The Swansea-Sorbonne Migration Network and the Online Migration Reading Group
The Swansea-Sorbonne Migration Network contributes to the development of Migration Research Wales (a new research network on migration within the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods) and started with a monthly Migration Reading Group.
The concept of the Migration Reading Group is that we will hold a series of reading sessions to critically engage migration concepts and issues affecting our world such as “deportation”, “integration”, “visibility”, “control”, “risk”, “fear”, “management”, “resistance” and the “nation-state”. These sessions take place online to enable international exchange and to reach people from different universities and research centres in Europe and the UK. The first session of the Migration Reading Group was held in November 2021, and the following sessions run until May 2022 on a monthly basis. The findings and discussions of this reading group will then also culminate in our two-day postgraduate conference hosted by Swansea University. The conference is an opportunity to present research related to themes of migration, mobilities and movement in a supportive and inclusive environment.
Academic conference theme: Migration, Mobilities and Emerging Political Spaces
The conference theme engages with how political movements and migrants do experience, navigate, and assemble political space. This theme is anchored in contemporary debates in International Political Sociology (IPS) seeking to conceptualize movement in ways that often challenge and/or exceed established sociological political categories (including identity, the people, citizenship, sovereignty etc.). In these debates, migration is understood as an analytical lens which enables the politicization of practices of mobility, but also highlights and makes visible the exclusionary boundaries of what are commonly considered "political spaces". From this starting point, ideas and themes emerging from the reading group will influence the make-up and structure of the conference, with panels and discussions that will critically engage migration concepts and issues including affect, integration, visibility, control, sovereignty, risk, fear, management, resistance, and the nation-state.
The event will bring together contemporary research from notable academics from the UK, France, Denmark and Italy and inspiring papers from several postgraduate students, early career researchers and emerging academics working on a wide range of topics surrounding issues of migration, mobility, and the politics of space. The conference will also welcome local civil society organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers, such as Swansea City of Sanctuary and the Ethic Youth Support Team (EYST) to showcase and exhibit their important work and to put them into conversation with our attending academics. The event is funded by the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute (MASI) at Swansea University and by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Wales Doctoral Training Centre and is organised in collaboration with the Centre for Migration Policy Research (CMPR) at Swansea University.
Confirmed academic speakers and panel presenters
Senior Academics
Professor Maja Zehfuss, University of Copenhagen, Keynote
Professor Yann Richard, Sorbonne University, Keynote
Dr Angharad Closs Stephens, Swansea University
Professor Clarisse Didelon-Loiseau, Sorbonne University
Dr Oscar Garcia Agustin, Aalborg University
Professor Pierluigi Musaro, University of Bologna
Professor Sergei Shubin, Swansea University
Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers
Dr Aled Singleton, Swansea University, ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Bethan Hier, Swansea University, Master Student
Djolar Kossigari, PhD student at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Dr Eleanor Cotterill, Lecturer at Cardiff University
Dr Franz Bernhardt, Swansea University, ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Felix Gueguen, Sorbonne University, PhD student
Jamie Abramson, Swansea University and EYST, PhD student
Khadija Medani, PhD student at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Mila Sanchez, Sorbonne University, Joint PhD Programme Swansea University and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Myrian Ouellet, PhD student at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Sarah Foster, Swansea University, PhD student