of displaced persons in and from Ukraine and identify emerging trends and results, even if only preliminary, (b) facilitate feeding evidence into the public domain, and (c) identify research gaps and encourage future research collaboration.

Call for Papers

Details

IMIS Brown Bag Session

13. September 2022 12:00-13:00

FFVT Fellow Dr. Mary Rose Sarausad: Assessment of Thailand’s Current Policy Response to Forced Displacement and Alternative Pathways for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a Non-Signatory Country

The main aim of the research is to assess the recently enacted Thailand's National Screening Mechanism (NSM) in addressing issues related to refugee protection and the uncertain conditions of refugees and asylum seekers in the country. Thailand, like several countries in Southeast Asia, is a non-signatory country to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.Thus, a refugee framework has been non-existent and it makes no distinction between migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, and enforces policies under the 1979 Immigration Act. The establishment of the NSM in 2019 is viewed as a step forward by various sectors as the government fulfills its commitment toward refugee protection but is also considered as ambiguous, and places refugees and asylum seekers in a more vulnerable position. Therefore, it is necessary to recommend for the expansion of the legal framework of the NSM and its implementation in order to provide an effective and fair refugee policy for the protection and integration of those in Thailand.Established refugee frameworks in the EU will be examined to determine effective refugee policies that can be used as a model for Thailand and other non-signatory countries in the Southeast Asian region.

IMIS Brown Bag Session

29. March 2023 12:00-13:00 

FFVT-Fellow Prof. Dr. Bezen Balamir Coşkun: Women Peace and Security Agenda, Women Refugees and National Refugee Regimes: The Case of Germany

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data, there are 84 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Among all, there are 26 million refugees and 4.2 million asylum seekers (UNHCR n.d). Half of the world's refugees and asylum seekers consist of women and girls. Women refugees and asylum seekers are commonly subject to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination based on their sex and other factors such as race, religion, or ethnicity. Furthermore, they face several challenges such as trauma, health complications, physical harm, injury, and all forms of exploitation. Thus, mass displacement is a pressing WPS issue. [...] WPS agenda requires states to develop their national refugee regimes responding to women’s rights and needs. Despite its importance, in the fields of forced migration and refugee studies literature studies that integrate WPS agenda are few (Among all see Holvikivi & Reeves 2020; Kirby 2020; Gyan-Addo, Standke-Erdmann & Stachowitsch 2021; Spasić 2019; Algora 2019). Thus, the aim of this research is multifaceted. First of all, it will cover the WPS-related issues that are neglected in forced migration and refugee studies literature. To do so, as being one of the major refugee host states Germany’s refugee and asylum regimes and their implementation will be inquired to answer the following questions: How do national refugee regimes link women refugees with the Women Peace and Security Agenda? How can the WPS agenda be promoted in the field of refugees and asylum seekers?

IMIS Brown Bag Session

08. March 2022, 12:00-13:00

FFVT Fellow Prof. Dr. Aysegul Kayaoglu: Gender-Sensitive Effects of Ethnic Enclaves on Syrian Refugees’ Paid Employment in Turkey  

Causal evidence about the impact of ethnic enclaves on refugees is very scarce, and those few that are available pertain only to certain refugee communities in just several developed countries, which, as a result, remain too narrow to be generalizable to even other immigrant populations in the same countries, let alone elsewhere. Moreover, the available evidence is only informative about the net impact of ethnic enclaves on employment. That said, we do not have information about the mechanisms that play a significant role in this net effect. This paper mainly contributes to the literature by providing the first causal evidence on the topic for a developing country context, and it provides the first available evidence about the mechanisms that are argued to play a role in the net impact of ethnic enclaves.

IMIS Brown Bag Session

15. February 2023, 12:00-13:00

FFVT Fellow Nazda Güngördü: Refugees’ housing strategies under precarious conditions and policy/political gaps in migration and asylum governance in Turkey.

