Cologne Autumn Research Academy 2023

Infrastructuring Migration | Migrating Infrastructures?
16^th to 20^th of October at the University of Cologne, Germany

This Research Academy aimed at exploring current changes and debates related to the Mediterranean as a border region and, in this context, to migration and mobility in the wider Mediterranean region from an interdisciplinary perspective. Our overarching conceptual focus was on the infrastructuring of migration. This entails a praxeological perspective that sees (infra)structures not as fixed entities, but as mutually shaped and shifting in the process of migration itself. Migrants and refugees not only actively rely on and build their own infrastructures - infrastructuring migration - but also adapt, intervene, and change border regimes according to specific local situations and demands. Could one even speak of migrating infrastructures of control and migration?

This approach implies a focus on localized settings and situated practices of bordering and calls for a broad understanding of migration that includes not only the movement of people, but also the movement of objects, ideas, and more-than-human (MTH) entities (such as viruses, toxins, plants, and animals). Such an understanding of the infrastructures of migration emphasizes the entanglement of human beings with material aspects involved in migration and its governance.

This DiaMiGo Autumn Research Academy explored this approach through three distinct yet intertwined areas of interest that co-structure contemporary practices and debates on migration and governance in the Mediterranean:

Human Mobility and the Autonomy of Migration
Religion and Migration
More than Human Migration.

Download Program Booklet

Here are some impressions shared by the students and young scholars who attended the Autumn Research Academy

Exchanging perspectives with our colleagues from Cairo made me reflect on my own positionality as a researcher. How do we produce knowledge, and who is it for?
Avelicia Cumbana, UoC