Online (Zoom)
The C-MISE project Research Exchange Webinar Series is a forum for invited researchers to share and discuss their findings with the C-MISE network.
Attendance is free, and all are welcome. However, to join via Zoom, you must register in advance (individual webinar registration links are available below).
2 - 3 pm (UK)
Speaker: Melissa Weihmayer, COMPAS, University of Oxford
London’s borough councils are adapting to the increase in asylum-seekers since 2020. This presentation explores their shift from reactive to more strategic and proactive responses, observed during a series of ‘design lab’ workshops between January and June 2023 in the Greater London Authority’s Asylum Welcome programme. Driven by a need to be better prepared to support people seeking asylum, the presentation examines how councils built capacity despite limited funding and a lack of a clear role within asylum policy. Though they struggle to change asylum policy without central government reforms, this research nonetheless recasts local governments as well-equipped to adapt to new and uncertain challenges.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/38U1pIDqQ7Ov0LOPgw_i-Q
2 - 3 pm (UK)
Speaker: Corina Lacatus, Reader in Global Governance and Director of the Centre for Governance and Democracy, Queen Mary University of London
In recent years, the European Union has used intermediary orchestrators in its migration governance at external borders, particularly for the provision of care and humanitarian assistance to undocumented migrants. While the EU has increasingly channelled financial resources to externalising border policing to neighbouring states and to Frontex, it has progressively disengaged from direct involvement in humanitarian care and delegated care responsibility to a diverse group of third-party actors, including NGOs, local governments, and individuals. From recent scholarship, we know that delegating powers to orchestrating intermediaries can be a strategy to evade legal responsibility and to control migration-related information and public knowledge. I theorise EU’s approach to migrant care provision with a novel concept – ‘hands-off governance’ – and argue that EU’s increased reliance on migration orchestrators (1) signals that care provision is not as important as border policing; (2) aims to render irregular migrants invisible; and (3) ultimately reinforces the day-to-day experiences of its migration governance as a reflection of the historical Europe-centric, post-colonial logic of relating to territories at its periphery. I illustrate this argument with an analysis of migration governance at the EU’s Atlantic border in the Canary Islands during the years of peak migration to the islands, 2021-2024.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/rBELIbMOTdyp4D0ge7zEww
2 - 3 pm (UK)
Speaker: Keina Raquel Espiñeira González, Universidade da Coruña
Spain is currently undergoing an extraordinary regularisation process in a context marked by the growing politicisation of migration and the rise of far-right narratives around security and national preference. This talk examines how Spain arrived at the current process and the role municipalities are playing in its implementation. Particular attention is paid to the practical and political functions local governments can perform throughout the process, including supporting public advocacy, building trust, providing legal orientation, facilitating access to documentation, and fostering more inclusive local environments for undocumented residents.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/rrpW3-ZUStqgIoW2_0kpZg