Event organised by: GRITIM-UPF at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in collaboration with the EuroMedMig Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Project
Event location: The PhD school will take place at the Ciutadella Campus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain
Deadline for application submissions: 15 November 2026
Organising Committee: Prof. Ricard Zapata-Barrero, Director of GRITIM-UPF and Coordinator of EuroMedMig and Dr. Luisa Faustini Torres, EuroMedMig PhD Network Project Manager
Call for Applications
Migration has long been studied through national and global perspectives. While these approaches remain essential, they can overlook the regional dynamics that shape how migration is governed, experienced and transformed. Regions are more than geographical spaces; they are political, economic, social and cultural arenas in which mobility is facilitated, regulated, negotiated and contested.
Regional organisations, labour markets, historical ties, environmental systems and geopolitical relationships influence migration patterns across national borders. Free movement regimes, regional integration projects, migration corridors, borderlands and cross-border cooperation all point to the importance of the regional scale for understanding contemporary human mobility.
Migration also contributes to the making and remaking of regional-building. Population movements transform labour markets, cities, political institutions, social identities and patterns of inter-state and translocal cooperation, creating new forms of connectivity as well as new political, economic and governance challenges.
The IMISCOE PhD School 2027 takes this reciprocal relationship between migration and regions as its starting point. It invites participants to critically examine how regions are imagined, constructed, governed and transformed through migration, and to consider the theoretical and methodological implications of studying migration beyond national boundaries.
Bringing together doctoral students with senior researchers working across different region of the world, the IMISCOE PhD School will create a space for comparison across regional contexts and for critical discussion of how a regional approach can contribute to migration studies.