Coordinator: Milena Belloni

Organisation and communication support: 

Imane Bendra

Roos Derrix

Giovanni Penna

Irene Landini

Researchers involved:

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Anne-Sophie Bafort

Anne-Sophie is a PhD student at the Department of Linguistics under the supervision of Mieke Vandenbroucke and co-supervision of Jürgen Jaspers (ULB). She is part of the GaP (Grammar and Pragmatics) research group. Her research focuses on elite education for transnational families: international schools in particular. It takes the form of a linguistic ethnographic case study of one such a school in Flanders. She is particularly interested in how these schools have a clearly exclusive, prestigious character (exuberant tuition fees, preparing students for world-class universities and leadership positions in global corporations later in life), but balance this with the proclamation of progressive views and placing great importance on inclusion. 

Department: Linguistic pragmatics – Research Center: GaP - Grammar and Pragmatics (University of Antwerp) Research area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations  Keywords: International school, Transnational families, Language-based elitism, Linguistic ethnography, Sociolinguistics

Milena Belloni

Milena is Assistant Research Professor at the University of Antwerp where she coordinates the Network on Migration and Global Mobility -MIGLOBA. Her research mainly concerns refugees’ migration dynamics and inclusion pathways, transnational refugee families, migrant smuggling, protracted displacement in Europe and in the Global South, home and housing studies, and ethnographic methods.

Department: Sociology – Research Center: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) – Research area: Global Mobility and Governance  – Keywords: Refugees, Eritrea, transnational families, migration decision-making, family reunification

Imane Bendra

Imane is a Ph.D. student at the University of Antwerp's Sociology Department. Her research, employing multi-sited ethnography and life-history interviews, examines the migration aspirations of Senegalese street traders in Morocco, with a focus on how internal borders and social boundaries influence their mobility and efforts to create and maintain a sense of belonging in Morocco.

Department: Sociology – Research Center: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) –  Research area: Global Mobility and Governance  Keywords: Internal Borders, Borders And Boundaries, Senegalese Migration, Morocco, Migration Externalisation Policies, Migration Aspirations

Akofa Boglo

Akofa is a PhD candidate at the University of Humanistic Studies (UvH) in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and an Early Stage Researchers in the SOLiDi (Solidarity in Diversity) Consortium. Her supervisors at the UvH are Evelien Tonkens and Thomas Kampen but she is also supervised by UAntwerpen's Stijn Oosterlynck. Broadly, her research is about social work and solidarity at neighbourhood level. More specifically, she is doing qualitative research in two neighbourhoods in the Netherlands in which she asks how social work practices can bridge boundaries and promote a sense of solidarity in diverse neighbourhoods.

Department: Sociology – Research Center: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp)Citizenship and Humanisation of the Public Sector (University of Humanistic Studies) – Research area: Diversity and Civil Society  – Keywords: Solidarity, Boundaries, Boundary-Work, Diversity, Community, Social Work

Imke Brummer

Imke is a PhD student working in the field of Sociology of Education. Her research focuses on the intersection of citizenship and belonging and how it is experienced by young people attending secondary education in Flanders.  Her research project aims to advance current understandings of citizenship and belonging in education by investigating the covert processes of emotions in the construction of identities and shared feelings of belonging of young people with and without migration backgrounds. Her supervisors are Prof. Noel Clycq and Prof. Jan Vanhoof.

Department: Department of Training and Education Sciences  – Research Center: ​EDUBRON (University of Antwerp) – Research area: Diversity and Civil Society  Keywords: Social cohesion, Processes of belonging and citizenship in education, Citizenship education, Ethnic minority students and collective identities

Noel Clycq

Noel is research professor at the Department of Training and Education Sciences. His research is on consequences of migration within formal and informal educational settings. This research sprang from the idea of large inequalities existing within the Flemish education system. Additionally, he focuses on citizenship education, the role of emotions in education, feelings of belonging and exclusion, student-teacher relations and how teachers discuss 'controversial' topics in the classroom.

