CESSMIR conference ‘Looking back, moving forward: migration studies in times of societal transformation’
14 September 2026
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16 September 2026
9:00 am
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7:00 pm
Ghent University, Campus Dunant, Henri Dunantlaan 2, Ghent, Belgium
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, CESSMIR invites researchers, practitioners, NGO representatives, volunteers, activists, and policymakers to join for a conference exploring migration studies in a changing societal landscape. Our call for contributions is open, registration (both for contributors and non-contributors) will open in March 2026.
This conference not only marks a decade of CESSMIR’s dedication to advancing the study of migration and refugees, but also aims to create a vibrant space for dialogue, reflection, and collaboration. Join us as we look back at the major changes in the last ten years, and envision new paths forward, strengthening the links between research, practice, and societal impact.
Call for contributions
In a context of rapid and often turbulent societal transformation, migration researchers are increasingly called upon to reflect on how their work engages with and responds to shifting global and local dynamics. This conference invites contributions that critically explore how migration intersects with key sites of inequality, contestation, and change. Across education and healthcare systems, persistent ethnoracial disparities reveal how structural and interpersonal forms of discrimination continue to shape migrant experiences. Language and religion, meanwhile, emerge as potent boundaries in processes of racialisation and exclusion. At the borders, the intensification of violence, the erosion of legal protection, and the criminalization of mobility challenge the principles of solidarity and justice. In response, scholars and activists are developing alternative, community-based approaches to migration and border governance. Simultaneously, calls to decenter and decolonize migration studies are gaining ground.
To deepen these discussions, the conference will be structured around six thematic streams that offer spaces to look back at critical debates in migration research, while moving forward in dialogue with ongoing societal transformations, with a focus on areas where CESSMIR researchers brought significant contributions. Furthermore, the conference also seeks to explore the dynamic interplay between migration research and policy, practice and activism, reflecting on the role of scholars and the impact of their work in this interplay.
- Ethnoracial inequalities in education
- Health at the intersections: migration, race, and inequality
- Multilingual borders of migration
- Entanglements of religion, race and migration
- Rethinking borders, solidarity and migration law
- Decolonial approaches to migration studies, narratives, practices
Details and deadlines
Details about submitting contributions
- You can find the detailed calls for each of the streams in the , along with info about the contributions formats and requirements.
- Abstract submission for individual presentations, symposia, dialogue sessions and other formats are welcome here.
Important deadlines
- Deadline for abstract submission: 23 February 2026 (extended!)
- Notification for acceptance or rejection: second half of March 2026
- Early registration: until 20 May 2026
- Late registration: until 1 September 2026
Preliminary program
Monday 14/09
PhD pre-conference
- 08.30 registration PhD pre-conference
- 09.00 PhD workshop
- 10.30 PhD pre-conference coffee
Main conference
- 10.00 registration main conference
- 11.00 Opening keynote Nando Sigona: Migration studies at a critical conjuncture
- 12.30 lunch
- 13.30 Parallel session 1
- 15.00 coffee
- 15.30 Parallel session 2
- 17.00 End conference day
- 17.30 Walk ‘Walking Gate Areas: Hidden Pasts, Present Futures’ with historian Tina De Gendt
Tuesday 15/09
- 09.30 Parallel sessions 3
- 11.00 Coffee break
- 11.30 Keynote Martina Tazzioli: Hijacking migration containment within the conjuncture
- 13.00 Lunch break
- 14.00 Parallel sessions 4
- 15:30 Coffee break
- 16.00 Parallel sessions 5
- 17.30 End conference day and conference drinks
Wednesday 16/09
- 09.30 Parallel sessions 6
- 11.00 Coffee break
- 11.30 Closing roundtable: From Impact to Social Justice? Doing research on migration in a polarised climate
- 13.00 End conference
Keynote Nando Sigona: Migration studies at a critical conjuncture
Over the past two decades, migration studies has expanded in scope and depth, becoming increasingly canonized through academic journals, research centres, and international networks of experts. In an increasingly multipolar world marked by war, climate crises, and systemic inequality, the drivers of displacement are intensifying—particularly in the Global South, where the majority of forcibly displaced people reside. At the same time, migration governance in the Global North has become more restrictive and securitized, often reinforcing racialized narratives and exclusionary politics. This talk reflects on whether, how, and to what extent migration studies has been able to respond to and reflect these transformations. It considers how theoretical and methodological innovations—including reflexive and decolonial turns—have enabled scholars to better understand the entanglements of mobility, inequality, and everyday life.
