CfP – Moving Across Europe as Non-Europeans. Meso-level Analyses of Mobility Regimes (20th and 21st century)
Vous trouverez ci-dessous un appel à contribution pour un workshop que je co-organise les 6 et 7 juillet prochains au Centre Marc Bloch à Berlin avec Giulia Scalettaris (Université de Lille), sur la thématique : Moving Across Europe as Non-Europeans. Meso-level Analyses of Mobility Regimes (20th and 21st century).
N’hésitez pas à nous contacter si vous avez des questions, Bien cordialement,
Lucie Lamy Post-doctorante au Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) Potsdam
Moving Across Europe as Non-Europeans Meso-level Analyses of Mobility Regimes (20th and 21st century)
Interdisciplinary Workshop, 6-7 July 2026, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin
A large body of research in the social and political sciences has examined the mobility to and within the EU of non-EU citizens coming from the Global South, often arriving as “irregular migrants” or “asylum seekers”. This substantial scholarship has highlighted the growing complexity of migration and asylum policies, ranging from border regimes and the Dublin system to the everyday administrative practices through which they are implemented. It has also examined the strategies developed by migrants to navigate these systems as well as the systemic effects of exclusion, containment, and illegalization that structure access to mobility and shape migrants’ subjectivities (e.g. Amelina and Vasilache 2014; de Genova 2002; Fontanari 2019; Lipphardt and Schwarz 2018; Wyss 2022; Tazzioli 2020). The workshop builds on this rich body of research while at the same time seeking to decenter it in two ways: first, by examining cases involving other groups categorized or perceived as “non-Europeans”; and second, by expanding the temporal focus beyond the past three decades in order to account for different historical configurations and geopolitical understandings of “Europe”, intended as a socially constructed and historically contingent entity.
Moving beyond the sole focus on contemporary EU and the “others” it produces enables us to denaturalize current geopolitical configurations, their definitions of membership, and existent policy structures. Looking back to the early twentieth century, we can trace how major geopolitical transformations—such as the introduction of new instruments to regulate cross-border mobilities in the 1920s, the massive population displacement during and after the two World Wars, the Cold War and its end, and the process of EU enlargement—have reshaped both what counts as Europe and who is considered European. These developments marked key moments in the institutionalization of modern European mobility regimes while also contributing to reshaping European polities and societies. By adopting a longue durée perspective and fostering dialogue between historians, political and social scientists, the workshop seeks, on the one hand, to better understand the genesis of contemporary European mobility regimes and, on the other hand, to advance the conceptualization of mobility regimes as embedded, co-produced, politically contested, and socially productive.
To investigate these processes empirically, the workshop places particular emphasis on the meso-level—that is, the institutional arenas, administrative practices, organizations, infrastructures and intermediary actors through which mobility regimes are implemented, negotiated, and transformed (Faist 1997, Chung 2021). The meso-level bridges macro-level analyses centered on state policies and micro-level perspectives focused on migrants’ experiences. It also brings into view a wide range of actors who mediate these regimes–such as civil society, local authorities, courts, humanitarian organizations, advocacy groups, smuggling networks, community leaders, etc. Focusing on this level allows us to examine the concrete sites where mobility regulation takes shape in practice, and thus to capture the embedded, negotiated and productive dimensions of mobility regimes. While a growing number of studies have begun to examine the everyday functioning and negotiation of mobility regimes—highlighting the role of intermediaries, infrastructures, and implementation practices (e.g. Andersson 2014; Khosravi 2007; Tsianos and Karakayali 2010; de Haas 2010)—the meso-level remains comparatively under-theorized. By foregrounding these arenas, the workshop also seeks to conceptualize the analytical potential of meso-level approaches.
Thus, this workshop aims to bring together contributions from history and the social and political sciences, focusing either on present-day or historical mobility regimes in Europe. In order to foster comparison and theoretical exchange across disciplines, we invite in particular case studies that: 1) Focus on populations legally categorized and/or socially labeled as “non-European”. We do not understand this term as a fixed geographical category but as populations constructed as such through legal, administrative, cultural, and social processes in specific historical and contemporary contexts. 2) Have a strong intra-European dimension. Studying movements within Europe allows us to move beyond a narrow focus on border control and exclusion and instead examine processes of membership, differentiation, and negotiation within European spaces. It shifts attention from entry at the border to the governance of movement inside the European space. 3) Engage with the meso-level, loosely defined as a focus on intermediate arenas and structures through which mobility regimes are produced and negotiated. 4) Mobilize the notion of mobility regimes. Despite the heterogeneous uses of the term in the literature, we understand mobility regimes as sets of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices that shape who can move, under what conditions, and with what consequences—and are shaped and negotiated by a large number of actors, including those who move (Rass and Wolff 2018; Oltmer 2025).