Department: Training and Education Sciences –  Research Center: ​EDUBRON (University of Antwerp) –  Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations  – Keywords: Education and learning, Identity, Belonging, Resources, Power

Elisabetta Costa 

Elisabetta is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Studies and a digital anthropologist. Her research focuses on the use of social media and digital platforms in people's everyday life. Her research also investigates the role of the digital in transnational communication, migration, and mobility in Europe and Turkey.

Department: Communication Studies –  Research Centre: ViDi - Visual and Digital Cultures Research Centre (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Media and Mobility – Keywords: Media and migration; media and mobility; Kurdish migration; mobile media and professional migration; work and gender

Blansefloer Coudenys

Blansefloer is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences (Department of Training and Education Sciences). Her research focuses on the impact of community-based educational spaces organised by various ethnic-cultural minoritised groups on ethnic educational inequality. She is supported by Noel Clycq (supervisor UAntwerp) and Orhan Agirdag (supervisor KuLeuven).

Department: Training and Education Sciences  – Research Centre: ​EDUBRON (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society; Social Inclusion and Migrants Populations  – Keywords: Education systems and achievement gap / Educational inequality - Ethnic-cultural minority students- Community-based educational spaces, - Effectiveness and impact of CBES on student outcomes and learning processes, Mixed methods

Woldegebriel Dagne

Woldegebriel is a doctoral researcher at the university of Ghent and the university of Antwerp.His research examines the right to work for refugees, with a specific focus on urban refugees in Ethiopia as a case study.He is supervised by Prof. Dr. Ellen Desmet (university of Ghent) and Prof. Dr. Milena Belloni (university of Antwerp).

Department: Faculty of Law and Criminology – Research Centre: Migration Law Research Group (Ghent University, Faculty of Law & Criminology) and CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrants Populations–  Keywords: Urban refugees, Refugees’ Right to work, Refugees’ livelihood, Refugee integration, Ethiopia

Eline De Jong

Eline is a social anthropologist and currently works as a PhD candidate within the European project “SOLiDi” (solidarity in diversity). In her research, she investigates the relationship between solidarity and deservingness in third sector organisations, focusing specifically on social enterprises which work with and for people with a migration background. She is a member of CRESC, with Stijn Oosterlynck (UAntwerpen) and Yuri Kazepov (University of Vienna) as her supervisors.

Department: Social anthropology –  Research Centre: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) and ​SOLiDi - Solidarity in Diversity (University of Antwerp and University of Vienna) – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society – Keywords: Solidarity; Deservingness; Social enterprises; Third sector; Migration

Roos Derrix

Roos is a PhD student at the Institute of Development Studies (IOB). She focuses on the refugee policy process in Uganda, as there is limited understanding of how these policies are shaped and managed in countries of first asylum. Her research aims to understand the effects of political interactions at the international, national, and local level on national refugee policies and refugees.

Department: Development studies –  Research Centre: IOB - Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Refugee policy process, Multi-level governance, Power relations, Politics, Uganda

Elien Diels

Elien is a PhD researcher affiliated to the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute and the University of Antwerp Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change. She conducts research on migration and integration policies at the local level from an interdisciplinary point of view (combining sociology and public administration).

Department: Sociology – Research Centre: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) and ​Public Governance Institute (KU Leuven) – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society – Keywords: Migration And Integration Policies, Multilevel And Multi-factor Governance, (Local) Policy Networks, Social Network Analysis

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​Sari Goukens

Sari is a Joint PhD student (main institution: UAntwerp, guest institution: UGent) currently working on a project looking into the influence of an interpreter on the entextualisation process during sham marriage investigations in Flanders, both on a municipal and police level. She has also worked as a researcher at UGent on a Fedasil National Project looking into the digital competencies and needs of asylum seekers in Belgium. As she is connected to UGent, she is also affiliated with CESSMIR. At UAntwerp she is part of the Faculty of Arts and the GaP research group (Grammar and Pragmatics).

Department: Linguistic pragmatics – Research Centre: GaP - Grammar and Pragmatics (University of Antwerp)Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (Ghent University)MULTIPLES - Research Centre for Multilingual Practices and Language Learning in Society (Ghent University)CESSMIR - Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (Ghent University) – Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Entextualisation, Interpreting, Marriage migration, Pragmatics, Transnational relationships

Ines Homburg

Ines is a third-year PhD student at the Department of Economics with Sunčica Vujić as supervisor, and Joana Clifton-Sprigg from the University of Bath as co-supervisor. She works on a project that examines the relationship between international migration and anti-immigration attitudes. As this is a two-way relationship, her research uses exogenous shock events and recent econometric methods to uncover causal estimates. 

