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Urban Border Spaces

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

About | Team | Conferences | Publications


Cities have been recognized as key sites for the inclusion of migrants. What has been less recognized is that the growing diversity of mechanisms of urban migration control is turning cities into key sites for exclusion as well. The project investigates city policies and practices of urban migration control and how they are experienced by migrants, in other words, it analyses the emergence of urban border spaces in Europe.

While studies on migration and border control have been focusing primarily on national and, increasingly, European scales, preliminary research for this project indicates that urban authorities and non-state actors play important roles in this field, through identity checks in city streets, for example, or through the checking of migrants residence status for the provision of social services. To close this research gap, this project draws on and integrates three previously disconnected strands of research, namely, urban migration research, which focuses on urban inclusion and citizenship but has largely neglected the issue of borders; border studies, which reveals the fundamental transformations of border spaces in Europe but does not consider the role of cities; and urban studies, which considers urban transformations but has rarely, if ever, addressed the role of borders. The disconnectedness of these three strands of research has obfuscated the fact that some recent border transformations concern urban migration control, which is intimately related to processes and migrants’ experience of exclusion and inclusion in cities.

In addressing this gap in the research on urban forms of control, this project asks (a) how cities engage with migration control; (b) how migrants experience urban control; and (c) how we can explain differences across cities. It further seeks to understand and conceptualize (d) the relationship between (urban) citizenship and control. These questions are addressed by means of qualitative social science research based on an urban comparative design, with comparison being premised on the assumption that the scalar position of a city in the global urban hierarchy and the degree of global connectivity influence urban politics of control. The research is conducted in Germany and Spain and involves data from official statistics and documents, semi-structured interviews with staff from local authorities and other relevant organizations, and narrative biographical interviews with migrants. Our work in these countries focuses on two global cities, Frankfurt am Main and Madrid, and two less globalized cities, Dortmund and Bilbao.

The project contributes to the empirical and theoretical understanding of cities and urban spaces in the changing spatial organization of borders in Europe, which will help us understand the interconnected dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, of (urban) citizenship and control, and how the interplay of these dynamics shapes the lives of migrants in European cities.


Prof. Dr. Margit Fauser | Principal Investigator

Elena Fattorelli | Researcher

Corinna Angela Di Stefano | Associated Researcher (formal team member between April 2020 and February 2022)

Katharina Mach | Student Research Assistant

 

Former team members

Deborah Balts supported the project as a research assistant from Februrary 2020 to January 2021.

Sarah von Querfurth and Nathale Melo Martins worked in the project as research assistants from November 2018 to August 2019.

Ole Oeltjen was a researcher in the project from June 2018 to May 2019.


Organized workshops and conferences

  • International author's conference 'Mapping the internal border', Ruhr-University Bochum, 11-12 May 2023
  • International Workhsop 'Mapping the internal border', (online), 04-05 November 2021
  • Interdisciplinary Workshop between History and Sociology, Bielefeld University, reports on the workshop by Christian Ulbrist at HsozKult and by Levke Harders on https://belonging.hypotheses.org/1550.

Presentations

  • Paper presentation at 20th IMISCOE Conference 2023 "Migration and Inequalities. In search of answers and solutions"
    Margit Fauser & Elena Fattorelli, Migrant Employment as Privilege and Duty, Warsaw, 06 July 2023
  • Paper Presentationat 20th IMISCOE Conference 2023 "Migration and Inequalities. In search of answers and solutions"
    Elene Fattorelli, The normative control of the migrant family through family reunification, Warsaw, 05 July 2023
  • Paper Presentation at DGS-Kongress 2922 "Polarisierte Welten"
    Ad-hoc-Gruppe "Erwerbslosigkeit unter den Bedingungen gesellschaftlicher Transformation. Polarisierung der Erwerbsarbeitsnorm?"

    Margit Fauser & Elena Fattorelli, Erwerbstätigkeit von Migrant*innen zwischen Privileg und Pflicht, Bielefeld, 29 September 2022
  • Paper Presentation at the Midterm Conference of RN35 "Sociology of Migration"
    "Departures, arrivals, border-crossings: changing migrations in times of crises"

    Margit Fauser, Documents as practices of differential inclusion in the urban border space, University Federico II, Naples, 30-31 March 2023
  • Paper Presentation at EASA Conference "Transformation, Hope and the Commons", Queen's University Belfast
    Corinna Di Stefano, De/bordering the urban space. The effects of diverging beliefs in the interplay of humanitarian healthcare and state control mechanisms in Frankfurt am Main, Panel "Bordering and establishment of gray zones in context of migration, health care and social welfare in Europe", Belfast, 2022