Nando Sigona is professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham, UK. Nando is a founding editor of the peer reviewed journal Migration Studies (Oxford University Press) and lead editor for Global Migration and Social Change book series by Bristol University Press. His research interests include: the migration and citizenship nexus; undocumented migration; naturalisation, denaturalisation and statelessness; Romani politics and anti-Gypsyism; asylum and EU; Brexit and intra-European mobility; and child and youth migration. Prof. Sigona has published in a range of international academic journals across disciplines.
Keynote Martina Tazzioli: Hijacking migration containment within the conjuncture
Over the last few years, critical migration scholarship has challenged ways of seeing migration like a State, has foregrounded the colonial legacies of the global politics of mobility; migration scholars have engaged in a “reflexivity turn”, calling for de-migranticise migration studies, and have problematized their positionality at the border. However, migration scholarship nowadays struggles in coping with the frantic changes in migration policies and the ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Scholarly works that aim at producing critical knowledge about the border regime should start from the present “migration conjuncture”, in which migration is no longer a drive for broader social struggles and mobilisations and where migrant persons are targeted by policies apt at debilitating them and eroding their lives. Thus, this presentation asks, what does it mean to re-articulate critical migration scholarship by mobilising a conjuctural analysis (Hall, 1976)? In fact, the centrality of migrant struggles over social reproduction activities and the increasing criminalisation of humanitarianism make hard nowadays to flatten a critique of the border regime onto binary oppositions – for instance, between humanitarian and activist interventions, or between claims for abolishing camps and one the one side and struggles for improving migrants’ living conditions. The laborious task of re-articulating a critique from within the conjuncture is not narrowed to targeting the actors responsible of border violence, nor can it resort to the myth of a “pure” radical politics. Rather, this presentation suggests a different pathway: this consists in “hijacking” (Garelli, Tazzioli, 2013) the epistemic-political assumptions of “migration management” envisioning an emancipatory politics of mobility that challenges the “organised abandonment” (Gilmore, 2007) by taking into account the ambivalences of humanitarianism, in a time of both withdrawal and criminalisation of humanitarian support, and of dismantling of life-support infrastructures.
Martina Tazzioli is Associate Professor in Geography at the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on migration and borders in Southern Europe and Mediterranean region. She is the author of “Border abolitionism: migration containment and the genealogies of struggles” (2023). The Making of Migration. The biopolitics of mobility at Europe’s borders (2019), Spaces of Governmentality: Autonomous Migration and the Arab Uprisings (2015) and co-author of Tunisia as a Revolutionised Space of Migration (2016).
Roundtable: From Impact to Social Justice? Doing research on migration in a polarised climate
Migration scholars are increasingly asked to demonstrate the ‘impact’ of their research on both policy and practice. This confronts them with a conundrum: while many scholars in this field are engaged in working towards societal transformation and social justice, they find themselves in a heavily polarised climate in which meaningful changes are hard to obtain. As a whole, migration studies has recently been subjected to contradictory critiques: from being too liberal and ‘woke’ for right-wing populists that are rising to power across the globe, to being inherently ‘colonial’ for critical scholars and activists on the left. In this panel debate, we jointly ask how scholars of migration-related phenomena can and should reposition themselves in face of the current political climate. How should we respond to the public ‘obsession’ with migration? And how can we rethink how we teach and do research in a way that moves beyond the institutional requirements of generating ‘impact’, and contribute to social justice?
Walking Gate Areas: Hidden Pasts, Present Futures
Who can imagine a city without its super-diverse hubs? But what’s their story? How have newcomers, activists, and grassroots organizations in these ‘gate areas’ shaped and reshaped urban life over the past two centuries? From the gate towers of the 19th century to the social mazes you’ll find there today, gate areas are full of hidden histories—narratives that challenge dominant ideas about the past, the present, and the future.
