12:10 p.m.
I would love to see you all there.
Parvati
Call for Papers:
IMISCOE Annual Conference ‘Strengthening Migration Studies through Community Engagement’,
Girona, 29 June - 2 July 2026
Class Matters: Community engagement and middle-class migrants in migration research
Panel organisers:
Gunjan Sondhi, The Open University UK, gunjan.sondhi(a)open.ac.uk
Markus Roos Breines, Fafo Norway, mrb(a)fafo.no
Parvati Raghuram, The Open University UK, Parvati.raghuram(a)open.ac.uk
Community engagement has emerged as an important research strategy that aims to build
collaborative relationships between researchers, community members and community-based
stakeholders, whilst seeking to minimise the extractive and exploitative nature of
research practices. In migration studies, community engagement is commonly understood as a
way to rebalance the politics of knowledge production by working with migrants to give
voice to their experiences and to help develop programmes and policies that attempt to
‘solve their problems’. Although such research is impactful, it has also been critiqued
for tokenism, its superficial nature, knowledge appropriation, and for data analysis
through the privileged lens of the migration researcher. Underpinning this critique is the
assumed legislative (citizen-asylum seeker, marginalised), class (middle-lower),
racialised (White-non-White) and geopolitical (Global North-South) distance between
researchers and the researched.
This panel turns its attention to how middle-class migration complicates both common
assumptions of community engagement in migration research and its critiques. Middle class
migrants are less, or at least differently, reliant on researchers to broker access,
obtain local knowledge and to further their lives. Class as it intersects with other
distinctions, might lead to differentiation. For instance, the distinctions around class
might be reversed across the sites the migrant lives stretch; racialisation might operate
differently as it intersects with class. However, other distinctions may persist, such as
that of global North- South or of citizenship, but may be transformed through migration.
Community engagement might be undertaken by middle class migrant academics and students
with their own communities or with other migrant groups, making for a varied set of class
and race affiliations and distinctions. as they are students and academics.
As importantly, exploring community engagement as it intersects with questions of class
will bring to light some of the common assumptions that we make while thinking about this
topic. What are some other groups who may also throw light on community engagement because
they disrupt common discourses on this topic?
By considering class in the broadest sense (performance, relations of production,
politics, relational, cultural), the panel will explore the following questions:
•
What is the role of class in shaping the notion of community and community engagement?
•
What are the class assumptions of that make up the ‘community’ in migration research?
•
How does class intersect with race and migrant origin and destination countries to shape
the migration-community engagement nexus?
•
What does a class analysis tell us about migration, migration research and research
methodologies?
•
How can class and middle-classness be useful terms for thinking about community
engagement, but also migration studies more broadly?
We welcome contributions that explore the intersections between community engagement and
middle classes, in their diverse forms, locations and spaces. We particularly welcome
papers that look at middle class migrants and research in the global South.
Please email abstracts no longer than 250 words by 10th September to Gunjan Sondhi
(gunjan.sondhi(a)open.ac.uk) and Markus Breines (mrb(a)fafo.no)
Prof. Parvati Raghuram
Geography Department
The Open University, UK
ph 01908 655370
My latest publication
Mezzadri, A., (she/her), Rai, S. M., (she/her), Stevano, S., (she/her), Alessandrini, D.,
(she/her), Bargawi, H., (she/her), Elias, J., (she/her), …Raghuram, P., Wöhl, S.,
(she/her). (2025). Pluralizing social reproduction approaches. International Feminist
Journal of Politics, 1–28.
https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1080/14616742.2024.2447594
-----Original Message-----
From: ih(a)lunchtimeresults.org.za <ih(a)lunchtimeresults.org.za>
Sent: 04 July 2025 06:42
To: mim-highly.skilled(a)lists.sunet.se
Subject: [Mim-highly.skilled] Re: [MIM-Highly.Skilled] CfP, ŒThe Zero-Sum Game of
Migration in Europe: 20 years after Tampere¹, 15 Oct 2019
External email: if the sender or content looks suspicious, please click the Report Message
icon, or forward it to report-phishing
Migration in Europe has always been a sensitive balancing act, and the “zero-sum” framing
still sparks debate even years after Tampere. I came across a thought-provoking angle on
fairness and allocation while browsing a lottery on a different topic, but the tension
between gain and loss felt oddly familiar.
https://lunchtimeresults.org.za/
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