There has been an increasing shift to evidence-based policy in public service and government in the past decades. Migration management also strongly relies on data on transnational movement, and policy makers have to some extent relied on input by migration scholars to make their positions appear more reasonable and legitimate. Migration scholarship has also increasingly challenged political narratives about the causes and effects of migration. The policy world in turn has also often driven categories and concepts in migration studies. Migration scholars are thus not mere observers of migration, as producers of knowledge about migration and shaping understanding about migration instead they can be viewed as migration governance players alongside others. Consequently, we have seen increasing reflection within migration scholarship about concepts, categories and perspectives employed in the field of migration studies. In the past years in Europe this reflexive turn was also complemented with a rise in claims for a decolonial approach, highlighting the necessity to focus on processes of racialisation and their continuities. Contributing to these efforts of reflection, this webinar discusses approaches, that aim to overcome methodological nationalism and the Eurocentric system of knowledge production in migration studies.

Presenters: Kudakwashe Vanyoro, Martina Tazzioli, Janine Dahinden. Chair: Leila Hadj-Abdou.

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