In this newsletter, we happily announce the publication of our newest working papers on border management and the programme for our upcoming conference in October 2019.

We are also sharing the call for refugee artists for our digital art exhibition, which will premiere in 2020 in Germany, Sweden and the UK and possibly more countries. 

Please distribute this call widely, and be sure to follow our social media accounts for updates about this and our other endeavors.

Read on to learn more about RESPOND’s recent and future projects.

The RESPOND-project has now reached half way of its project period and has produced more than 23 reports on governance policy and border management, mainly in WPs 1 and 2. WP 3 on protection is next in line. We are now in an intensive period of qualitative data coding of all material for the writing and analysis of the remaining country and comparative reports. With more than 700 in-depth interviews in 11 countries, we provide a “thick description” of the experiences of refugees, as well as highlight their agency. The refugee experience together with the stakeholder information gathered has increased the validity of our results.

At the same time, to make the data open for other researchers, we are creating datasets based on the qualitative material. Both sets of data are anonymized to ensure the security of our research participants. There are several challenges to interdisciplinary and transnational scientific work.  We have had to find a constructive balance for the data to be shared, determining how much sensitive information can be revealed, and at the same time providing enough material for meaningful analysis.

We have successfully also continued with our Migration Governance Network (MGN), where we meet and discuss burning questions with stakeholders. One of the successful examples has been the MGN of our UNIFI partner. Both in Turkey and Sweden, we have started our survey study, which will give statistical data on most of the WP-themes of the RESPOND-project.

During our bi-annual meeting, we continued discussing the project’s authorship policy, as well as our publication plan. RESPOND has an ambitious publication plan. The team members are planning publications based on conference presentations, thematic reports, and country reports, in the format of edited volumes and special journal issues. See for example one of our call for papers.

RESPOND includes not only social science tasks, but also innovative channels to disseminate knowledge, among these our planned art exhibition, Kino-eye, and documentary, which are all in progress.

Please click the links below to learn more about the countries we studied.

COUNTRY REPORTS: SWEDEN IRAQ GREECE HUNGARY GERMANY AUSTRIA UK ITALY

Researchers studying migration in different geographical regions will present their work on the themes of governance and integration.  The conference is an opportunity for RESPOND partners to share their findings with researchers who are not affiliated with the project and to learn from others in order to generate new inter- and multi-disciplinary insights. Confirmed keynote speakers are Prof. Dawn Chatty (Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, Former director of the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre), Prof. Halina Grzymała-Moszczyńska (Profesor in Psychology of Religion, Jagiellonian University, Kraków), Prof. Mario Savino (Professor of Administrative Law, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy) and Prof. Peter Scholten (Professor Public Administration specialised in the Dynamics of Migration and Diversity Policies, at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam).

This event is not to be missed! If you plan to attend, please

REGISTER HERE

The exhibition was based on an earlier exhibition hosted by the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden (May-December 2018) developed by Dr Naures Atto, Dr Onver Cetrez and Soner Barthoma. In addition to the artworks, Cambridge based PhDs and other researchers were invited to display posters about their migration related research. After the opening by Prof Loraine Gelsthorpe (director of the Centre for Global Human Movement, Faculty of Criminology) and an introduction by Dr Naures Atto (RESPOND Cambridge), the participants engaged with the organisers, the artworks and each other about the theme of the art exhibition, namely the suffering of people who have been forcibly displaced. The audience showed great interest in the work of Assyrian and Yazidi artists who made their artworks available for the exhibition.