Department: Economics –  Research Centre: Department of Economics (Ghent University) – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: labour economics; applied econometrics; international migration; anti-immigration attitudes; public attitudes

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Mark Marvin Kadigo

Mark is a Teaching and Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He is currently working on several studies on refugees and host communities in Uganda and Ethiopia. The broad focus of his doctoral research is on the migration and sustainable development nexus. He is investigating the socio-economic dynamics within a refugee hosting context, and the related outcomes. Specifically, with his research, he aims to contribute to the understanding of the socio-economic effects of hosting refugees, and attitudes and perceptions in refugee-hosting contexts.

Department: Development studies – Research Centre: IOB - Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: Refugees, Labor Markets, Coping Strategies, Perceptions, Integration

Irene Landini

Irene is a YUFE post-doctoral research, specialized in international migration and immigrant integration into host societies. She is interested in investigating the main obstacles to and the strategies prompting integration in the domains of welfare and formal education. Her education background is in political science, and she currently carries out research at the intersection of political science and sociology. She is a member of EDUBRON research group (Educational research with impact) at the University of Antwerp. She is also a research fellow at the Centre for Migration Studies, at the University of Essex in the UK.

​Department: Social sciences-Training and Education – Research CenterEDUBRON (University of Antwerp) and Centre for Migration Studies (University of Essex) – Research AreaSocial Inclusion and Migrant Populations  – Keywords immigrants, integration, education and learning, welfare-migration nexus, ethnicity

Dries Lens

Dries is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and a consultant for Myria (the Federal Migration Institute). Within the University, he has worked for MIGLOBA's predecessor CeMIS and is currently affiliated with the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy. His research focuses on migration and the integration of migrants and their offspring, with a focus on Belgium.

​Department: Sociology – Research Centre: University of Antwerp (previous CEMIS and CSP) – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: Economic Migration; Posting Of Workers; Labour Market Integration; Integration And Activation Measures; Refugees; Self-Employment; Service Voucher Scheme

M -- P

Amal Miri

Amal is a postdoctoral researcher and coordinates ReIncluGen a European Horizon project on gender empowerment and the role of civil society in Europe. Her PhD was on marriage migration, motherhood and integration among Moroccan mothers in Belgium. She was also a member of MIGLOBA's predecessor, CeMIS.

Department: Sociology  – Research Centre:CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society; Global Mobility and Governance  – Keywords: Migration - Gender - (religious) Agency - Empowerment - Participatory Research - arts & culture

Ninke Mussche

Ninke is a researcher at the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy since 2000. her research focuses on migration, intra-EU mobility and the labour market integration of migrants and their offspring.

Department: Sociology  – Research Centre: CSB - Centre for Social Policy Herman Deleeck (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations  – Keywords: Economic migration; Labour Market Integration; intra-EU mobility; Labour Migrants; Posting; Third Country Nationals

Alberto Neidhardt

Alberto is professor at the Faculty of Law, focusing on comparative law and legal pluralism, including migration law and the politics of migration. He is also Senior Policy Analyst and the head of the European Migration and Diversity Programme at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank.

Department: Law – Research Centre: Faculty of Law (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance; Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: European Union; Common European Asylum System; Cooperation; Labour Migration; Narratives.

Giovanni Penna

Giovanni is a doctoral scholarship holder. The preliminary title of his research is "Outsourcing family visa processes: the role of non-state actors in migration border management".  He will investigate this topic by analysing the policies of European countries and carrying out ethnographic research with migrant populations living in crisis-affected areas 

Department: Sociology – Research Centre:CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Visa policy, Visa outsourcing, Border externalisation, Refugee families, Ethnography.

