MMOBILITIES AND IMMOBILITIES IN AN ERA OF POLYCRISIS

2024 IMISCOE Spring Conference

17-19 April 2024

Dear scholars, researchers, and practitioners,

We are delighted to announce the 20th Year of MiReKoc with a conference on “Mobilities and Immobilities in an Era of Polycrisis”, to be held in collaboration with 2024 IMISCOE Spring Conference, Europe’s leading network of migration scholars. This momentous occasion celebrates two decades of dedicated exploration and analysis of migration dynamics, offering an invaluable platform to reflect on our past achievements and chart a path towards a more inclusive and resilient future.

The conference will take place at Koç University, known for its unwavering commitment to academic excellence and cutting-edge research. From April 17-19, 2024, our gathering will bring together distinguished academics, policymakers, and practitioners from around the globe, providing an enriching opportunity for cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaborative knowledge exchange.

Elaborating on the term “polycrisis”, this international conference proposes to explore the impact of these multiple and overlapping crises on migration and mobility by focusing particularly on the above-introduced four crisis axes: politics, economics, health, and climate. Research that accounts for these multiple and overlapping crises will provide deeper insights into their impacts on migration and mobility. The conference aims to bring together academics from various disciplines and geographies with different methodological approaches to discuss these pressing issues. It seeks to foster a research agenda that embeds migration and mobility within current social transformations while acknowledging multiple crises we are going through. The conference aims to create a space for future-oriented dialogue and exchange among scholars.

Themes

This international conference proposes to explore the impact of multiple, compound and overlapping crises on generating complex, nuanced and multi-directional actions within the mobility spectrum, such as emigration; return; forced displacement; or immobility. The conference theme benefits from the terminology “polycrisis” to define the scale, multitude, speed and overlapping natures of the crisis situations globally.  It aims to provide a venue for scholars and researchers to explore the intersection between polycrises and (im)mobilities, particularly focusing on four main crisis axes, independently and simultaneously, including politics, economics, health, and climate. This conference will consider submissions focusing on one of the following topics:

• Polycrisis, mobility/immobility, and stages of migration
  • Mobility/Immobility and Polycrisis
  • Migration aspirations
  • Settled immigrant populations
  • Return decisions
• Perspectives on political crises
  • Emerging and protracted conflict situations with far reaching impact
  • Regional perspectives from Ukraine / Syria / Afghanistan / Iran among others
  • Migration diplomacy and the instrumentalization of migration crises
  • Rising xenophobia and democracies in crisis
  • The language of crisis and its implications for migration policies
• Migration within the context of global economic and financial crises
  • Inflation – Increase in living costs
  • Demographic Developments
  • Unemployment/Labour market integration
  • Shifting economic activities/patterns (e.g. gig economy, digital nomadism, etc.)
• Migration and Health in a rapidly changing world
  • The COVID-19 Pandemic as impetus to revisit mobility discussions
  • Right to health; migrant and refugee health in transit and upon arrival
  • Migration and transnationalism on health-related decisions/practices
• Environmental and climate change induced migration
  • Food security and migration
  • Direct/indirect slow onset processes
  • Rapid onset disasters

Call for Papers

This conference will be hybrid in nature and presenters can join online or in person.

Registration for Attendees

Registration is required for all participants. To register, please visit the conference website at https://mirekoc2024imiscoe.ku.edu.tr/

Conference Web Page

Please visit the conference webpage for more information at https://mirekoc2024imiscoe.ku.edu.tr/

Click <here> for the poster.