News

Together with Stephane Moyson and Christopher Weible, I edited a special issue for Policy & Society on Policy Learning and Policy Change: Theorizing their relationship from different perspectives. The special issue is now available here. It has contributions from various scholars working in different theoretical traditions of policy sciences, including network analysis, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, constructivism, a phenomenological approach, co-creation and institutional analysis. 

I'm very happy to report that two H2020 projects have been awarded, one as main applicant (CROSS-MIGRATION) and one as co-applicant (ReSOMA). CROSS-MIGRATION aims to promote knowledge integration in the field of migration studies. It will focus on a number of key knowledge questions around migration flows, drivers and infrastructures, and the interaction between these flows/drivers/infrastructures and policies. The project has 15 institutional partners from all over Europe, and will be associated to IMISCOE. ReSOMA aims at the creation of a Research-Social Platform on Migration & Asylum, seeking to initiate dialogues on research and social innovation with key stakeholders from the local, national and EU level. Both projects are to start January 1st 2018. More news to follow soon (after the grant agreements have been due signed). 

The IMISCOE Board of Directors has unanimously decided to grant EUR another coordination period from 2018-2022. We are honoured by the confidence that the BD (now 39 member institutes) has put in us as coordinators. This means that I will continue as coordinator of IMISCOE for this upcoming period. Unfortunately Prof.dr. Maurice Crul will stop as co-coordinator. For the new period there will be a number of key policy priorities for IMISCOE:

• Pursuing a strategy of incremental growth of the network while maintaining the academic quality of the network's activities
• Strengthening the interdisicplinary character of the network
• Develing more intelligent strategies for putting IMISCOE's research capacity to use for research funding opportunities such as Horizon2020 and JPI. 
• Positioning IMISCOE more centrally in the ongoing public and political debates on migration and migration-related diversity
• Securing an impact rating for the IMISCOE journal CMS.
• Decentralizing some of the network activities with a view on the future of IMISCOE. 

After years of preparation, the Erasmus Migration & Diversity Institute (EMDI) finally saw the light on March 10th. EMDI is an initiative of four parts of Erasmus University Rotterdam to bring together research on migration and migration-related diversity from various disciplines. This involves the School of Social Sciences, the School of History, Culture and Communication, the Erasmus Law School, the Erasmus MC Medical Faculty and the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS). Together with Prof.dr. Kristin Henrard, Prof.dr. Susanne Janssen and Prof.dr. Des Gasper I will coordinating EMDI. To mark the occasion, Prof.dr. Steven Vertovec came over to EMDI to provide a guest lecture on the governance of superdiversity. 

As part of the IOM-led MECLEP project on Climate Change and Migration, we did a case study of the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta. The outcomes of this study are now published in the report 'Adapting to climate change through migration: a study of the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta', co-authored by Han Entzinger and me. You can download the full report here. 

Executive summary:

The article 'Framing the Immigration Policy Agenda A qualitative comparative analysis of media-effects on Dutch immigration policies" that was co-authored by Rianne Dekker and me, has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Press-Politics. An abstract will appear here on my website soon. 

New article, co-authored with Ilona van Breugel, accepted for publication in Politics & Society: "Mainstreaming in response to superdiversity? The governance of migration-related diversity in France, the UK and the Netherlands' . The publication is based on the UPSTREAM project. 

The Netherlands Institute of Government has kindly awarded me the 2016 Best PhD Supervisor Award. I'm very honoured and owe many thanks for my PhD's for this award, as they actually do all the work themselves! See link for the jury report. 

Together with the Department of Security and Justice and the Scientific Council for Government Policy, Erasmus University will organize this year's Immigration Conference. The aim of the conference is to get policymakers and scientists to meet around shared research interests. This year's conference will focus on the topic 'Governance of Migration and Diversity.' More information to follow soon. 

The new Leiden-Delft-Erasmus master Governance of Migration & Diversity has begun. Our first class has 22 students from all over the world. For more information, see www.mastergmd.nl 

Erasmus University Rotterdam will host the 2017 IMISCOE annual conference. The conference will focus on the urban dimension of migration & diversity, covering topics such as the refugee situation, intra-EU mobility, the politics of migration and the economic implications of migration & diversity for cities. The conference is to take place from 28-30 June 2017, and I will be chairing the Conference Committee. More information to follow soon!

This article, co-authored by Mark van Ostaijen and me, is an outcome of the Urban Europe project IMAGINATION on the urban consequences of intra-EU mobility. It has now been accepted for publication in the journal Critical Policy Studies. More information will follow soon. For more on the IMAGINATION project, see www.project-imagination.net. Click here for link to the article. 

Scholten, P., Collett, E., and Petrovic, M. (forthcoming) 'Mainstreaming migrant integration? A critical analysis of a new trend in integration governance', in International Review of Administrative Sciences.  

This is the introduction to a special issue of Comparative Migration Studies that hosts a conversation between leading scholars from various disciplines and perspectives on the relation between immigration, welfare state, cultural diversity and nationhood. The focal point of the discussion is a lead article by the political philosopher Will Kymlicka, which refers to a ‘progressive’s dilemma’ (see also Banting 2010) between support for social solidarity and cultural diversity.

As of April 1st 2016, I will be scientific advisor for the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR). As part of a WRR project on migration-related diversity, I will work at the WRR for 2 days a week for a one year period. The WRR is a scientific advisory body for government policy that has a tradition of involvement in the area of migration and diversity. In fact, my career as a scholar began with a research to science-politics boundary work around the first WRR reports in the field of migration (1979, 1989, 2001). Happy now to be part of the next (and very timely) reflection of the WRR on this topic. More information to follow soon.