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The Journal of Refugee Studies (JRS) is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal featuring original, high-quality research related to diverse aspects of forced migration, as well as Field Reflections and Reviews

Are you interested in the human rights of migrants, and would you like to work in a vibrant team of scholars forming one of the largest migration law research groups in Europe? These PhD positions will study the ambivalent role of the European Court of Human Rights as an actor and forum for the human rights turn in legal discourses on migration. The research will be part of the project entitled “Who is empowered by Strasbourg? Migrants and States before the European Court of Human Rights”. 

On Wednesday 1 June at 10.00, Laura Ogden will defend her PhD thesis, “Transnational Youth Mobility Trajectories: An ethnography of young people with a migration background between Ghana and Germany.”

On Monday 30 May 2022 at 13:00, Sarah Anschütz will defend her PhD dissertation “Young lives on the move: The mobility trajectories and transnational affective engagements of Ghanaian-background youth living in Belgium” in the Aula of Maastricht University at Minderbroedersberg 4-6. You are cordially invited to attend the defence online or in person. 

In this discussion with Refugee Project Maastricht (RPM), Melissa Siegel breaks down how migration is a prominent component of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. They compare rhetoric from public officials and civil society in Europe in 2015 and 2022 regarding refugee reception and unpack these situations’ similarities and differences. Going a few steps further, she analyses whether international law distinguishes refugees based on their origins and also lay out the factors boosting a country’s capacity to host refugees. 

The recent “migrant wave” in Europe (2015) has reiterated at least a two-sided perspective on the representational power of images. Images of migrants and/or refugees were a) either instrumentalized in depicting a threat to the nation-state (Sassken, 1992) or were used in an iconographic sense to frame the suffering of the victim, or b) were used – more seldomly – as a proof for reports of mistreatment and violation of human rights of migrants (i.e., Border Violence Monitoring Network). My talk aims to provide a “countervisual” approach to the migrant image (Nail, 2019) in the Balkans by emphasizing the importance of images made of them, but also of the images made by them.

About the speaker: 

Chloe Sydney is a Researcher at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). Much of her research has focused on the relationship between internal displacement and cross-border movements.

This workshop is a collaboration between Maastricht University (the Netherlands), Wolaita Sodo University (Ethiopia) and Dutch Association for Migration Research (DAMR). 

From May 20 to June 24 there will be 4 online lectures on research on transnational families organized by the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and the Interdisciplinary Center for Integration and Migration Research (InZentIM).

UNU-MERIT are organising a week long series of events covering a variety of topics to mark their 15th Anniversary. 

Join the New School on May 5, 2022 for the fourth conference organised by the scholar members of the New University in Exile Consortium.

In Melissa Siegel’s latest video she addresses the Ukraine situation. In this video she addresses the internal displacement situation, the international displacement situation and the policy response, specifically from the EU.