  • Paper Presentation at the 19th IMISCOE Annual Conference
    Margit Fauser & Corinna Di Stefano, Healthcare access in the urban border space, Panel: “Healthcare for precarious migrants – exploring contradictions“, Oslo, 29 June to 01 July, 2022
  • Paper Presentation at the Frühjahrstagung der Sektion Migration und ethnische Minderheiten der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie
    Margit Fauser & Elena Fattorelli, Zivilgesellschaftliche Akteure in Urbanen Grenzräumen zwischen De- und Rebordering, Online, 28-29 April 2022
  • Invited Keynote, Social Work Science Day, FH St. Pölten
    Margit Fauser, Wie Papiere Grenzen ziehen. Dokumente als Praxis differentieller Inklusion im urbanen Grenzraum, Online 5 May 2022
  • Paper Presentation at the Workshop "Mapping the internal border", Univ. of Applied Sciences Darmstadt
    Corinna Di Stefano, Is there an urban humanitarian border zone? On the fragmentation of health care access for EU2-Migrants in Frankfurt am Main, Darmstadt, 2021

  • Paper Presentation at the Workshop ‘Mapping the internal border’
    Elena Fattorelli, “If you can't prove that, it's a potential lie”: suspicion and other control mechanisms underlying family reunification, Online, 04 November 2021
  • Invited Talk at the Lecture Series ‘EU-Migration in urban Social Spaces’
    Margit Fauser, The city as border space. On the role of local actors in migration control (in German), organized by Research Group Migration and Social Policy at the Institute for Labour and Qualification (IAQ), University Duisburg-Essen, online, 06 May 2021
  • Paper Presentation at the Workshop ‘NGOs/CSOs, migration management and border control`
    Margit Fauser, Corinna Di Stefano, Elena Fattorelli, Street-level agents in the urban border space between border struggle and border control, organized by Paolo Cuttitta and Antoine Pécoud, Université Paris 13, Online, 15 and 16 March 2021
  • Paper Presentation at the 18th IMISCOE Annual Conference
    Margit Fauser, Borders made of paper, online, 7 -9 July 2021
  • Research Project Presentation at the Interdisciplinary Colloquium for Early Stage Migration Researchers MIGRAKOLLOQ
    Elena Fattorelli, "Between support and border work": An investigation of local counselling actors in family reunification, online, 25 June 2021
  • Invited Talk at the think & drink colloquium @HU Berlin
    Margit Fauser, The emergence of urban border space, Georg Simmel Centre for Metropolitan Studies and Department of Urban and Regional Sociology, HU Berlin, 25 November 2019
  • Keynote at the Students Congress 2019 Ruhr University Bochum ‚Grenzenlos leben!?‘
    Margit Fauser, Vor der Grenze ist nach der Grenze. Territoriale und symbolische Grenzziehungen als Bausteine einer Soziologie der Grenze, 19 -22 September 2019 in Bochum
  • Paper Presentation at the 14th ESA Conference “Europe and beyond” in Manchester
    Margit Fauser, Rescaling Borders in the City, Joint session RN35 and RN37 - Bordering and policing, Manchester, 20 – 23 August 2019
  • Paper presentation at the IMISCOE Annual Conference “Understanding International Migration in the 21st Century” in Malmö
    Margit Fauser, The production of borders at the urban scale, 26 – 28 June 2019
  • Discussion with students at Ruhr University Bochum
    Margit Fauser, Research seminar „Sozialer Statuswandel in Migrationsbiographien - Biographische Analyse sozialer Positionierungsprozesse von Geflüchteten mit Gewalterfahrung und/oder prekärem Aufenthaltsstatus, organized by Christian Schramm, 09 May 2019
  • Discussion with students at the Fachhochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung NRW
    Margit Fauser, Research seminar Ausländerbehörde, organized by Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Schilling, 08 March 2019, Minden
  • Paper presentation at the ESA RN 35 Midterm Conference “Belongings and Borders – Biographies, Mobilities, and the Politics of Migration”
    Margit Fauser, Local border policies and practices, 24-25 January 2019, University of Strasbourg
  • Invited talk at the Viadrina Conference "B/Orders in Motion - Current challenges and future perspectives"
    Margit Fauser ,The city as border space, Viadrina Center B/Orders in Motion, Frankfurt/Oder and Collegium Polonicum, Słubice, 15 -17 November 2018
  • Paper presentation at the 13th European Sociological Association Conference in Athens
    Margit Fauser , Mechanisms of urban migration control, at the session organized by RN 37 Urban Sociology, 29 Aug. – 01 September 2017, Athens
  • Paper presentation at the Workshop ‘Migration and mobilities in an urbanising World’ at Utrecht University
    Margit Fauser , Urban border spaces in Europe, organized by Utrecht University and The Transnational Mobility-Development Network, 16-17 June 2016
  • Paper presentation at IMISCOE Spring Conference “Measures of Control: Managing Migration in the 21st Century” in Copenhagen
    Margit Fauser, Politics of control in migrant cities, 18-19 February 2016, IMISCOE & Centre for Advanced Migration Studies at Copenhagen University