Working Areas

Migration processes and inclusion are complex areas of research, which MIS organised into five working areas. Each of these working areas combines a focus on a phenomenon linked to migration processes with a focus on a particular aspect of inclusion. Each of these combinations addresses questions that are of interest to several disciplines, thereby creating a space for interdisciplinary cooperation. Transversal forms of collaboration (such as regular workshops, conferences) will further support trans- and interdisciplinary research (e.g. the meaning of cross-border movement for cultural identities).

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Global Connectivity and Socio-Economic Participation

Contemporary globalization has meant an unprecedented increase in the mobility of goods, services, money, data and people, including migrants (although the recent Corona crisis also shows that globalization can also bring about a sudden interruption of mobility). Increased mobility has become an opportunity for many but a problem for others. It is paradoxical that increasing connectivity has provoked a backlash against mobility amongst many political movements. For this reason, it is important to examine global connectivity within the framework of socio-economic participation.

Diversity and Social Cohesion

Global connectivity has contributed to increased diversity. Even within a globalized world, Luxembourg takes a special position with its diverse population and its foreign population percentage of 47.5%. It is therefore a place where we can study challenges related to the construction of cohesion before the background of various forms of diversity (“heterogeneity of diversity”). Culture contact, meeting people of different nationalities and backgrounds, and switching between languages characterize everyday life in Luxembourg. Cultural diversity manifests itself in manifold social contexts, in schools, state institutions, the work place, but also in families. A multitude of constellations must be taken into account, such as children growing up in mixed-national households or dual citizens, and the ways in which questions of belonging and identity are discussed and managed.

Cross Border Movement and Citizenship

In a “borderless Europe”, characterized by free movement of people, citizenship assumes a new dimension as cross-border mobility is promoted through the regionalization of migration laws and regulations. The legal context in which migration occurs is vital to understanding the rights and responsibilities of migrants and non-migrants alike as evolving notions of citizenship affect the socio-economic and cultural protection of people. Individuals can even lose their citizenship and thus become stateless when they engage in cross-border movements. These movements (e.g. cross-border residential mobility, cross-border labour migration can be viewed as “Acts of Citizenship” (Isin, E., 2008) because they are effectively a negotiation of the relationship between rights, responsibilities and territories.

Multilingualism and Educational Challenges

Migration complexifies individual and societal multilingualism entailing challenges and opportunities. Through the lens of multilingualism, migration-related research seeks, on the one hand, to understand challenges emerging from linguistic diversification in social-economic, and cultural fields such as education (in schools, adult, vocational, higher education and workplace communication), and areas of media, literary and artistic practice. On the other hand, multilingual practices in these same areas can be considered as generating potential for innovation and for re-imagining society and social cohesion.

Experiences of Borders and Cultural Identities

The enormous increase in the mobility of people – as well as things, ideas or capital – in the past decades has led to a changed understanding of borders. Research in social sciences and cultural studies no longer regards borders as fixed markers of territorial relationships, but is primarily interested in the processes of their production and (de)stabilization. These processes, also effective and particularly visible in times of covid-19, take place to an important degree in the field of everyday cultural life in which borders are experienced and negotiated. Dealing with everyday practices, narratives, aesthetics etc. gives insights into the complex functioning of borders. In migration research, this changed understanding of borders allows discussing and analyzing questions of social and cultural belonging and forms of conviviality in increasingly diversified societies beyond geopolitical patterns, ethnic-national categories or normative ideas of integration.