Contested boundaries: migration and citizenship regimes in comparative perspective

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme
• MPC: Migration Policy Centre
• GlobalCit: Global Citzenship Observatory

Join this event that will bring insight from a variety of disciplinary, methodological, and empirical perspectives to promote a synergetic reflection on key issues in the study of international migration and citizenship, including the main intellectual, analytical, and methodological challenges across the two interconnected fields of research.

The conference will explore how international migration and citizenship regimes can be powerful sources of economic growth, societal change, and human development. At the same time, citizenship and migration often drive political divisions or contest knowledge and expertise of and about migration and citizenship. This duality contributes to an uneasy relationship between openness and closure in migration and citizenship regimes, the sources and effects of political contestation, and the contentious politics of knowledge of and about international migration and citizenship.

As such, it raises a plethora of questions, including: (1) the constitution and effects of boundary mechanisms, (2) categorisations and classifications systems that govern international migration and citizenship, (3) the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion governing key societal processes such as access to citizenship, employment and social rights, and (4) the role of expertise and knowledge in the contentious politics of migration and citizenship. These issues play out from the local/community to the international forums and require connections to be made across levels through multidisciplinary interactions.