Participants are invited to explore a set of guiding, non-exclusive questions: • How have European states and institutions categorized populations as “non-European”? How have these classifications evolved over time, and how have they shaped mobility opportunities and constraints? • What institutional, administrative, and bureaucratic mechanisms structure mobility regimes within Europe? To what extent do these mechanisms produce comparable mobility outcomes across different historical and empirical contexts? • What roles do meso-level actors—such as administrations, NGOs, educational institutions, and regional or municipal authorities—play in shaping, implementing, or mediating mobility regimes? • How do historical and contemporary mobility regimes compare? What continuities, transformations, or ruptures can be observed across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? • How is the European space shaped and transformed by the mobility of populations categorized as non-European? How does such mobility challenge, reproduce, or redefine boundaries of belonging within Europe? • How can we conceptualize and operationalize the notion of “mobility regime”? What are the analytical advantages and limitations of this concept?
Please send a 250-word abstract accompanied by a 150-word biographical note to Giulia Scalettaris (giulia.scalettaris@univ-lille.fr) by 10 April 2026.
Organisation
The workshop is organized by Giulia Scalettaris (University of Lille/ Centre Marc Bloch Berlin) and Lucie Lamy (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam) in the framework of the AMORE project. AMORE (Afghan Europeans. The Invention of a Mobility Regime) is a research project funded by the French National Agency for Research that aims to analyze the internal functioning and the evolution of the Afghan mobility regime within the EU.
References Amelina, Anna, and Andreas Vasilache. 2014. The Shadows of Enlargement: Theorising Mobility and Inequality in a Changing Europe. Migration Letters 11 (2): 109–124. Andersson, Ruben. Time and the Migrant Other: European Border Controls and the Temporal Economics of Illegality. American Anthropologist 116 (4): 795–809. Chung, Erin Aeran. 2021. Migration politics at the meso-level. In Catherine Dauvergne (ed) Research Handbook on the Law and Politics of Migration. Elgar: 35–46. De Genova, Nicholas. 2002. Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 419–447. de Haas, Hein. 2010. Migration and Development: A Theoretical Perspective. International Migration Review 44 (1): 227–264. Faist, Thomas. 1997. The Crucial Meso-Level. In Hammar, Thomas, Grete Brochmann, Kristof Tamas and Thomas Faist (ed.) International migration, immobility, and development : multidisciplinary perspectives. Berg, Oxford / New York: 187–218. Fontanari, Elena. 2019. Lives in Transit. An Ethnographic Study of Refugees’ Subjectivity across European Borders. Routledge, London / New York. Khosravi, Shahram. 2008. The ‘Illegal’ Traveller: an Auto-Ethnography of Borders. Social Anthropology, 15: 321–334. Lipphardt, Anna, Inga Schwarz. 2018. Follow the People! Examining Migration Regimes through the Trajectories of Unauthorized Migrants. In Pott, Andreas, Christoph Rass and Frank Wolff (ed.) Was ist ein Migrationsregime? / What is a migration regime? Springer, Wiesbaden: 187– 206. Rass, Christoph, Frank Wolff. 2018. What Is in a Migration Regime? Genealogical Approach and Methodological Proposal. In Pott, Andreas, Christoph Rass and Frank Wolff (ed.) Was ist ein Migrationsregime? / What is a migration regime? Springer, Wiesbaden: 65–80. Tazzioli, Martina. 2020. Governing migrant mobility through mobility: Containment and dispersal at the internal frontiers of Europe. EPC: Politcs and Space 2020, 38(1): 3–19. Tsianos, Vassilis, Serhat Karakayali. 2010. Transnational Migration and the Emergence of the European Border Regime: An Ethnographic Analysis. European Journal of Social Theory, 13: 373–387. Wyss, Anna. 2022. Navigating the European Migration Regime. Male Migrants, Interrupted Journeys and Precarious Lives. Bristol University Press.