We are pleased to invite paper proposals for the 1.5-day interdisciplinary conference: “Governing migration outside ‘Fortress Europe’”, that will take place in the Alison Richard Building, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, on 16 and 17 September 2019. The conference will explore dynamics of migration politics and governance across three regions that have seen rapid and diverging migration policy developments in recent years: North Africa, West Africa and the Middle East.

We invite abstracts that make an original empirical and/or theoretical contribution to discussions on the politics and practice of immigration and emigration governance in North Africa, West Africa and the Middle East. We welcome submissions from various academic disciplines and particularly accounts that go beyond usual Eurocentric explanations of migration policymaking and focus on one or more of the following themes:

• Dynamics of preference formation among domestic, regional and/or international actors and how these inform decision-making;
• Competition between domestic actors in migration policy-making, within as well as among state and civil society actors;
• The role of migration policy-making in shaping foreign policy: its relation to state reputation-building, international norms and broader discourses and patterns of “democratization”;
• Relations between governments and civil society actors on the one hand and the international

Keynote speaker: Prof. Ferruccio Pastore (FIERI, Italy)

Title: The International Relations of Fear: Intrinsic Paradoxes and Problematic Outcomes of European External Migration Governance

Short abstracts (up to 300 words) should be submitted by the 31st of March 2019 through the online form available at this link: https://www.humanmovement.cam.ac.uk/Research/fortress-europe. Applicants will be notified by the end of April 2019 of the outcome of their submission.

Ahead of the workshop, by September 5th at the latest, participants will be asked to circulate their full draft papers. Publication plans will be discussed at the workshop, but we intend to publish revised versions of selected papers in a leading journal.

Funding is available to contribute towards presenters’ travel expensesand will be allocated according to needs. Priority will be given to PhD and early career researchers; as well as scholars at non-European institutions or with no access to alternative sources of funding. Two nights’ accommodation (Sunday and Monday) is offered for all presenters at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Costs for lunches will be covered for all participants.

For queries, please email: beyondfortresseurope2019@gmail.com