S01 E06 The Scholar-Activist

In the episode “The Scholar-Activist” of the podcast Production Site, Professors Christine Lang and Janine Dahinden speak with internationally renowned migration researcher Nina Glick Schiller about science, social responsibility, and the political present of migration research.

The starting point is Glick Schiller’s recent Manifesto and her thesis of a profound conjunctural transformation, in which political, economic, and social orders are undergoing fundamental change. In this context, migration is increasingly shaped by border regimes, control, and precarity, while questions of belonging, morality, and social coexistence are being renegotiated.

At the center of the discussion is the question of how activist migration research can or should be: Is there such a thing as neutral, objective research at all? Can research remain neutral in the face of growing inequalities and exclusions, or does it require a clearly positioned, engaged scholarly practice? The conversation connects this debate with Glick Schiller’s work on transnationalism, methodological nationalism, and power relations in transnational social fields, showing why her perspectives continue to shape international migration research today.

About the Guest

 Prof. Dr. Nina Glick Schiller is one of the most internationally influential migration scholars and is considered one of the founders of transnational migration studies. As a social anthropologist, she has significantly shaped the field through her work on transnationalism, methodological nationalism, and the interconnections between migration, urban development, and social change. She served as Director of the Cosmopolitan Cultures Institute at the  University of Manchester and as  Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. She is currently Professor Emerita, Research Associate at the  Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and co-editor of the journal  Anthropological Theory.

In her research, Nina Glick Schiller examines migration, transnational processes, and structures of social power from historical and comparative perspectives. She is particularly concerned with the intersections of migration and categories such as gender, class, race, citizenship, poverty, and national identity. She has also played a key role in shaping the debate on so-called “methodological nationalism” in migration studies—and strategies for overcoming it.

Her most important publications include Nations Unbound, Migrants and City-Making, and Whose Cosmopolitanism? Currently, she also investigates how social, political, and economic transformation processes produce and reshape narratives about migration and anti-migration, and how they shape societal understandings of belonging.

In addition, Nina Glick Schiller is a co-founder of the  Migration Scholars’ Global Solidarity and Resistance Network, which brings together researchers, educators, students, and activists worldwide to defend academic freedom, provide research-based information on migration, and strengthen solidarity with migrants and refugees.

About the Hosts

 Prof. Dr. Janine Dahinden is Professor of Transnational Studies at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). Her research focuses on migration, mobility, transnationalisation, as well as processes of social boundary-making and the associated inequalities related to ethnicity, origin, gender, and social position. Janine Dahinden is considered a key figure in reflexive migration studies and has made important contributions to the development of the field through her concept of “de-migranticisation.”

In addition to her academic work, she serves as Vice-Rector for Teaching and Pedagogical Innovation at the University of Neuchâtel and is involved in international research networks such as IMISCOE, where she has been a board member of the Standing Committee  Reflexivities in Migration Studies since 2020. Janine Dahinden is a DFG Mercator Fellow (2024–2027) in the Collaborative Research Centre “Production of Migration” (SFB 1604).

 Prof. Dr. Christine Lang is Junior Professor of Social Geography and Reflexive Migration Studies at the University of Osnabrück and a member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS). Her research focuses on the social production of migration, diversity, and processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the role of space in these dynamics. Currently, she works in particular on the geographies of healthcare worker migration and the urban governance of diversity. Previously, she was affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. She earned her PhD from the University of Osnabrück in 2018 with a dissertation on the production of diversity in urban administrations.

Within the Collaborative Research Centre “Production of Migration” (SFB 1604), she leads the project C3  The Production of Spaces of Skilled Labour Migration: Recruitment and Mobility of Physicians.