CfP ESA RN35 Sociology of Migration Midterm Conference, Athens, 27-28/11/2025

ESA RN35 Sociology of Migration Midterm Conference

in collaboration with the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

November 27-28, 2025, Athens

Sociology of migration after the 2015 “migrant crisis”

The ESA RN35 2025 midterm conference focuses on the transformations that have followed the 2015 “migrant crisis” in Europe. Ten years after the sudden upsurge in refugee and migrant influx recorded in 2015-2016, what traces are left in European border regimes, migration policies, political imaginaries, and in sociology of migration itself? How have European countries and the EU responded to the upsurge and to the post emergency phase? How have the arrivals reshaped local contexts of entry and resettlement from the Mediterranean and the Polish-Belarussian border forests to German cities and Nordic neighbourhoods, and beyond? How have cultural representations, political meanings, and scientific research of migration and migration-induced diversity changed in the last 10 years, and with what effect to European democracies, economies, and welfare states?

The midterm conference that brings together scholars in Greece, a frontline of the 2015 crisis, invites papers and panels from and on Europe that examine changes in border and mobility regimes and migration policy across the continent. It also invites papers that target the political uses of immigration and the mutations in the production of sociological knowledge on human mobility. In other words, the conference offers a venue for sociological imagination to travel back in time and open new perspectives to migration from the rearranged borders of Europe.

Conference themes: We welcome papers and panels that consider the following issues:

• The impact of the “migrant crisis” on mobility patterns and experiences: How has the “migrant crisis”, along with the COVID-19 and current armed conflicts, altered patterns of mobility, including migratory projects, routes, and destinations? How have cross-nationally mobile individuals – from asylum seekers to privileged migrants – responded to the post- emergency phase in different European settings?
• Post-2015 migration policy: How has the Pact on Migration and Asylum reshaped the European border and migration regimes? To what extent and effect have migration policies undergone Europeanisation or, on the contrary, fragmentation?
• Patterns of exclusion/inclusion: How have patterns of exclusion/inclusion been reshaped in the aftermath of the 2015 “migration crisis”? What political discourses and cultural representations have returned or emerged, and how do they affect social imaginaries of a de facto diverse Europe? How have labour markets and welfare states responded to the crisis and with what effect on migrants’ – and citizens’ – access to rights and resources?
• Migration research and theory: How has sociology of migration responded to the 2015-2016 migrant influx and to the subsequent crisis induced population movements? What concepts and theories, data and methods, do European sociologists of migration employ in and across national settings, and with what effect on the ways migration is conceptualised within the academic sphere and beyond it? What could be sociology’s unique contribution to the study of human mobility and associated emergencies? Will sociology of migration stand the trial of current (geo)political turmoil, why and how?

Conference format: We aim for a vibrant two-day conference that brings together younger and well-established scholars from across Europe and beyond working in the field of sociology of migration and closely related disciplines. The conference will host three types of session:

• Thematical sessions brought together either on the basis of individual paper submissions or panel proposals.
• Two early-stage researchers’ sessions organized around papers by PhD or junior researchers to be discussed in a supportive environment by experienced researchers.
• Two sessions on the production of sociological knowledge on migration organised by the RN35 board. The board encourages paper submissions that focus on national traditions and cross-national tendencies in sociology of migration, on the dynamics of discipline-defining themes, methods and theories in different European settings, and current institutional and political conditions of knowledge production. The RN35 will work towards a special issue based on the papers received and therefore first versions are expected in Athens.

Proposal submission: Please submit your paper abstract or panel proposal with a short biographical note to rn35conference2025@gmail.com by 31 May 2025. Decisions will be communicated by the end of June 2025.

Individual abstracts are expected to include a title and a 250-word abstract with the contact and affiliation details of the author(s). While two early stage scholar sessions are planned, junior sociologist are welcome to apply for all other sessions too. Panel proposals are expected to include the panel title, three to five papers (titles and abstracts, names of authors with affiliation, and a discussant) and a brief indication of the session’s overarching theme (1000 words max.).

Fees and accommodation: No conference fees will be charged, but conference participants will need to pay their own travel and accommodation. Information on accommodation will be communicated in due course.

Organisers:

Local Committee: Olga Lafazani (Humboldt University of Berlin), Haris Malamidis Dimitra Mareta, Dimitris Parsanoglou, Alexandros Sakellariou, Manos Spyridakis & Nefeli Stournara (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Apostolos Papadopoulos (Harokopio University of Athens), Ioanna Tsigkanou (National Centre for Social Research), Aggeliki Yfanti (Academy of Athens)

RN 35 Board: Ilenya Camozzi (University of Milano-Bicocca), Linda Haapajärvi (Tampere University), Rosa Gatti (University of Naples Federico II) Maxime Maréchal (Université Paris Cité, Laura Odasso (Cergy Paris Université), Ildikó Zakariás (HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences)

For more information about RN35: https://www.europeansociology.org/research-networks/rn35-sociology-migration