Refugee Migration and Urban Studies – Theoretical Challenges and New Approaches

Forced migration is a global phenomenon, which is regulated by supranational and national laws and politics. However, it is the city where the arrival, accommodation and integration of refugees predominantly take place. The city often overtakes a significant role – not only in implementing national approaches, but also in developing innovative and progressive urban solutions in regards to receiving, housing and integrating refugees. Especially in the context of the decline of the nation state and globalization, cities – due to processes of localization and rescaling – have the ability to overrule national migration regimes and to push for a migration agenda that has the needs of refugees at its heart.

Migration research and refugee studies have traditionally explored the nation state and supranational migration regimes in regards to refugee resettlement, housing challenges and integration practices. In the fields of urban studies, the city in relation to migration has been often applied as a container in which migrants settle consequently neglecting the impacts of refugees on urban development and the transformation of urban politics and society. However, in the passing years a growing body of scholarship has emerged addressing the importance of the local scale and the city as an actor in regards to migration and particularly the arrival of refugees. These research works apply and develop theories and/or conceptualize ideas of (im)mobility, infrastructures, arrival, local migration regimes, governance, localization and rescaling processes as well as planning theories and theories of space.

With focusing particularly on the (political, societal, cultural and economic) arrangements of the arrival of refugees in European metropolitan areas, this panel discusses the dynamic and complex relationship between refugee migration, urban development and restructuring from a theoretical angle. It examines concepts to study the role of the city (and its various actors) in managing refugee migration in relation to national political systems, trends of globalization and thus in regards to rescaling processes and “scale jumping”. It asks which theoretical approaches are suitable to develop research designs for the study of the organization and negotiations of the arrival of refugees in cities. Consequently this panel brings together the theoretical and conceptual fields of urban studies and refugee/migration research. It invites contributions that work with the mentioned concepts and other approaches focusing on theorizing (aspects of) the urban in regards to refugee migration.

If you are interested in participating in the session please send an abstract of no more than 250 words before December 10 to kreichauf@gsnas.fu-berlin.de and birgit.glorius@phil.tu-chemnitz.de. We will give a pre-decision on the papers until December 15th. The final decision upon acceptance of the panel is taken by the IMISCOE office in the course of February 2017.

Organisers of the panel:

René Kreichauf, MA Urban Studies, PhD Candidate at Freie Universität Berlin and Graduate School of North American Studies (GSNAS), John-F.-Kennedy Institute for North American Studies

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Birgit Glorius, associate professor at Chemnitz University of Technology, Institute for European Studies, Chair of Human Geography of East Central Europe, Chemnitz, Germany

About IMISCOE:

IMISCOE is the largest European network of scholars in the area of migration and integration. The focus is on comparative research and joint research projects. The annual IMISCOE conference is a key-moment in the agendas of most migration scholars in Europe. In addition, IMISCOE contributes to the training of young researchers and their exchange throughout Europe. Also IMISCOE plays an important role in the mutual dialogue between researchers and society (policy, politics, civil society).

Read more http://www.imiscoe.org/