Family Migration in Times of Crisis (Workshop)
On June 15, RUNOMI and the Marriage and Migration Workshop organized a virtual workshop on ‘Family Migration in Times of Crisis’ to explore the impacts of crisis on family migration, how family migrants respond to crises, and intertwined temporalities of crisis and migration. The crises to be considered included most obviously the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on cross-border movement, key services, and particular populations; but also refugee crises, Brexit, recent events on the US-Mexico border, and other watershed moments in national, local or personal contexts. By including crises at the personal level, we invited consideration of how individual or familial periods of particular challenge are interrelated with processes of family migration, and new explorations of the relationships between the personal and political in this context.
The aims of the workshop were to:
- Gather and stimulate new thinking on family migration, crisis and temporalities, through a range of disciplinary perspectives including sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science and law.
- Create networking opportunities for the development of international collaborations.
- Lay the foundations for a Special Issue proposal to JEMS.
Format:
During the half day online workshop, a short presentation (10 minutes) format was chosen to facilitate discussion in three consecutive sessions. There were three paper presentations per session. Each session had its own specific focus point. The contributions provided expertise on a diverse range of migration contexts and came from a variety of disciplines.
Session 1: Policy and immobility
- Franck Düvell & David Schiefer: Syrians in Turkey: the role of family considerations for forced migrants’ migration aspirations
- Iris Poelen & Lothar Smith: Homemaking as a way of dealing with crises: Syrian and Eritrean female forced migrants’ homemaking processes in The Netherlands
- Justyna Bell, Anne Balke Staver & Ida Tolgensabkk: Citizenship and (im)mobile family life during the COVID-19 pandemic
Session 2: COVID-19
- Betty de Hart: #LoveIsNotTourism: cross-border couples, citizenship and belonging during the Covid19-crisis
- Áron Telegdi-Csetri, Viorela Ducu, Iulia Hossu and Sorana Constantinescu: Children in locked-down social and mental spaces
- Laura Odasso: Immobilisation and mobilisation of private and family life in times of Pandemic
Session 3: Policy and Law
- Eleonore Kofman: Family Migrations Post Brexit in the UK
- Gizem Kolbaşi-Muyan , Ricky van Oers, Pascal Beckers: Changing perspectives of the Dutch government regarding the integration of Turkish marriage migrants: Dutch integration law and policy and its implications for Turkish family migrant households
- Eline Westra: Surinamese Migrant Organisations Political Claims-making on Family Migration Rights in the Netherlands: Navigating the ‘Crisis’ of Decolonisation
More than 30 people participated and there was a lively discussion throughout each session. Following this workshop, the editorial team (Katharine Charsley, Gizem Kolbasi, Helena Wray, Lothar Smith) connected contributions and bundeled them to write the special issue proposal which was successfully submitted to JEMS.