The 23rd IMISCOE Annual Conference is hosted by the Migratory Movements Group (Grup de Recerca sobre Moviments Migratoris) at the University of Girona (UdG). Our group is multidisciplinary — bringing together researchers from sociology, education, social pedagogy, anthropology and related social sciences — and has a long tradition of applied, socially engaged research on migration, mobility, diversity and social inclusion in Catalonia and beyond. We are closely linked to the Master’s Programme in Migratory Movements at UdG, one of the few specialised postgraduate programmes on migration in Spain. A conference of this scale is, however, never the work of one person or one team. The local Organising Committee brings together four colleagues from the University of Girona — Eila Prats-Brugat, Eduard Carrera, Òscar Prieto-Flores and Xavier Casademont — working alongside the broader Migratory Movements Group, our PhD candidates and early-career researchers, and the administrative, technical and events staff at UdG who carry much of the logistical weight. We are also working hand in hand with the IMISCOE Network Office, whose experience has been invaluable.
About the organisers
The Migratory Movements Group is based at the University of Girona and brings together researchers from sociology, education, social pedagogy, anthropology and related social sciences. Their work sits at the intersection of migration, education, citizenship and community-based action in Catalonia, with strong ties to European and international debates. The group's main lines of research include migration and education, youth transitions, social mentoring, inequalities and discrimination, citizenship and political participation, well-being and mental health, and the role of institutions and policies in shaping migratory experiences. Methodologically, we combine qualitative, quantitative and participatory approaches, with a strong emphasis on co-production of knowledge and ethically grounded research practices. Our members are active in European and international research networks and projects — including Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ — and play leading roles in knowledge-transfer initiatives with public administrations, civil-society organisations and local communities.
As early as 2004, colleagues from UdG — among them Carles Serra and Josep Miquel Palaudàrias — hosted the Spanish Conference of Migration in the city, an early signal of Girona's place in the field. Our engagement with the IMISCOE network itself began in 2014, when members of the group started taking part in its Annual Conferences — from Madrid 2014 onwards — and progressively in Standing Committees, panels and the PhD Network. In 2020, the University of Girona formally joined IMISCOE as a member institution, consolidating a relationship that had been growing for almost a decade. Hosting the 2026 conference in Girona is, for us, a way of returning some of that hospitality, and of contributing to migration research from a medium-sized Catalan city with a strong commitment to social cohesion, civic participation and academic–community collaboration.
About the conference theme "Strengthening Migration Studies through Community Engagement"
This year's conference theme grew out of a concern we share with many colleagues in the network: how knowledge about migration is produced, and for whom. Migration studies have expanded enormously, yet the field is still shaped by Eurocentric and Western-centric assumptions, by the boundaries academia has historically drawn, and by the pressures of a neoliberal model of academic production. At a moment of intense polarisation, when migration is one of the most problematized issues in public debate, we believe scholars cannot limit themselves to explaining how borders, control technologies and criminalisation work. We also have a responsibility to ask how our research can produce narratives, interventions and policies that strengthen solidarity, human dignity, inclusive pathways and hope for a fairer society. Community engagement is our entry point into that question. Under the heading “Strengthening Migration Studies through Community Engagement”, the conference invites participants to reflect critically on how migration research can be more deeply connected to the communities, places and social actors with whom we engage as scholars, and to foster dialogue between research, lived experience and public debate. It foregrounds participatory, collaborative and reflexive approaches to the production of knowledge — co-production with social movements, artists, NGOs, schools, trade unions and policy-makers — as well as the ethical dilemmas these collaborations raise. It also calls for epistemic justice: recognising absences in the field, valuing voices that have been marginalised, and examining how race, class, gender, nationalism and coloniality have shaped migration and ‘integration’ studies — and how we, as researchers, are affected by or reproduce these inequalities. Ultimately, we hope the theme opens a conversation about how migration studies can contribute to social justice, democratic participation and inclusive public discourse, and about building reparative relationships within and beyond the academy.
About the conference program
The conference runs over four days, from 29 June to 2 July 2026, in Girona and online. It keeps the structure the IMISCOE community knows well — plenary sessions, thematic panels and workshops clustered around the Standing Committees and the Open Section, alongside the Standing Committee and Board meetings. In keeping with the theme, we are giving particular space to formats that put community engagement into practice: roundtables and workshops co-designed with civil-society organisations, activists, artists, practitioners and policy-makers, as well as moments that connect the academic programme with the city of Girona and its associative fabric. As in previous editions, panels and workshops will run either fully on-site or fully online, with a very small number of hybrid sessions reserved for justified exceptional cases. The conference venue is the Barri Vell Campus of the University of Girona, in the heart of the medieval old town — a setting that we hope will encourage exchanges between scholars, civil-society actors, artists, practitioners and policy-makers, both inside and outside the sessions.
Expectations for the Annual Conference
More than anything, we hope colleagues leave Girona feeling that the conference did justice to its theme — that community engagement was not only discussed but practised. We would love participants to take home new collaborations and ideas for research that is rigorous and socially useful at the same time, especially at a moment when migration is so often distorted in public discourse and only careful, verified scholarship can support fair decision-making. We also hope the event offers something the field needs: a generous, welcoming space for early-career researchers, for colleagues from the Global South, and for voices that are too rarely at the centre of our conversations. On a more human level, Girona is a small, walkable, Mediterranean city, and we hope that scale allows for the kind of unhurried encounters — long lunches, evening strolls along the Onyar, conversations that spill out of the sessions — where real intellectual community is built. If colleagues leave with a sense of solidarity and renewed purpose, alongside a few good memories of the city, we will consider the conference a success.
Recommendations for conference participants to make the most of their time in Girona
For colleagues working on migration, Girona and its surroundings offer an itinerary with particular relevance to the field. Within walking distance of the venue, the Museum of Jewish History (Museu d’Història dels Jueus), in one of the best-preserved medieval Jewish Quarters in Europe, tells the long story of expulsion and forced displacement that culminated in 1492. About forty minutes north of Girona, in La Jonquera, the Museu Memorial de l’Exili (MUME) is dedicated to La Retirada of 1939 — the exodus of around half a million Spanish Republicans across the Pyrenees — and is an almost mandatory stop for anyone working on forced migration, borders and memory. A little further along the coast, in Portbou, Dani Karavan’s memorial “Passatges” marks the place where Walter Benjamin died in 1940 trying to escape the Nazis: one of the most moving contemporary monuments to border-crossing and refuge in Europe, reachable from Girona by train in just over an hour. For those with an extra day, a “borderscape” route linking Girona, Portbou, Cap de Creus, and Cadaqués offers an opportunity to explore the Mediterranean Pyrenees as a landscape shaped by multiple histories of mobility and displacement. It bears traces of multiple histories: as a site of Republican exile, a route of escape from Nazi persecution, and today as a landscape shaped both by mass tourism and by ongoing migration dynamics.
Conference Organising Committees:
Eila Prats-Brugat
Eduard Carrera
Òscar Prieto-Flores
Xavier Casademont