The presentation will take a closer look at the emplacement strategies of refugees in urban context by focusing on the «housing» process. Specifically, it will present the main findings of a rigorous fieldwork conducted in Izmir, Türkiye, on the housing strategies of Syrian refugees under precarious conditions, legal/political ambiguities and policy gaps in the Turkish context (i.e., gaps in the governance of refugees’ settlement, mobility and integration). In explaining this process of “self-settling”, the presentation will explore the individual housing strategies of Syrian refugees and the roles of non-state actors (i.e., local initiatives, landlords, realtors, mukhtars) in refugees’ access to housing, who step in to fill/solve or take the advantage of the policy gaps. The presentation will focus on three interrelated topics representing the re-distributional, spatial and relational dimensions of refugee emplacement/housing: (I) refugees’ housing needs, housing options and novel strategies to access housing, (ii) housing location and (ii) the non-state actors shaping/influencing refugees’ housing strategies and access to housing.

IMIS Brown Bag Session

18. January 2023, 12:00-13:00

 FFVT Fellow Bojana Babic: Everyday life of Syrian Refugees in Istanbul and Cairo

Building on a couple of years of ethnography of the everyday life of the displaced Syrian population in the cities of Cairo and Istanbul within this presentation, I would like to reflect on some of my theoretical observations around the economic subject and emerging subjectivities. More precisely, I would organise this presentation around the following inquiry: How someone “thrown into the world” come to “rationalise” towards making their livings; thus, through which practices and means they come to “know”, “judge”, “calculate” and “improvise” towards making their livings in the city (such as Cairo and Istanbul) and whether as such these displaced population is becoming an “active participants” in the making and remaking the urban lives of the city rather than just a new economic subject of further control. That should provide us with the conversation around how to think further about a link between the displaced population and ‘homo-economicus".

IMIS Brown Bag Session

26. October 2022, 12:00-13:00

FFVT Fellow Merve Erdilmen: Gender mainstreaming practices of refugee‐led community organizations (RLCOs)

In her work, Merve Erdilmen investigates how refugees’ everyday practices and life experiences shape global gender mainstreaming efforts? By investigating the everyday gender mainstreaming practices of refugee-led organizations (RLOs) in the area of refugee protection in Turkey, now the world’s largest refugee hosting country, I aim to deepen understandings of refugee agency and the taken-for-granted nature of actors within global governance regimes. To answer this question, methodologically, I employ a mix of multi-sited ethnography in Turkey and in-depth interviews with different humanitarian actors.

Workshop

17.-18. October 2022

Forced migration and refugee studies in the East. Is there a need for acknowledging the Global East as yet another epistemic concept? 

Thinking about the world in a simple binary of the Global North and the Global South epistemologically disregards the experiences of the post-Soviet countries and generally the regions in the Global East (Müller 2020). Equally, some post-colonial thinking tends to struggle with the subaltern imperial position of Russia and other countries towards the West who are colonial powers in the region but subaltern to the North (Morozov 2013) or the dual subaltern position of countries such as Ukraine or Georgia vis a vis the North and Russia (Chernetsky 2003) or of subaltern powers such as Russia which may be inferior to the West but still superior to other countries in their vicinity. The epistemic concept of the Global East does thus not imply any homogeneity but rather facilitates studying its great diversity as well as the regional power relations of the coloniser and the colonised. However, the East “is outside the circuits and conduits of Western knowledge architecture” (Müller 2020).

The purpose of this workshop is thus threefold: (a) to sketch the state-of-the-art of forced migration research on the countries east of the EU, (b) to discuss the utility of the concept of the Global East not so much as a region but as an “epistemic concept” (Müller 2020) and (c) to consider how to facilitate and expand research collaboration and research.

