Research and impact activities
Unsettled Status? Which EU Citizens are at Risk of Failing to Secure their Rights after Brexit?
In mid April the Migration Observatory published a report arguing that substantial numbers of UK residents could be at risk of losing their legal status after Brexit, with particularly vulnerable groups including victims of domestic abuse, elderly people and children. At the same time the Migration Observatory supplied figures on commonwealth citizens in the UK to journalists, which provided background for a spate of stories on the Windrush generation of migrants. These two issues converged when researchers and advocacy groups explicitly tied the Windrush generation to EU migrants who could get caught up in similar difficulties in the future.
Role of European Mobility and its Impacts in Narratives, Debates and EU Reforms (REMINDER)
The REMINDER project has begun to publish research results, with working papers on the fiscal effects of EU migration, comparing perceptions of the impact of migration across EU member states, and looking at media practices in the EU-10 and EU-15 member states. As background material, the project has also produced literature reviews in key areas of research, including mobility data, migrants in the home care industry, determinants of migration flows, media effects on attitudes toward migration and media discourses on mobility.
Urban Transformations conference
The ESRC Urban Transformations network organised a conference on The Good City: Urban Transformation, Comparison and Value in Oxford on 18-20 April. The conference provided a gathering space for researchers focusing on issues of comparative urbanism across global, European and UK scales, and offered UT programme researchers an opportunity to summarize their work and benefit from the range of experiences to outline new methodologies and vocabularies for conducting comparative and future-oriented urban research.
PEAK Urban launch meeting
International partners on the PEAK Urban programme met up in Cape Town in February to develop programme ideas and share research plans. The PEAK Urban programme involves a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Oxford, Peking University, the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) in Bangalore and Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia.
Upcoming events
Crossing Borders / Crossing Disciplines: Rethinking Inclusion, Exclusion, and Human Mobility
The TORCH Migration and Mobility Network and the Oxford Migration Studies Society are co-hosting the annual interdisciplinary migration conference on 17-18 May at Worcester College. The conference aims to draw together Oxford researchers of migration and mobility of all academic stages from across the disciplines to generate new inter- and multi-disciplinary insights and ideas on the theme of inclusion/exclusion. The conference kicks off at 2.30pm on 17 May, with a keynote address by Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, whose research focuses on questions of migration, identity and resistance in both post-colonial literature and writing of the colonial period, in particular of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Tickets are still available on eventbrite.
Book launch of School of Europeanness: Tolerance and Other Lessons in Political Liberalism in Latvia
In School of Europeanness, Dace Dzenovska argues that Europe’s political landscape is shaped by a fundamental tension between the need to exclude and the requirement to profess and institutionalize the value of inclusion. Nowhere, Dzenovska writes, is this tension more glaring than in the former Soviet Republics. The event on 24 May at the Pauling Centre will involve a panel discussion on the book and the themes it raises.
International events
Third Workshop on Immigration, Health and Well-Being
The REMINDER project is hosting the third workshop on immigration and health on 24-25 May at the Centre for Research in Health and Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. The workshop’s focus is broad, covering empirical economic research on these topics, and aims to foster new connections among scholars with common interests in these areas.
Migration and Urban Transformation in Latin America and the UK
This 8-10 June workshop at the University of Brasilia in Brazil is aimed at early career researchers and will cover a wide range of themes, including: housing, health, employment, language, community relations, citizenship, education, subjective well-being relating to migrants in the UK and Latin America.
Networks
Sarah Spencer was selected at the new Chair of the Board of Directors of IMISCOE, the European network of scholars working on international migration, integration and social cohesion
The TORCH Migration and Mobility network, launched in Autumn 2017, has held a successful series of academic and early career researcher networking events on a range of topics, from family and inclusion to human trafficking.
New staff
New members of the COMPAS administrative team joined us in January - Ashley Beck as receptionist and Karla Perez as Personal Assistant to the COMPAS Director. Marina Fernandez-Reino has recently joined the Migration Observatory team as a researcher on migration and integration.
Awards
New Years Honours 2018: Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory, was appointed MBE for services to Social Science.
COMPAS participated in the Social Sciences & Impact Conference on 19 April, where Will Allen received a highly commended award in early career impact and Sarah Spencer, Nicola Delvino and Caroline Oliver received a highly commended award for excellence in impact, for their Online Tool to Improve the Assessment of Destitute Families’ Eligibility for Support.