WS team at 17TH IMISCOE Annual conference

In July 2020, our team organised a panel at the international 17th IMISCOE Annual Conference.

The panel was moderated by Karin Geuijen, Maggi Leung and Annelies Zoomers, where first of all the research questions and objectives of the project were presented. Besides the participation of several members of our project, other social scholars took part. With the lecture on the topic ´New welcoming spaces? Concepts, plans, and conflicts in diversifying neighbourhoods´, Ms. Madlen Pilz from the Leibniz Institute for Spatial Social Research discussed the question of how the strategies for producing welcoming spaces of local governmental and non-governmental actors are received by the residents of these spaces. Moreover, Ester Driel and Tihomir Sabchev from the Utrecht University have presented their papers. Ester Driel examines to what extent Riace’s reception program (1) supports the successful settlement of refugees, and (2) affects the local community and the attitude of the local population towards newcomers. Tihomir Sabchev presented evidence from a qualitative comparative case study of two municipalities located on the opposite sides of the metropolitan area of Thessaloniki, which hosted a large number of forced migrants after the closure of the Balkan route to safety.