Details

IMIS Brown Bag Session

22. June 2022, 10:00-12:00

FFVT Fellow Saniye Dedeoglu: Book presentation "Syrian Refugees and Agriculture in Turkey. Work, Precarity, Survival" 

The presentation explores how the vulnerabilities of Syrian refugees influence their integration into Turkish labour markets, in particular the agricultural sector. Taking into account the concept of ‘intersectional vulnerabilities’ as a form of embodiment of interconnected disadvantages based on social categorisations (such as race, ethnicity, class, gender and social status – e.g. being migrants), my presentation explores how refugees use the most vulnerable groups – women and children – to gain access to employment and how the vulnerabilities of Syrian refugees influence their integration into Turkish labour markets, in particular the agricultural sector. ‘Vulnerable integration’ paves the path to the inclusion of the most vulnerable segments of migrant labour in the face of rivalry among different segments of the precariat to obtain existing agricultural jobs. It also highlights the interconnectedness between women’s production and social reproduction by focusing on how the feminisation of precarisation of Syrian labour in Turkey is built on intersectional vulnerabilities of women and children. Therefore, I develop a sociological multidimensional dynamic way of thinking about the integration of Syrian refugee labour in Turkey.

Book

Online Podiumsdiskussion

20. Juni 2022

"Refugees beyond the headlines: Navigating emerging and protracted challenges in 2022" Öffentliche Veranstaltung zum Weltflüchtlingstag

Der 20. Juni ist der Weltflüchtlingstag! Kriege und gewaltsame Konflikte, Verfolgung, Armut, Klimawandel und viele andere Probleme tragen dazu bei, dass Menschen ihre Herkunftsregionen verlassen und anderenorts Schutz suchen müssen. Zur Diskussion über neue und langwierige Probleme kommen acht Institutionen zu einem Gespräch unter dem Titel “Refugees beyond the headlines: Navigating emerging and protracted challenges in 2022” zusammen.

Details

IMIS Brown Bag Session

25. May 2022, 12:00-13:00

FFVT Fellow Dr Jorge Morales Cardiel: Forced Transit Migration in Mexico

„My current FFVT project is focused in the differential experiences of forced displacement between two ethnic groups: garífuna and mestizo from Honduras. I think is innovate because it seeks to compare the differential migration strategies of two populations ethnically distinct but displaced from the same country. For it, I´ll identify forms of discrimination that put populations such as the Garifuna like a disadvantage or an advantage, compared to their mestizo fellow citizens. Highlighting the sociocultural resources that can benefit this Afro-American migrant population. In terms of reaching and assimilate faster their final destination United States, what I call "racial of bridges" or “ethnic bridges”."

Online Diskussion

4. April 2022

FFVT on point: Flucht in und aus der Ukraine – einige (weniger bekannte) Facetten

In Folge des Krieges im Donbas 2014 und verstärkt seit dem direkten russischen Angriffs auf die Ukraine im Februar 2022 sind fünf Millionen Menschen auf der Flucht – innerhalb des Landes wie auch aus der Ukraine hinaus. FFVT on point nimmt diese Fluchtbewegung genauer in den Blick und fragt danach, wie sich diese heterogene Gruppe zusammensetzt, wohin die Menschen sich in Sicherheit bringen und welche Aufnahme- und Unterstützungsstrukturen hier neben denen der aufnehmenden Staaten und internationalen Organisationen hier entstehen und aktiv werden. FVVT on point stellt damit Aspekte in den Fokus, die in der bisherigen medialen und wissenschaftlichen Analyse des Fluchtgeschehens nicht im Mittelpunkt stehen, um ein differenzierteres Bild zu der Flucht in und aus der Ukraine sichtbar zu machen.

Details

Aufzeichnung der Diskussion

Online Diskussion

3. März 2022

Ukraine: Krieg & Flucht: Austausch und Diskussion

Aufgrund der aktuellen Situation in der Ukraine laden das IMIS und FFVT ein zu einer Veranstaltung, in der die IMIS-Mitglieder Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schneckener und Dr. Franck Düvell je einen Input zur aktuellen Situation geben: Ulrich Schneckener mit einer Konfliktanalyse aus politikwissenschaftlicher Sicht und Franck Düvell, der bis vor wenigen Tagen in der Ukraine war, zu Fragen von Grenzen, Flucht und Migration.

