News from Members

As part of the "Migrating Identities: Models, Measures, Institutions" Project", a workshop will be held on the 3rd of June (10am-5pm), at the Utrecht University School of Economics. Invited speakers are Rinus Penninx (University of Amsterdam), Godfried Engbersen (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Brenda Oude Breuil (Utrecht University), and John B. Davis (Marquette University and University of Amsterdam).

Immigration concerns individuals’ move from one society to another. Understanding this movement and the adaptation processes and outcomes in new societies require going beyond the traditional economic agent conception. Immigrants, who possess social and personal identities, are heterogeneous. When they move, their identities move, too. Integration, then, is taken as a question of how identities evolve. Linking up the ideas of four leading scholars on the issue of migrating identities, the focus of the workshop is to investigate the options for new perspectives on migration and integration. Combining diverse approaches, it tackles several important questions in the times that persons and societies keep continuously moving:

1. Who are immigrants and how do they change?
2. Why is it important to consider immigrants with identities? Does it matter whether they are well represented or not in theory?
3. With whom immigrants interact, and how influential these interactions are in integration processes?
4. Is it possible to model and measure integration dynamics as evolutionary mechanisms?
5. Can we speak of a tension that results from heterogeneity and evolution characteristics of migrants, which are unlike the migrant image of policy-makers?

This workshop is a part of the Ph.D. Project called: “Migrating Identity: Models, Measures, Institutions”. The main motivation is to observe real-life dynamics about immigration and integration, and to analyze the position of economics in the face of these dynamics. For doing so, we suggest analyses in three levels: Economic models, consequent measures, and the role of involved institutions/organizations.

In the “Models” part of the project, economic models are surveyed regarding how immigrants and host societies, and the interaction between and the change of these agents in integration processes are conceptualized. It appears that although the empirical evidence point at new behavioral and structural impacts day by day, the theories behind the evidence remain quite the same. The economic migration and integration theories still go along with the conventional economic agent conception, which assumes individuals as to seek maximizing utilities that are made of self-regarding and static elements in isolation. Such a dominant conception in economic theory has at least four main problems:

1. It limits individuals to be mere economic types and divergence from these types to be caused by
   externalities, which might, indeed, not be the case in reality.
2. Based on such assumption, interactions between migrants and host country and societies may be
   underestimated.
3. Real-life integration dynamics can hardly be understood when individuals and interactions remain that
   hypothetical.
4. Depending on the link between theory, measurement, and policy-making, above problems may lead to
   wrong policies and wrong solutions about the real-world problems.

To understand the moving individuals in reality and the dynamics involved in integration, we suggest an innovative approach in economics. This is, as we call, “An Identity-Based Club Theory Approach to Immigration and Integration”. The reason of claiming that this is an innovative approach can be explained by two focus points. First, rather than limiting agents in migration context to pure economic agent conception, we suggest to understand behaviors and decisions in a complex social system using a framework that emphasizes social identity mechanisms. Second, we suggest considering interactions in integration processes in connection with the club understanding that brings institutional elements and excludability into account.

To encourage in-depth discussion, each session includes 30 minutes of presentation and 30 minutes of discussion.
Contact: Merve Burnazoglu (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., +31615609596)

Program
09:30-10:00 Welcome Coffee
10:00-10:15 Opening of the Workshop
10:15-11:15 Rinus Penninx (UvA) - Identity and the Concept of Integration as an Analytical Tool
11:30-12:30 Godfried Engbersen (Erasmus) - Migration Mechanisms of the Middle Range: On the Concept of Reverse Cumulative Causation
12:30-13:30 Lunch in the canteen
13:30-14:30 Brenda Oude Breuil (Utrecht) - Imagining The Migrant: On Flexible Realities, Forced Identities and Fake Moralities
14:45-15:45 John B. Davis (Marquette and UvA) - The Behavior and Identity of Reflexive Economic Agents
15:45-16:00 Closing discussion
16:00-17:00 Borrel/Cocktail in the garden

Location: Green Room (2.13) in the Adam Smith Hall.
Please register by contacting Merve Burnazoglu (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)