Centre for Global Migration Studies (CeMig)

Centre for Global Migration Studies (CeMig)

Migration is one of the most pressing and complex issues of the 21st century. The Centre for Global Migration Studies (CeMig) brings together scholars of
Göttingen Campus from six different faculties, plus the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG). Together they study the complex challenges of migration on a global scale under very different thematic and regional foci, that by engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration and by pooling together diverse methodological approaches. CeMig strengthens research and teaching in the area of Migration Studies in addition to establishing innovative forms of knowledge transfer.

More about us...


New research project by Sabine Hess
EU research project MORE:
"Motivations, Experiences, and Consequences of Returns and Readmission Policy: Revealing and Developing Effective Alternatives"

In a research network of various university institutions and civil society associations in Europe and the UK, the EU research project MORE will analyze the developments, implementations and effects of a return-oriented policy from 01.10.23 onwards. In addition, over the next three years, projects, initiatives and approaches that (can) represent solidarity-based alternatives to return-oriented policies will be examined based on cooperation with people at risk of deportation and their advocacy groups.

It has long been known to all actors involved - from refugees and government officials to politicians - that policies focused on deportations and returns are inefficient and do not address the realities of people's lives in Europe. People become part of the societies in which they live beyond their legal residency status. Despite forced return policies, deportations, policies of deterrence and return assistance fail again and again for a variety of reasons and at a variety of levels.

In three project phases, the first step will be to examine the rationalities and justification contexts underlying the design of the European return directives at the respective national levels. In a second step, the concrete implementation will be examined in order to find alternative ways out of the return-oriented policy in a third step.

More information can be found here.


Map of Göttingen

Stadtlabor:

Wege zur kolonialkritischen Stadt


Mon. 15-19 Uhr
Thurs. 10:00-14.00 Uhr

Wilhelmsplatz 3



The "Urban Lab: Ways to the colonial-critical city" (Stadtlabor) will provide space for exchange and the collaborative exploration and development of paths to a colonial-critical city of Göttingen over the next 12 months. The project aims to gather perspectives, network knowledge and shape commemoration. In addition to the reappraisal of local colonial history, the City Lab also wants to make anti-colonial resistance and colonial continuities to the present more visible and invite all Göttingen residents to get involved and participate.

In the course of building up an open archive, all Göttingen residents are called upon to contribute objects, documents or other contemporary testimonies.

Go to the collection call here.

You will find further information on the current dates here on Instagram

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New research project by Sabine Hess
ZiF-Research Group:
The Social and Normative Consequences of the European Border Regime

With the hardening of borders and a reportedly abounding border violence, it becomes evident—in Europe particularly—that the new border policies conflict with liberal norms, international law and humanitarian values which constitute the historical and normative bases of the democratic nation state and the process of European unification itself.
Against this backdrop, the proposed research group will explore the normative and social consequences of the fortification and closing of borders for the states and societies engaged in these processes. How do hardened borders and border violence perpetrated by state and non-state actors eat into the legal, moral, and social fabric of democratic societies, undermining the very norms on which the latter rest? How can we conceptualize the normative and social consequences of violent bordering practices?

You can find more information here.

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New research project by Sabine Hess
Expertise on the establishment of a documentation center for the victims of the NSU:
"Nationwide inventory of reappraisal activities and inclusion of affected persons' perspectives."
On behalf of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb)

As a first planning step towards a possible place of remembrance and a documentation center for the victims of the NSU - as envisaged in the coalition agreement of the current federal government - a team at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology (Sabine Hess, Lee Hielscher, Çaǧan Varol, Jelka Günther, Eva Apelt, Yasmin Dreessen) was commissioned by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) with an expertise to qualitatively classify the nationwide reappraisal activities on the NSU complex on the basis of an inventory and to discuss fundamental questions about the orientation, contents and structures of such a place with those affected and their relatives as well as with supporting groups, victim counseling services and lawyers.
The goal is to find out in open discussions how they would like to see such a place (or places) against the background of their struggles for clarification and remembrance. In the process, various structural, methodological and content-related considerations - for example, with regard to the location, the tasks, the prerequisites for participation and co-design or the requirements for a legal supporting structure - are to be reflected upon with an open mind and, building on this, a recommendation is to be drafted as to how the perspective of those affected and their relatives can be placed centrally in all steps of realization.

The expertise is one of three clusters that serve as a basis for the preparation of a feasibility study by the Federal Agency for Civic Education and in which fundamental questions for a concept of an NSU Documentation Center will be discussed.

You can find more information here.

Related publications: "Testifying and being heard: Perspectives of those affected on a possible documentation center on the NSU complex" by Sabine Hess in the bpb's "ApuZ: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte" on the NSU complex.