12th IMISCOE Annual Conference Geneva 2015
Panel: The Undocumented, the Non‐legitimate, and Their Welfare. Taking stock of social and health services vis‐à‐vis "unexpected migrants" across European societies.
Organisers: ERICA RIGHARD (Malmö Univesristy), PAOLO BOCCAGNI (Trento University), and CLAUDIO BOLZMAN (University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland)
Abstract (250 words) of paper proposals are due by January 9, 2015.
Social and health care work with undocumented migrants has always been a source of challenges and dilemmas for practitioners and their organizations. This session aims to collect reflections, research findings and practice experiences about social and health care provision with this specific kind of users/clients. Undocumented migrants – including "illegal", overstayers, rejected applicants for asylum, non-registered EU-migrants, or formerly "regular" migrants – are typically marginal to the rights and service provision of receiving societies, although with strong variations across and within them. Their claims and needs are often addressed, if at all, by grassroots civil society initiative and through their informal ethnic networks, rather
than via institutional welfare provision. Their very existence may be a source of major ethical and substantive dilemmas to welfare practitioners and their agencies, against a background of generally hostile public opinions. While a number of studies have been done on the topic, there is a strong need for more comparative and interdisciplinary analysis, also in the light of several recent developments: the effects of the persisting recession in some European countries, the growing pressures of refugees from the Global South and of the increasing visibility of "return" programmes, to mention but a few.
Our session, which is expected to the part of the IMISCOE 2015 conference in Geneva, aims to advance knowledge and the public debate on the position, entitlements and protection of undocumented migrants, vis-à-vis all sort of social and health care agencies of receiving societies. We encourage paper proposals on several aspects of undocumented migrants inclusion/exclusion from welfare services, including the following:
- Migrants' access to everyday social and health care provision as an everyday process of boundarymaking
and of predominant exclusion; - The interaction between undocumented migrants' marginality towards "formal" services, and the
constellation of informal arrangements of social welfare and protection (including NGOs, social
movements and ethnic networks/associations); - Social and health work with asylum seekers and follow-up of failed applicants;
- Social and health work with "non-legitimate" residents as deontological dilemma for welfare
professions, as well as for research and training in social work; - Undocumented migrants' rights as a field of advocacy and claims-making for welfare professions;
- Social care and health agencies/practitioners vis-à-vis "voluntary return" programmes.
Abstract (250 words) of paper proposals are due by January 9, 2015. Please send your proposals to