For the past seven years, public historian Tina De Gendt has been ‘re-negotiating’ the urban past of her hometown Ghent in a bottom-up project called The Square Kilometer (commissioned by City Museum STAM), which received the European Heritage Award in 2024. In this walk, Tina will not only take you to a part of Ghent far off the tourist trail, but also offer some insights on how to use public space as a forum for democratization of our relationship with the past.
Registration
Registration fees
The conference fee includes the full conference program, lunch for two days (14 and 15 September), coffee, tea and water during the coffee breaks and a reception (15 September).
| Early bird (until 20 May 2026) | Late bird (until 1 September 2026) | |
| CESSMIR supervisor (ZAP and postdoc) | 200 euro | 300 euro |
| CESSMIR PhD student | 100 euro | 150 euro |
| Academic non-CESSMIR | 250 euro | 350 euro |
| PhD student non-CESSMIR | 150 euro | 200 euro |
| Non-academic 14,15 and 16 sep 26 | 150 euro | 200 euro |
| Non-academic day ticket 14 sep 26 | 75 euro | 125 euro |
| Non-academic day ticket 15 sept 26 | 75 euro | 125 euro |
| Non-academic day ticket 16 sept 26 | 50 euro | 75 euro |
With ‘academic’, we refer to all staff members related to a university or university college, except for PhD students (who are in a separate price category). With ‘non-academic’, we refer to policy makers, practitioners, activists, volunteers, bachelor and master students. Non-academics can attend the conference on a partial (daily) basis.
Please be aware that registration for the CESSMIR 2026 Conference is only complete when payment has been received.
Cancellation of registration has to be made in writing to cessmir2026@ugent.be. If a cancellation is received before 1 August 2026, reimbursement of the registration fee, minus €50 administration costs, will be made. After this date, or if registrants fail to attend the conference for any reason whatsoever, no refund can be made.
Registration form
Registration will be open in March. You will find the registration form here.
Conference venue
The conference will be held at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University. The faculty is located at the H. Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent. This faculty is easily accessible with public transport from the main railway station Gent-Sint-Pieters Station. There you can take tramway T1, T3 or T4, and get off at the Bernard Spaelaan tram stop. Then, you cross the parking lot of the Delhaize supermarket and when you reach the Jubileumlaan on the other side of the parking lot, go to the right until you reach an intersection. The faculty is located on the opposite side of this intersection. You can also click here to open the H. Dunantlaan area in Google Maps.
Accomodation
There are numerous high-quality hotels in the city centre of Ghent. The number of stars awarded to a hotel (1 to 5) indicate the level of comfort you might expect. For more information about the hotels and an overview of all possible hotels, we recommend to visit the city website or use Google to find your accommodation. Interesting options are the Ibis in the heart of the historical centre at St. Bavo’s Catehdral, the other Ibis in the city centre at the Opera, Hotel Gravensteen opposite of the world-famous Gravensteen, the Getaway Studios or the 1898 The Post hotel.
Participants looking for a budget-friendly way of staying in Ghent can stay in one of the many hostels. Check the city website for an overview. We recommend in particular Hostel Uppelink (city centre), Youth Hostel De Draecke (city centre), KaBa Hostel (city centre), Ecohostel Adromeda (converted barge within walking distance of the city centre) and Treck Hostel (indoor campsite with themed caravans and joint rooms).
About Ghent
Ghent is the capital of East-Flanders and has about 250,000 inhabitants. According to National Geographic Traveler Magazine, Ghent is the third city in its global ranking of most beautiful cities across the world. Ghent is a lively city with more than 70,000 University and University College students. As the Ghent tourism website shows, there are many things to do in the small, pedestrian and bike friendly city. We would definitely recommend a visit to the Castle of the Counts (make sure to go with the audio guide, voiced by a Flemish comedian), St. Bavo’ Cathedral with the world-famous Adoration of the Mystic Lamb painted by Hubert and Jan van Eyck around 1432, the Beguinages and the Belfry. However, our main recommendation is to take a stroll along the cobblestone streets in the medieval city centre, take some time for the views on St Michael’s bridge and to hang out a bit at the waterside around the Graslei and the Korenlei. The boat tours that leave every half an hour or so from different spots at the Graslei and Korenlei are also a great way of discovering the city.
