Monday, 14 September 2026, 2:00pm-3:30pm

Keynote Panel I: Rethinking Knowledge Production and Relevance

Chair: Helena Segarra, Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Fataneh Farahani, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions, and Gender Studies at Stockholm University

Migration Studies and Its Others: From Migrant-Centred Research to the Study of Migration Knowledge

In my opening talk for this panel, I trace the entanglement between my scholarly trajectory and migration studies as a field of knowledge production embedded in Eurocentric epistemic structures. I examine how migration scholars navigate regimes of epistemic ignorance while simultaneously contributing to the formation of the very field they study. I argue for moving beyond migrants as the primary object of inquiry toward an analysis of how migration-related discourses—such as hospitality and hostility, integration and disintegration—shape social and epistemic orders within host societies through the racialized and gendered logics that organize belonging and exclusion. Situating this within critiques of Global North–dominated epistemic hierarchies, I reflect on the conditions under which certain forms of knowledge become legible and authoritative, and how these conditions are themselves constituted through racialized and gendered regimes of recognition.

Anna Amelina, Chemnitz University of Technology

After Methodological Innocence: The Politics of Relevance in Migration Studies

Relevance in migration studies is neither self-evident nor politically neutral: it is contested, constructed, and inseparable from the epistemological and institutional conditions under which knowledge about migration is produced. Drawing on reflexive scholarship that challenges the field’s dominant Eurocentric orientations, this presentation argues that reflexivity and critique are inseparable, and that migration studies generate genuine social relevance not through political neutrality, but through sustained engagement with the power relations it studies. Central to this argument is the analytical tool of ‘(un)doing migration’, which scrutinizes the institutional labelling practices that construct ‘migrants’ as a governed population and determine their legal status and life chances. The talk further situates knowledge production within the university as a site of colonial and androcentric domination, insisting that institutional self-critique is a precondition for emancipatory research. Drawing on theoretical pluralism, the talk proposes a multidimensional conception of relevance that is simultaneously political, epistemological, ethical, and historical. These arguments suggest that migration research which combines these dimensions is not a weakened or politicized version of the discipline, but a more rigorous and socially responsive scientific field.

Monday, 14 September 2026, 6:00pm-7:00pm

Panel Debate I: Have We Failed? On the Growing Discrepancy Between Migration Research and the Political-Media Debate

Chair: Judith Kohlenberger, Research Institute for Migration and Forced Displacement Management, WU Vienna

Panelists:

Rainer Bauböck, EUI, Florence

Marcus Engler, German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), Berlin

Solmaz Khorsand, journalist, author and podcaster, Vienna

Wiebke Sievers, Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Peter Webinger, Interior Ministry, Vienna

Nowadays, more knowledge about migration is being produced than ever before. Yet this knowledge finds only limited expression in public debate and political decision-making processes. The panel will explore the causes of the growing divide between migration research, politics and the media – and how this divide can be bridged. Migration researchers from Austria and Germany will join representatives from the media and public administration to discuss the contribution of academic findings to policy-making, successful forms of collaboration, and structural barriers to a knowledge-based approach to migration. At the same time, the panel will examine gaps, challenges and future developments in migration research in the German-speaking world and beyond.
The panel will take place in German with simultaneous English interpretation.

Wednesday, 16 September 2026, 11:00am-12:30pm

Keynote Panel II: Rethinking Policy Relevance in a Changing World

Chair: Ádám Németh, Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Martin Ruhs, European University Institute (EUI), Florence

Beyond Mythbusting: Research and Value Conflicts in Migration Policy

Many migration and other public policies involve inescapable value conflicts. For example, temporary labour migration programmes involve a tension between global and domestic justice, while asylum policies must balance humanitarian protection norms with host country sovereignty and self-determination. Similarly, policies toward irregular migrants face a fundamental dilemma between protecting basic rights of all people and enforcing immigration controls.  Drawing on the international ‘Dilemmas’ project, Martin Ruhs shows how social science research can play an important role in clarifying the nature and sources of these value conflicts, and in structuring public and policy discussions about alternative ways of addressing them. Critically, fundamental value conflicts cannot be “myth-busted” away through more (and more accurate) facts and scientific evidence – they require genuine engagement with competing moral goals and policy trade-offs. 

Fran Meissner, Critical Geodata Studies and Geodata Ethics, University of Twentehelen

From Data Poor to Data Rich: Reflections on Migration Research and Policy from a Critical Data Studies Perspective

The field of migration research and policy development has shifted significantly in the last decades. As in many other disciplines, we see a shift from a scarcity of data to many more and diverse data shaping how we know migration. Engaging in new data practices changes the field of migration research but also has concrete implications for the data-migration policy nexus. Drawing on work in the domain of critical data studies Fran Meissner discusses how these shifts need to entail a changed understanding of research ethics that engages with making sense of the translations between research data practice and policy implementation.