Dominika Proszowska

Dominika is a postdoctoral researcher at GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence and Politics & Public Governance (PPG) working together with prof. Peter Bursens and prof. Koen Verhoest. Currently she is developing a new line of research on (COVID-19) vaccination and access to health care of Polish migrants in Flanders. Previously, she has worked on political trust at local/national/EU levels of governance, political attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccination strategies in EU countries. In her research, she focuses on migrant communities, their trust to the government of the home/receiving country and the health behaviors resulting from it.

Department: Political sciences – Research Centre: GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence (University of Antwerp) and PPG - Politics & Public Governance (University of Antwerp) –  Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: Political trust, Public opinion, EU governance, Vaccination, Health care

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Chiara Russo

Chiara is a phd researcher and part of the ROBUST project, under the supervision of Prof. Wouter Van Dooren. Her research on crisis governance explores the role of knowledge (its exchange, development, and heterogeneity) in adapting and innovating in turbulent times. The Belgian response to the influx of asylum seekers in 2014-2015 is among the cases she has been analysing, together with vaccination promotion, contact tracing, and school closure during the COVID-19 pandemic – Research Centre: Politics and Public Governance – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations  – Keywords: crisis, knowledge, intermediaries, experts, networks 

Mieke Schrooten

Mieke is Assistant Professor in the Master of Social Work and CRESC. In her research and teaching, she focuses mainly on issues of urban social work, (trans)migration and mobility, transnational social work, diversity and informal social work practices. In CRESC, she is involved in the Soligion project. This is an FWO-SBO project (2020 – 2024) that focuses on religiously inspired solidarity initiatives in Flanders and their relationship with the welfare state. One of the findings of this project is that these solidarity initiatives often target or reach people with a migration background.

Department: Sociology  – Research Centre: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp), UA, KU Leuven, Universiteit Gent  – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society; Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Social Work, Solidarity Initiatives, Welfare State, Migration, Mobility

Jasper Segerink

Jasper is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Urban History at the History department under supervision of Hilde Greefs and Greet De Block. His research focuses on migrant groups and the commercial accommodation sector of lodging houses in late nineteenth century Antwerp.  He is particularly interested in the spatial dynamics of migrant presence and experience caused by governance, housing markets and urban planning in the long term.

Department: History  – Research Centre: Centre for Urban History – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society– Keywords: Migration history, urban migration, temporary migration, migrant housing, segregation. 

Olivier Sterck

Olivier is a research professor at IOB (UAntwerp) and associate professor at the University of Oxford. He has a PhD in economics and conducts research on refugee economiees in East Africa. His research uses mixed-methods, with large-scale quantitative and qualitative surveys carried out with refugees and host communities in camp and urban settings. Additionally, he has worked with the World Food Program and the World Bank on e.g. the impact of cash-based assistance to refugees.

Department: Development studies  – Research Centre: IOB - Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp) ​– Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: Refugee Economies, Cash Transfers, Impact Evaluations, Mixed Methods, East Africa.

Nik Stoop

Nik is affiliated to the IOB - Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp)  and holds an FWO senior post-doctoral fellowship. As a development economist, he tries to address policy relevant questions through empirical microeconomics. His work on migration can be summarised by the questions “Who helps the displaced, and why?”. Through a combination of large-scale surveys, experimental approaches and qualitative data collection, he studies the determinants of public attitudes and helping behaviour towards those who are forcibly displaced - and how this compares across a variety of contexts.

Research CentreIOB - Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations – Keywords: Displacement, Hosting, Helping behavior, Preferences for migrants, Experiment

Kristof Titeca

Kristof is a political scientist and full professor at the Institute of Development Policy. He is specialized in conflict and governance in Central and Eastern Africa. He is broadly interested in the relations between the international community and national governments in this region. From this perspective, he has an interest in the politics of refugee policies; which has led him to work on internal displacement, donor politics, corruption in refugee policies, and the role of UNHCR in Uganda. He is a regular contributor to The New Humanitarian on these issues; and has published academically on these in for example Third World Quarterly. 

Department: Development studies  – Research Centre: IOB - Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Refugee policy; Humanitarian Policy; UNHCR; Donor aid

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Mieke Vandenbroucke

Mieke is a tenure track research professor in linguistic pragmatics. Her current research is typically ethnographic in nature and broadly concerns the institutional management of migration-related multilingualism. She also supervises many (PhD) projects which relate to migration, such as the role of language and interpreters in government investigations into alleged sham relations, so-called 'expats' living in Brussels, elite multilingualism in an international school, and the reception of Global English spoken by migrants by institutions in Belgium.