Details

Online Workshop

28.-29. September 2021

Comparative Forced Migration and Refugee Studies – reflexive, postcolonial, international 

This workshop shall be devoted mainly to forced migration and displacement processes and the underlying causes/drivers/motivations, infrastructures, experiences, particularities, geography etc. but less so to policy. It aims to promote and strengthen the recent shifts towards a comparative approach as well as generally a reflexive approach in the field. To this end, it wishes to obtain a better overview over the state-of-the-art of comparative forced migration studies. This shall also facilitate sketching some key parameters of comparative forced migration and refugee studies. Another objective is to link comparative migration studies to refugee studies. Equally important is it to increase the visibility or even enhance perspectives of the Global South and East.

Details 

Online Workshop

29 - 30. July 2021

Advances, Recent Trends and Knowledge Gaps in Forced Migration and Refugee Research in and on Turkey

On 29/30 July 2021, the Turkey Migration Studies network (TurkMiS) workshop “Advances, Recent Trends and Knowledge Gaps in Forced Migration and Refugee Research in and on Turkey” was held at IMIS (online). It was the 10th Anniversary Event of TurkMiS and the 15th International Workshop, organized by Dr Franck Düvell (IMIS) and Dr Ali Zafer Sağıroğlu (AYBU) in collaboration with the GIZ and in the context of the FFVT project. We took stock of the achievements of the last decade of knowledge production on refugees in Turkey. We had excellent speakers including a dramatic and moving report from a colleague from Kabul and an exciting policy round table.

Workshop report

Details

Konferenz

26. November 2021

Refugees: Integration, Harmonisation, Solidarity, Hospitality or what? Philosophies,Policies and Practices in Turkey and Germany

Turkey is hosting several million refugees, mostly from Syria but also many other countries. It is widely acknowledged that hosting large numbers of refugees is a morally, politically and practically complex issue and that the future of Syrian and other refugees in Turkey relies on successfully navigating the diverse challenges. Over the last decades, Turkey has been going through a migration transition meaning that the country has converted from a net emigration to a net immigration country. This has been further reinforced by the arrival of a few million Syrian refugees who are the largest immigrant groups. Cities and municipalities because they host the people are at the forefront of this process. This situation generated an almost ontological challenge with regards to the country’s and its host communities’ identity (Icduygu 2021). Germany, too, has a long tradition ofhosting large numbers of displaced persons and migrants. Within the EU, it is hosting the largest number of Syrians as well as many other refugees. Turkey and Germany and its societies and municipalities thus share long experiences with migration and the challenges to social cohesion. However, there are major differences in the respective country’s trajectories and perspectives. Whereas on the practical level much can be learned from one another, on the philosophical and policy level each specific approaches might be required.

The conference aims to facilitate an open conversation and cooperation between German and Turkish academics enriched by some international experts on how to think about and how to govern (new) diversity with the view to also underpin the practical challenges especially on the level of municipalities in both countries.

Details

Conference report

Online Panel Debate

1 October 2020, 17:00-18:30 (CEST), online

About the Non/Sense of Distinguishing between Migrants and Refugees – a Debate

In policy and public, it is often taken for granted to distinguish between migrants and refugees. However, researchers and practitioners tend to find that matters in the field are more intricate, reject a simple dichotomy, and struggle to assign clear labels to the opalescent realities. Whereas policy and law usually require clear-cut categories in order to manage mobilities, scholars seek to develop more fine-tuned typologies to explain the diversity of human behaviour and mobility. As a consequence, a whole array of concepts and categories has emerged, such as migration, forced migration, mixed migration, internal displacement, refuge, migrants, refugees, climate refugees, people on the move and even economic refugees. However, the labels such as migrants and refugees have significant legal and discursive powers as they determine which opportunities and rights new arrivals have.

In this panel debate, we aim to shed light on the diverse legal, scholarly and discursive practices and carve out lines of controversies to better understand the reasoning behind the different approaches. We have invited three distinguished guests from different disciplines, namely em. Prof Roger Zetter at the Refugee Studies Centre at University of Oxford, Prof Heaven Crawley, director of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University and Dr Dana Schmalz, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg/Berlin.

The debate is hosted by the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at Osnabrück University (IMIS) and part of the FFVT-Workshop Series. It will be held online via Zoom Webinar. For registration, please send an email to ffvt@uos.de including name, affiliation and email address by 28 September.

Details (PDF)

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