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Working group

Trust, integration and institutional encounters in Europe

When

22 April 2026

11:00 - 12:30 CET

Where

Cappella, Villa Schifanoia and online

Via Boccaccio 121 Firenze and zoom

Join this event featuring two presentations that tackle how institutional contexts and lived experiences shape diverse pathways of belonging and participation in Europe.

This session of the Migration Working Group will explore how immigrants and their descendants build, negotiate, and experience trust in institutions and integration processes across European societies. The first paper to be presented, by Gabriella Agyei and Asya Pisarevskaya, examines the determinants of institutional trust among African second-generation individuals in the Netherlands. Adopting a transnational lens, it traces how perceptions of political instability in countries of origin intersect with everyday encounters in Dutch institutions, shedding light on the experiential foundations of trust and distrust. The second paper by Abd Alkader Alhag Fteah will compare socio-economic integration experiences of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants and refugees in Spain and Germany. Drawing on 40 semi-structured interviews and using Ager and Strang's integration model as a reference framework, the paper argues that labor and social integration are deeply intertwined.

The Migration Working Group (MWG) is a researcher-led research group, whose aim is to foster exchange on the latest, cutting-edge migration research and give the opportunity to early career scholars and PhD researchers to present their research.

Discussant

Martin Ruhs

European University Institute

Billie Martiniello

European University Institute

Scientific Organiser

Eréndira León

European University Institute

Andreea-Maria Ferent

European University Institute

Marianna Hu

European University Institute

Researcher Mustapha Kokumo

EUI

Speaker

Gabriella Agyei

European University Institute

Asya Pisarevskaya

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abd Alkader Alhag Fteah

Complutense University of Madrid

Chair

Researcher Mustapha Kokumo

EUI

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