News & Updates 2020

May 2020

Institute Director Steven Vertovec gave a live television interview on Deutsche Welle and PBS America to comment on the coronavirus pandemic, xenophobia and group stigmas.

DWnews TV Interview Thursday, 7th May 2020 with Steven Vertovec, conducted by Anchor Brent Goff

In the pandemic, populists and campaigners are currently stirring up prejudice against migrants and blaming them for the spread of the virus. The freedom of movement of refugees or certain ethnic groups is being restricted more drastically than that of the native population in order to prevent further spread of the disease - as it is officially called - but this also stigmatises those affected. Steven Vertovec, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, considers this a dangerous development and calls for countermeasures.

Source: www.mpg.de

April 2020

Seminar speakers: Steven Vertovec, Kerilyn Schewel, Biao Xiang and Olena Babakova
Seminar moderators: Konrad Pędziwiatr, Jan Brzozowski
Jorgen Carling in his text on Cape Verdean migration experiences (2002) argues that far more people would like to migrate than actually do and rather than an “Age of Migration” (Castles et al 2014), our times are better characterized as an age of “involuntary immobility”. In the time of coronavirus pandemic this has transformed into forced immobility for migrants and non-migrants alike. One of the groups that has been particularly harshly affected by this immobility are migrants.

February 2020

Together with two other colleagues (one at LSE and one at Ghent) Farhan Samanani was awarded a $20,000 grant from the Wenner Gren foundation to run a workshop on politics, irony and new social movements in the late summer/early autumn 2020.

February 2020

ENMISA Book Award
Congratulations to our former colleague Alan Gamlen, who received the ENMISA Book Prize 2020 for the best book in the field of ethnicity, nationalism or migration studies.

ENMISA Paper Award
We also congratulate our former colleague Darshan Vigneswaran, who was awarded the ENMISA Prize 2020 for outstanding conference papers. Konferenzpapiere ausgezeichnet wurde.

January 2020

What role can researchers play in the current discussion about migration, flight and integration?
The moderator Dr. Elisabeth Badenhoop (MPI-MMG) with Prof. Dr. Petra Bendel (Sachverständigenrat deutscher Stiftungen für Integration und Migration), Prof. Dr. Thomas Faist (Rat für Migration) and Dr. Mehmet Ata (Mediendienst Integration).