Annual theme: 2020 – 2022: Contemporary forms of racism and discrimination

Around the world, people have been protesting against racism and discrimination. While Europe’s discourses regarding migration and refugees seem to have fuelled anti-migration sentiments, the call to decolonize our minds and institutions sounds louder than it has done for a long time. Racism and discrimination take a wide range of forms, each of which is embedded in a specific social context.

In accordance with its commitments to the social aspects of migration and refugees, CESSMIR will focus, in 2020-2022, on ‘Contemporary forms of racism and discrimination’. In taking this topic as a core, biennial theme, CESSMIR will stimulate research and debate on how to understand and describe discrimination and racism and its antecedents and consequences for various racialized and ethnicized minority groups. CESSMIR’s interdisciplinary approach and focus on practice, policy and research invites a discussion on a broad range of issues related to this theme. For example: the meaning of racism, its relationship to other forms of inequality (sexism, classism…), (post) colonial and decolonial processes. A wide range of activities will tackle this theme, such as a research seminar series, a set of PhD workshops, an international conference, lectures for master students and a summer school.