2021/11/15 Sussex Conference “New Dynamics of East–West Migration and Migrant Integration Within Europe and Beyond”




Being a migration researcher often entails own experiences of migration. Consequently, as migration researchers, we are ourselves implicated in the phenomena we are studying. In this roundtable, we explore how our transnational researcher positionalities matter for our research, with a focus on mobilities between Eastern and Western Europe. We explore the intersections of different positions, such as those of “privileged researcher” and “Eastern European migrant”, and how these might link to other markers of difference like class, gender, ethnicity and differentiated whiteness.
After a short round of presentations and initial reflections the roundtable will take on a more interactive form, engaging with questions and comments from the audience.
Questions that we will be exploring will include:
- How do our own migration (hi)stories constrain our research foci?
- What does it mean to be a “transnational” researcher?
- How do we navigate insider and outsider positions, multiple research contexts and their different power dynamics and inequalities?
- How do different dimensions of our positions as researchers intersect- for instance, “privileged researcher” versus “Eastern European migrant”, situated in academic field often characterized by precarity?
Keywords: researcher positionality; intersectionality; migration; fieldwork; feminist methodologies

Relational approach has become popular in many fields of social scientific research, but less so in citizenship studies. While it was introduced rather early by Margaret Somers (1993, 1994), the impact of relationalism on advancement of the field as a whole has remained rather limited (Isin & Turner, 2002). This session will analyze different types of relational approaches in the field of citizenship studies by focusing on their meta-theoretical assumptions, based on respective accounts of group formation. Common starting point of all relationalist approaches is the idea of overcoming of typological thinking found in substantialist approaches, for example by reframing citizenship without ontological difference between internal/external, oriental/occidental, local/foreigner etc. In presenting different approaches to understanding citizenship and identities as embodied political resource mobilizations in the context of Bourdieusian asymmetrical field, we will explore how citizenship is better understood as political subjectivity where conflictual, overlapping, contradictory dynamic identities or forms of belonging not only co-exist but also flourish. We aim to address the question of under what conditions is overcoming of meta-theoretical dualisms possible? If one accepts that groups cannot be formed without imposing of certain types of closures and hierarchies, the following question arises: why do we expect that some types of closures and hierarchies based on other meta-theoretical dualisms will be preferable, as compared to the ones performed, for example, by the Orientalizing strategies? If Occident is rendered peripheral, does not centering of the Orient as the ground of conceptualization of key social science notions repeat the same problem of privileging the one and subordinating the other ground?
Raivo Vetik, Leif Kalev and Mari-Liis Jakobson, Tallinn University
Nawal Shaharyar, Tallinn University
Engin Isin, Queen Mary University of London

Vitor Lopes Andrade, University of Sussex
Sandra King-Savic, University St. Gallen
Sara Fikry Abdelshafy Eltokhy
Aleksandra Lewicki, University of Sussex

Oksana Shmulyar Gréén, Charlotte Melander and Ingrid Höjer, University of Gothenburg
Sabrina Colombo, Free University of Bolzano/Bozen
Penny Koutrolikou, Emmy Karimali and Filyra Vlastou, National Technical University of Athens; Eirini Avramopoulou, Panteion University
Aleksandra Szkudlarek, University of Warsaw

Traute Meyer and Paul Bridgen, University of Southampton
Berfin Nur Osso, University of Helsinki

Anita Brzozowska and Karolina Madej, University of Warsaw
Giulia Marroccoli, Tanja Schroot and Loris Botto, University of Turin
Mette Ginnerskov-Dahlberg, Södertörn University and Uppsala University
Milena Błahuta, University of Warsaw