International Conference “Rethinking EU Immigration: legal developments, management and practices”

This week we will be part of the CDCDI international conference entitled “Rethinking EU Immigration: legal developments, management and practices” promoted by the Research and Information Centre on Immigrant Integration (Centru de Documentare și Cercetare în Domeniul Integrării Imigranților, CDCDI) and organised by the Romanian Association for Health Promotion (Asociaţia Română pentru Promovarea Sănătăţii, ARPS) in partnership with the SOROS Foundation Romania that will take place on March 13-14, 2014 in Bucharest, Romania.

Is immigrant integration a key challenge for the EU states? How should governments address the European trends in Migration? These are among the most relevant issues to be dealt from scholars, practitioners and NGOs representatives during the event.

Immigration and integration are, indeed, of high interest for political actors, academics, researchers and policy makers. With increasing migration to and within an already diverse European Union, the need for understanding and explaining the immigration process is urgent in order to identify the most appropriate integration frameworks. Viewed both as a challenge and as an opportunity, immigration cannot be efficiently managed without coherent integration measures.

The economic crisis and the focus on the nation-state from the last 5 years pushed the governments to make adjustments to their immigration policies that answered to the “party induced public pressure”. The European legal framework in the area of migration and asylum has undergone some important changes during 2013. To what extend are those changes likely to improve the life prospect of both immigrants and local population in the member states? What are the risks related to the transposition of the recast Asylum Procedures Directive at the national level, taking into account the protracted conflict in Syria? The conference aims to explore the political, economic, legal and social implications of immigration in the EU, as well as the development potential of migration for the member states and the region as a whole.

The conference programme includes around thirty speakers from several other NGOs and civil society organisation as well as universities and institutions, such as the Migration Policy Group, the University of Leiden, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), the University of Amsterdam, the University of Essex, the Centre of Migration Research of Warsaw, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Migrants’ Rights Network, and the University of Geneva, to discuss around the following themes:

• Transnationalism, European identity and integration in Europe;
• Understanding the European integration modules;
• Challenges in measuring immigrant integration;
• Action research on migration;
• Legal perspectives on European immigration;
• The role of migration research centres in migration management;
• Migration and development.

At the beginning of 2014, a call for abstracts was also open to submission of topics from an inter-disciplinary approach to migration dynamics and integration policies and contributions covering research actions, policy analyses, as well as good practice models in migration management.

Anna Lodeserto will attend this conference with a paper selected for presentation with the title “Walls and Borders Ruling Europe in Times of Free Movement of Citizens” focusing on the free movement governance models within the EU following the lifting of the final restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian workers by January 1st, 2014, under Accession Treaties. This research work also assesses the actual socio-economic situation of Romanian migrants and the ‘securitarian’ approach emerging in Bulgaria with the government’s plans to build a razor-wire fence along the country’s border with Turkey thus posing further investigative questions on the strengthening of the “Fortress Europe” in times of crisis.

The full paper can be downloaded here:
“Walls and Borders Ruling Europe in Times of Free Movement of Citizens” 

Link to the Facebook event page: “International conference: Rethinking EU Immigration” (ABplus Events)

For further information about the conference, please contact: conference@cdcdi.ro