Hybrid Annual Conference
Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of
European Migration and Border Control
organized by Cost Action 22135: DATAMIG
Ljubljana, June 5-6 2025
The Peace Institute & Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana
Kardeljeva ploščad 5, Ljubljana
In 2023, the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) approved funding for the research network “Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of European Migration and Border Control” (DATAMIG) to facilitate an international network of researchers; to deepen international collaboration; and to exchange and foster knowledge across disciplines.
DATAMIG holds its second annual conference online and on site. The conference is hosted by DATAMIG Vice-Chair Prof. Mojca Pajnik & team, The Peace Institute & Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana.
The conference starts on June 5, 09:15 and ends on June 6, (13:00) (CET). Before the conference, on June 4, the local event “A City for Everyone” – Migrant Tour (18:00-20:00) will be organized. Directly after the conference, the COST Action Management Committee will take place June 6, 13:00-15:00. Onsite and online participation is possible.
The hybrid conference will comprise working groups internal events and events to allow for exchange across working groups. A special highlight is the public event that is organized on June 5 by the Ljubljana team:
Seminar: From Corridor to Tampon Zone: The Rebordering of the Balkans Ten years after the ‘long summer of migration’, the European border regime in South-Eastern Europe has gradually been restored, while migratory movements continue in clandestinity and deep marginalization. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Balkans has been progressively integrated into the European border regime at varying speeds and intensities across different countries. After March 2016, the region’s role as a ‘tampon zone’ between the ‘core Europe’ and the ‘outside’ has intensified. Pushbacks have become normalized, walls, fences, and other ‘technical barriers’ proliferate. Humanitarian approaches are subordinated to security priorities, while solidarity is increasingly criminalised. Thousands along the Route are left without basic services or legal protection. Even upon reaching the EU, people on the move face difficulties and persistent insecurity. At the same time, solidarity initiatives continue to challenge the militarisation of borders and rising right-wing populism. In collaboration with people on the
move, they form an alternative current of resistance and care. This seminar explores these dynamics through the lens of critical, decolonial epistemologies and practices, viewing the border as a contested and shifting space shaped by both violence and resistance.
Roundtable: Migrant Data Troubles of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum We are preparing a roundtable session with civic actors to critically explore and discuss the migrant data troubles linked to the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, and its implementation on EU level and Member States. Guests will be invited to share experiences of interventions and collaborations that continue to accompany these processes.
Specific call for DATAMIG working group 3 – Laboratory
European liberal democracies experience a multifaceted crisis by various threats. The recent shifts towards authoritarian governance styles, as well as the political and societal polarization around migration and the unprecedented datafication of the regulation of migration across borders are major challenges to liberal democratic systems and democratic legitimacy. Datafication translates the everyday life of people into numbers and facts making them visible to bigger audiences and prone to exploitation, surveillance, stigmatization and discrimination. Datafied migration and border control regimes have provoked diverse critique and contestation. Civic action and social movements have a long-standing tradition of pointing up democratic deficits, demanding and proposing alternatives, and reclaiming existing institutions. Therefore, engaging with the creative and contentious civic action of NGOs, activists, journalists, lawyers, artists, social movements and critical engaged scholars articulating challenges of migrant data matters for democracy is a unique opportunity. It is an opportunity to unpack the theoretical, normative and practical challenges of articulating critique and mobilizing for social and political change towards just and inclusive democracies vis-vis engaging with migrants’ data matters and datafied migration and border control regimes.
The working group 3 sessions as part of the DATAMIG annual conference in Ljubljana bring together contributions of diverse authors (academics, activists, journalists, artists and migrants) who portray forms of academic and civic collaborations where current problématiques of migration and border control regimes and data are at stake. Critical, interventional and inventive, creative, artistic and poetic engagements with datafication of migration and border control regimes and migrants’ data matters are studied and investigated.
We ask how can academic, civil society, grass roots and artistic structures generate and engage critically and creatively with datafication of migration and border control more inclusively whilst protecting negatively affected communities. The objective is to assemble knowledge that inspires reflections and mobilizations of civic actions in careful and impactful ways in solidarity with migrants.
We invite contributions that respond to the following thematic priorities:
– A specific focus lies on methodologies and approaches of connecting knowledges and building bridges from the local to the global; apathy-countering inspiring practices to intervene in politics and public debate; exploring forms of creating more transparency and accountability; better understandings and counter knowledges of the interplay of technology, practice and institutions at the border; practices of artistic speculation, collaboration, resistance; engagements of civil society in advocacy work; investigative journalism, strategic litigation, campaigning, solidarity work; approaches of grass root activists and solidarians involved in struggles and forms of resistance.
– Special attention is given to specific sites of collaborative interventions and portraying cases of collaborative engagements linked to the contributor’s own work or experience. Sites of interests are border struggles, deportation, undoing the securitization of
migration, unpacking and contesting categories and statistics and democratic struggles and democracy labs, imagination and visions about how things could be otherwise. – We welcome portrayals of critical engagements with paradigms and modes of regulating human mobility through datafication take the history of data infrastructures of migration and border control rooted in imperial and colonial legacies as well as current geo-politics of the externalisation of borders into account.
– We invite contributions that engage with the specific border geographies. situated contexts and struggles along the Balkan corridor.
– Contributions are encouraged to share methodological and analytical tools deriving from practices and experiences from and for civic actors to inspire careful and experimental forms of collaboration on the one hand, and policy-relevant considerations of regulating human mobility beyond the anti-migration, security and data driven paradigms on the other.
– We encourage contributions that portray making-and-doings and multi-modal interventions (film, participatory methodologies, art installations, performances, exhibitions, graphic illustrations, alternative forms of publishing) having to do with migrants’ matters of datafication.
The working group sessions are dedicated to share and discuss contributors’ work. A major objective is to create connections and deeper understandings of critical and creative engagements with data matters and the migration and border control regime in the EU across Europe. Beyond that, working group 3 currently prepares a book initiative and will soon publish a call for contributions. Participants who are interested are invited to submit their proposals to this initiative as well.
Submissions:
Please submit an abstract of 250 words and a biographic note. Please indicate your interest and availability, if you would like to attend online or on-site, and if you would like to take up an active role (presenter, moderator) to [email protected], subject [Annual Conference 2025 Participation] by April 29 2025.
We have limited funding for reimbursing travel and accommodation costs for on site attendance. Those who actively engage in the conference’s activities as presenter or moderator as well as criteria defined by COST (gender, junior researchers, non-inclusive target countries) will be taken into account by dedicating reimbursement funds to persons.
Important Dates:
Opening call: April 14 2025
Deadline for submissions: April 29 2025
Communication of results: May 2 2025
Travel arrangements need to be made asap after the confirmation for onsite participation.
Recommendations for travel arrangements and local information
You find separate information about Ljubljana and travel information in a separate Welcome Package.
Organizational team
Ljubljana team:
The Peace Institute and Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana Prof. Dr. Mojca Pajnik ([email protected]; +386 41 515 682) Dr. Barbara Beznec ([email protected]; +386 31 867 156)
Lori Šramel Čebular ([email protected]; +386 40 813 998)
WG 1: Alice Fill, Koen Leurs, Analisa Meloni, Veronika Nagy, Silvan Pollozek, Philipp Seuferling, Zuzana Uhde
WG 2: Arely Cruz-Santiago, Vanessa Ugolini, Stevan Tatalovic, Ernesto Schwartz-Marin WG 3: Nina Amelung, Kinan Alajak, Mojca Pajnik, Barbara Beznec, Martin Bak Jørgensen, Brigitta Kuster
