Co-organised by the IMISCOE SC on Migration, Citizenship and Political Participation and the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the following call for papers aims to gather contributions for a workshop taking place from 12 to 14 July in Istanbul, Türkiye.
The Workshop starts from a distinct, constructivist premise. If categories carry rights, then categories are worth contesting. The term migranticisation has so far been applied to migrants and their descendants, who are held in the category of the foreign long after arrival (Dahinden 2016; Dahinden and Anderson 2021; Charsley and Hoellerer 2025). We extend it in a direction it has not yet taken, to the strategic conversion of native minorities into foreign immigrants, which is not the consequence of exclusion but its precondition. Once a native population is recast as an immigrant one, the thick international and domestic obligations owed to it become considerably thinner. Expulsion becomes migration management. Pushed to its bitter end, the process amounts to ethnic cleansing by stealth, tolerated because it is conducted in the language of national preservation against foreigners, rather than a sectarian war against "sons of the soil" (Weiner 1978). The power to recast is never the sole prerogative of the state. Minorities advance claims of their own, often involving kin states, diaspora organisations, domestic courts and international bodies. Sometimes the reclassification is defeated outright. The process is rarely straightforward. It typically advances by amendments and decrees, by courts and appeals, by demands for papers that were never issued or no longer recognised. What holds these cases together is an attempt to deny that a minority is rooted where it lives. Comparing these classificatory struggles, explaining their variations across time and context, is the analytical task we propose.
You can find the full call here!
Expected contributions
Against this background, we welcome contributions examining the underlying discursive and institutional processes of migranticisation of indigenous minorities, from any discipline in the social sciences and humanities, in any period and any country or region. We also consider proposals examining the opposite process, whereby foreigners are recast as nationals through co-ethnic citizenship policies (Harpaz 2022, Dumbrava 2019). Papers may address the process itself, its causes or its effects. They may proceed from the top down, examining how the category is proposed, propagated, institutionalised or abandoned, or from the bottom up, examining how it is internalised, evaded and resisted, by minorities themselves and by others acting alongside them.
Practical information
The Workshop is co-organised by MIGCITPOL, the Standing Committee on Migration, Citizenship and Political Participation of the IMISCOE, and by the HUMANCIT project at the University of Neuchâtel, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant number: 219766). Papers will be developed with a view to publication as a Special Issue in a leading journal in the field.
The Workshop will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, on 12-14 July 2027.
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words, together with a short biographical note, to
Decisions will be communicated by 30 January 2027, and full drafts will be circulated in advance of the Workshop. Accommodation is covered for all selected participants, and limited travel support is available; it will be allocated on the basis of need and of our aim to assemble a diverse group of contributors.
The conference is co-organised by Debasreeta Deb (University of Hyderabad), Shamna Thachamam Poyil (University of Delhi), and Jean-Thomas Arrighi (University of Neuchâtel).
Questions regarding the event may be addressed to