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From February 16-19, 2025 the IMIS is welcoming students and coordinators from the Double Degree partner institutes. The Winter Workshop centers around reflexivity in migration studies with a particular focus on critical and reflexive mapping practices. The students will engage in a one-day intensive workshop, mapping their own experiences of studying migration (on the move). On the third day of the workshop, a panel on reflexivity in migration studies will be held, which will be open to a broader audience. The panel will bring together the editors and some of the contributors to the soon to be published book “Reflexivities and Knowledge Production in Migration Studies: Pitfalls and Alternatives” (edited by Janine Dahinden and Andreas Pott).

Throughout the event, the workshop participants will have a chance to get to know the city of Osnabrück and the IMIS as well as the Collective Research Centre/SFB on the “Production of Migration”, which have been and will be one of the centers of debates and work in reflexive migration studies in Germany and Europe.

View the  Winter Workshop´s programme (PDF, 397 kB)

Public Sessions:

Lecture “Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Maps Through Critical Cartography” by Dr. Nora Küttel (University of Bremen) with a commentary by Dr. Sophie Hinger (IMIS, Osnabrück University)

Maps are everywhere in our lives, often without us even realizing it. We encounter them in the news, on our smartphones, and in our heads. While they might help us navigate our everyday lives, maps also serve as tools of oppression, exploitation, and marginalization. They can create invisibilities and influence existing power dynamics by acting as representations of what we deem reality. Conversely, maps can also empower us by providing visibility and offering a platform to share diverse and other stories and experiences.

Panel: “Reflexivity in Migration Studies” with 

• Andreas Pott (Osnabrück University): “Why we (still) need to think and write about reflexivities in migration studies” (as a matter of introduction)
• Faten Khazaei (Northumbria University, Newcastle): “Racism in/through migration studies”
• Camille Schmoll (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris): “Linguistic hegemony, marginalization, and migration scholarship. A view from the Francophone world”
• Inken Bartels (Osnabrück University): “Practicing double reflexivity. Producing knowledge on the production of knowledge on migration”
• Jens Schneider (Osnabrück University): “What comes after ‘post-migration’? On the biography of terms”

You can find recorded lectures on the  EuMIGS website or the  EuMIGS YouTube channel.

The European Master in Migration Studies (EuMIGS) has officially been selected for an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership (KA220-HED) by the European Commission, receiving a grant in the total amount of 400.000 Euros.

In addition to University of Osnabrück, Germany as the applicant organization, the project involves six other EuMIGS partners from five European countries: Universidade da Coruña, Spain; University of Liège, Belgium; Linköping University and Malmö University, Sweden; Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland; and Paris Lodron University, Salzburg, Austria.

As part of the Erasmus+ project, EuMIGS double-degree students will receive international top-level training in migration studies and get insights into migration realities in other countries. The exchange program will give them the opportunity to create research networks and make connections to senior scholars and research institutes as well as migration practitioners in other countries. Additionally, thanks to the funding provided through Erasmus+ several hundred master students will take part in virtual and blended teaching events over the next three years.

The European Master in Migration Studies (EuMIGS) is a network of high-level institutes for migration research and their respective master programs. The network regularly exchanges students and provides them with the opportunity to obtain double master degrees in the field of migration studies. Moreover, it fosters structures of cooperation, knowledge exchange, and student and teaching mobility. The Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership Project will significantly improve the capacity of the network to strengthen the strategic and structured cooperation between the EuMIGS partners through the development of innovative teaching methods, including transnational online, blended and face-to-face classes. The network will develop new teaching tools and promote teachers’ exchanges between EuMIGS partner universities and support the long-lasting insertion of international collaboration and exchange into the curricula of the seven participating master programs.

The Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership project runs between 01.09.2022 and 31.08.2025 and will be coordinated by Prof. Dr. Andreas Pott, Dr. Jens Schneider, and Dr. Mert Pekşen at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück.

Welcome to Switzerland! 10 students of the double degree cohort 2022-2023 and the EuMIGS coordinators of the different partner institutes met in Neuchâtel for three days in November to kick-off the second year abroad.

In addition to many interesting discussions on why and how to study migration-related topics in today's world of intersecting crises, we gained insight into the public debate on migration in Switzerland through the film "Welcome to Switzerland" by Sabine Gisiger, and learned about the colonial past of the town of Neuchâtel during a walking tour.

EuMIGS Double Degree students move between seven partner universities. The kick-off meeting is the first opportunity for them to get to meet in person.

On Friday, 3 November 2017, the new European academic exchange programme European Master in Migration Studies (EuMIGS) was officially launched in the “Peace Hall” of the town hall of Osnabrück. Aim of the programme is to promote the mobility and cross-country learning of students and the exchange of teaching staff between eight high-level institutes of migration research and their respective master programmes. The new exchange programme is coordinated by the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück.

In the presence of representatives from the partner universities, the Commissioner for Integration, Seda Rass-Turgut, and the Vice-President for Teaching of the University of Osnabrück, Professor Martina Blasberg-Kuhnke, welcomed the international guests, the members of IMIS, and the students of the local master programme International Migration and Intercultural Relations (IMIB). Both emphasised the self-obligation of both the city and the university in Osnabrück towards a better European understanding and praised the new programme as an important and innovative contribution to further internationalisation of the relations of Osnabrück with regard to research, education and to other European cities. Also, the co-ordinator of the European Research Network IMISCOE, Dr Peter Scholten (Erasmus University Rotterdam), and the director of IMIS, Professor Andreas Pott, highlighted the unusual dimension of the new programme and network and its relevance for the education of young scholars in the field of Migration Studies in Europe. EuMIGS is closely connected to IMISCOE that since more than 15 years has brought together the most important scholars and research institutes in the field of migration in Europe. Highlight of the kick-off event was the symbolic signing of a "Memorandum of Understanding” for the future co-operation by the vice-president of the University of Osnabrück and the international partners.

Members of the new EuMIGS-Network are, currently, eight master programmes in seven European countries who come from Linköping and Malmö (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Liège (Belgium), Neuchâtel (Switzerland), A Coruña (Spain) und Osnabrück (Germany). Additional partners from Barcelona (Spain), Lyon (France) und Groningen (The Netherlands) are waiting to join at the next possible moment.

Centrepiece of the network is a Double Degree Programme between, at least, five participating universities. In this programme, the master students spend the respective second year of their studies at one of the partner master programmes in another country. Upon successfully finishing their studies, they will receive an attractive double degree from both, their home and host university. And also the teaching staff in the participating master programmes will enter into a regular exchange and give seminars and lectures at the partner programmes. Foreseen are also joint training activities for all EuMIGS-double degree students of the same cohort. The first exchange students of the European Master in Migration Studies are expected for Fall 2018.