October 23-27, 2023

International migration from West Africa to Europe has been the focus of media and political attention for over twenty years, with an emphasis on current events to provide insights into the most immediate processes. In this workshop, we will draw on research in social sciences that highlights the historical depth of mobility on the African continent and the importance of South-South movements.

Mon 9 – Tue 10 October 2023

This workshop aims to connect insights from research, professional practice or lived experience, to shed light on how systems and processes – some aiming to support, others to control – subject various groups of UK residents to forms of mobility over which they have limited or no choice. These mobilities are often intimately related to housing dynamics and fiscal austerity in the UK. This workshop seeks to understand the state of knowledge on such non-voluntary mobilities, and the future research needed to advance it. It takes inspiration from two emerging directions in scholarship.

In this one-day workshop, we will discuss the emergence and transformation of arrival areas in Turkey and will explore the following questions:

❖ How are old arrival areas in Turkey being transformed through recent migrations?
❖ What new arrival areas (including non-urban areas such as small towns and rural areas) and infrastructures do we see emerging across Turkey?
❖ How do different actors shape arrival?
❖ How have recent changes (social, legal, technological) and crises (pandemics, wars, natural disasters such as earthquakes) shaped arrival in Turkey?
❖ What are the methodological and ethical challenges, opportunities, and limitations in analyzing arrival from below and through an everyday lens?

Within this workshop, there is also a scope to move beyond these themes/questions, providing additional perspectives and critiques on the notion of ‘arrival’ in itself as a term within and outside the boundaries of urban spaces. We hope this workshop fosters open and diverse dialogue with scholars across disciplines, career levels, and localities. We aspire to move this dialogue beyond Western-centric conceptions of arrival and bring in empirically rich, theoretically substantial, and methodologically innovative research discussion.

This workshop is funded by EU Horizon 2020 project ReROOT: Arrival Infrastructures as Sites of Integration for the Newcomers (https://rerootproject.eu) and organized in collaboration with the Association for Migration Research (Göç Araştırmaları Derneği https://gocarastirmalaridernegi.org/en/ ).

The Laboratory of Economic Policy and Strategic Planning of the Department of Economics of the University of Thessaly, in collaboration with local stakeholders of the city of Katerini, organized a Workshop & Round Table on the topic: The labor market as an ‘arrival infrastructure’ for newcomers. The role of local communities.