Department:  Linguistic pragmatics  –  Research centre: GaP - Grammar and Pragmatics (University of Antwerp) –  Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance –  Keywords: Language and Migration; Marriage Migration; Multilingualism; Urban super diversity; Language Policy; Government Communication

Dirk Vanheule

Dirk is full professor at the Faculty of Law and member of the Government and Law research group. He was a founding member of MIGLOBA's predecessor, CeMIS. His research focuses on national, EU and international asylum and migration law and civic integration policy from a legal and multilevel governance perspective.

Faculty: Law – Research centre: Government and Law (University of Antwerp) – Research area: Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Immigration and Asylum Law; Due process, procedural law and judicial review in immigration procedures; Civic integration

Jasper Van der Kist

Jasper is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp. His PhD research, which he completed at the University of Manchester in 2022, examined the role of Country of Origin Information (COI) in European asylum systems. His current research explores the design, use and impact of new technology in both asylum and warfare. He works at the intersection of critical security studies, socio-legal studies and science and technology studies. His work has been published in International Political Sociology, Citizenship Studies and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Department: Political Science – Research centre: International Politics (University of Antwerp)Research area: Global Mobility and Governance – Keywords: Migration; Asylum; Knowledge; Technology; Politics

Jana Van der Smissen 

Jana is an FWO predoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and member of the Government and Law research group. Her research focuses on the elaboration, emphasis, conceptualisation, and enforcement of the principle of “EU solidarity” within the context of EU Asylum and Migration law, with focus on the EU’s external border legal set-up. 

Faculty: Law  –  Research centre:  Government and Law (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Global Mobility and Governance –  Keywords: EU Asylum and Immigration Law; EU Law; Principle of Solidarity; External Border Control 

Gert Verschraegen

Gert is Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and a member of CRESC. His research and teaching focus on citizenship, diversity, migration and mobility, transnational and global sociology, cultural sociology and the sociology of science and knowledge. He also supervises a number of (PhD) projects related to migration and diversity, dealing with issues such as everyday ethnic boundary work, urban diversity and youth musical practices, ethnicisation processes in civil society, and the outsourcing of visa policies.

Department: Sociology  – Research Centre: CRESC - Centre for Research on Environmental and Social Change (University of Antwerp)Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations; Diversity and Civil Society; Global Mobility and GovernanceKeywords: Culture; Citizenship; Migration; Mobility; Social Theory

Marloes Vrolijk

Marloes is a PhD researcher focusing on citizenship education and diversity at upper-secondary schools in majority-minority cities. Her project is a qualitative case study on classroom and school practices in Flanders. Themes related to migration come up in her research in different ways. In the context of the majority-minority city, most students have a "migration background". Moreover, some schools in the research project offer education for newcomers to Flanders (OKAN). Her research also raises relevant questions, such as those concerning exclusions going together with citizenship education practices. She is an early-stage research fellow at the European "Solidarity in Diversity" (SOLiDi) research consortium and a member of Edubron's focus group "Diversity and Inclusion" at the University of Antwerp’s Department of Training and Education Sciences.

Department: Training and Education Sciences  –  Research centre: EDUBRON (University of Antwerp) – Research Area: Diversity and Civil Society –  Keywords: Citizenship education, solidarity, diversity, Case study

Jonas Wood

Jonas is assistant professor and FWO postdoc fellow at the Centre for Population, Family and Health. He supervises various research projects related to the unfolding of migrant groups’ life courses, ranging from research on policies to stimulate labour force integration, the social inclusiveness of social policies towards groups with a migration background, or patterns of intergenerational adaptation between first and second generation migrants. His work relies upon the combination of longitudinal modelling using large-scale administrative data in combination with innovative qualitative research methods.

Department: Sociology – Research centre: University of Antwerp (previous CEMIS and CSP)  –  Research Area: Social Inclusion and Migrant Populations –  Keywords: Labour market integration, Active Labour Market Policy, Life Course Perspective, Family Formation, Gender