Decentering the Study of Migration

20 Feb 2025

This panel discussion event addressed critical questions about current trends and historical legacies in contemporary migration scholarship and research.  

In an open-ended dialogue with members of the UCC-based ERC MIGMOBS project and the ISS21 Migration & Integration Research Cluster, the discussion considered critical questions such as: 

• What does it mean to take seriously the challenge of decentering in the study of migration?
• How we can move beyond Western-, nation state-, and metropolitan- centrism, and open up the study of migration to multi-vocality?
• How can we move beyond exploitative migration research relations and the exoticisation of migration?
• What are examples of the kinds of approaches in our panellists' own applied and contextual work that may suggest ways to contribute to decentering the study of migration?

The event drew inspiration from the IMISCOE 2025 annual conference theme of decentring migration studies. Decentering - and associated themes of reflexivity and decolonialisation - has, it seems, (finally) come centre-stage to the study of migration in all its forms.

Panel Contributors: Dr Glenda Garelli (University of Leeds); Professor Gracia Liu-Farrer (Waseda University, Tokyo); Professor Ana Paula Penchaszadeh (University of Buenos Aires); Aoife Dare (University College Cork); Dr Mastoureh Fathi (University College Cork).

Introduced by: Dr Caitríona Ní Laoire (ISS21 & Applied Social Studies)

Chaired by:   Professor Adrian Favell (Director, Radical Humanities Lab)

The event was co-hosted by the UCC-based ERC project MIGMOBS ('The Orders and Borders of Global Inequality') and the ISS21 Migration and Integration Research Cluster.